Category Archives: War On Drugs

Modern day hippies claim we are amid a revival of the 1960s counterculture, an era known for its drug-fueled, antiestablishment cultural wave that flooded through the 60s into the 70s. There are many contextual similarities between the 60s and now, such as the large anti-war sentiment, the social demand for civil rights and an increase in psychedelic use. The 60s were a time where psychedelic use was in a gray area, LSD was barely regulated and some psychotherapists even prescribed LSD to patients in the United States, since LSD was technically legal until 1968. The legality of the drug was short-lived with the induction of the Nixon administration, which took steps to demonize LSD in efforts to distract from the Vietnam War and to delegitimize the hippies associated with it.

Over the last few decades, psychedelics have risen back to prominence, with highly acclaimed institutions having conducted FDA-approved studies finding medical merit to psychedelics and several cities decriminalizing psilocybin, a natural mushroom psychedelic. The state of Oregon went as far as to [legalize] supervised psilocybin-assisted therapy, according to The Appeal. The demonized portrayal of psychedelics has prevented us from studying the potential health benefits that they present. By repealing the false narrative left from the Nixon era, we can comprehend the effects of psychedelics and increase overall well-being as a society.

Psychedelics have helped shape history and cultures to what they are today. In the ancient Sanskrit texts that created the Hindu religion, there is a reoccurring herb called the Soma, which is the hallucinogenic mushroom Amanita muscaria. The ancient Greeks would make initiates of religious rituals consume a drink thought to be contaminated by the ergot fungus, which has a psychedelic component closely related to that of LSD. Psychedelic plants have been tools of non-Western cultures for thousands of years, mostly used in religious ceremonies to attain a different state of consciousness and communicate with the spirit world. Dr. Ben Sessa, a licensed and approved psilocybin psychotherapist, writes that communities who utilized these drugs are largely associated with lower levels of mental illness than those communities who are more heavily influenced by alcohol abuse one of the trappings of Western culture.

Western cultures were exposed to psychedelics after the synthesizing of LSD by Albert Hofmann in 1938. At first, the press surrounding psychedelics and LSD was mostly positive, as wealthy and affluent individuals shared their experiences to publications like Life Magazine. The first wave of negative criticism came after two Harvard psychology professors named Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert were kicked out of Harvard in 1963 for conducting studies of LSD on themselves and advocating for the use of LSD. The incident was named the Harvard Drug Scandal. After this incident, the press started to publish almost baseless articles of LSD trips gone wrong, all to dissuade children and teenagers from experimenting with LSD.

This trend of demonization of LSD and psychedelics gained more traction with the inauguration of Richard Nixon, who claimed Leary was the most dangerous man in America. When Nixon began the War on Drugs, he made sure to dissuade the public from using LSD. Nixon and the Drug Enforcement Adminstration (DEA) ranked drugs on a scale of Schedule I to Schedule V, with Schedule I having high potential for abuse and low therapeutic value and Schedule V being least addictive with most clinical potential. LSD was ranked a Schedule I drug, the same rank as heroin, despite thousands of studies in the 50s stating that substances like LSD could help mental health issues and addiction. As the war on drugs raged on, LSD remained a Schedule I drug, preventing any research from being done on it, and propaganda was spread to young teens to dissuade them from using LSD or other psychedelics, leading to programs like Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) a government program that ran through more than 75 percent of public schools through the 90s centered on preventing young students from succumbing to controlled substances and illegal activities. The program was deemed to have no real impact on drug behavior and was extremely expensive.

Despite the legality and negative press of psychedelics, there has been a huge uptake in LSD consumption. From 2015 to 2018, there was a 56 percent increase in overall LSD usage, a 70 percent increase for college graduates, a 59 percent increase for people aged 26 to 34 and a whopping 223 percent for people aged 35 to 49. Andrew Yockey, the lead author of a paper on LSD published in Drug and Alcohol Dependence, believes that figure might have tripled in the face of COVID-19, as the increase could be allotted to the fact that some people are using the drug in a therapeutic manner or as a form of escapism.

While LSD usage is still far from the level it used to be in the 60s, there has been more of a variety of psychedelic drugs being used. In areas like Silicon Valley, where there are immense amounts of competition between tech giants, professionals in the field have started to self-medicate with psilocybin, or magic mushrooms, to have an edge against younger newcomers. Most of these professionals take microdoses, which is usually one-tenth of an average dose. This allows for users to stay motivated and approach problems in a creative manner without being incapable of functioning on a day-to-day basis. Some professionals pay $2,000 a month to get their own personal trip guru to help try to better their well-being.

While psychedelics can help in work performance and provide an escape from reality, the biggest benefit lies in its ability to help mental health issues. Though psychedelics could have an adverse reaction and trigger schizophrenia, if screened and administered properly, those risks could be reduced down almost to zero. Due to the Schedule I ranking of most psychedelics, the publics understanding of the drugs has been very limited, and most countries in the world dont allow for testing. Recently, there have been new emerging clinical studies showing that psychedelics can help with many mental health issues. Scientific American writes, Most of this research centers around shorter-acting psilocybin, which is in current or planned clinical trials for treating depression, anxiety, anorexia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, certain severe headaches and addiction to smoking, cocaine and alcohol.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has identified a 13 percent increase in mental health issues and substance abuse disorder throughout the world in the past decade. It is important to tackle this rising mental health issue that is plaguing the world. Today, one in five Americans will experience a mental illness in a given year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). By preventing the use and study of psychedelics, we are obstructing and hindering a new field of medicine that could help mental and spiritual well-being. Mental health issues like anxiety and depression cost the global economy over $1 trillion per year. The reality is, no drug is inherently evil or good. If we fear what we do not know, we prevent ourselves from utilizing everything we have to grow collectively as a society.

Akshay Ma Kumar is a senior majoring in economics.

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Demonizing LSD prevents valuable research on health benefits - Binghamton University Pipe Dream

Good afternoon, and welcome back to Women Rule! What are you excited about with the return of fall TV? How do you like the newsletter lately? Anything in particular you want to see? Feel free to email me: [emailprotected]. Follow me on Twitter, too. Thanks to Maya Parthasarathy for putting together all these great links. Onto the newsletter this week ...

In a new Hulu series, Dopesick, about the roots of the opioid crisis and how it affected one small Virginia town, Rosario Dawson plays a frustrated Drug Enforcement Administration agent. After discovering bags of OxyContin at a drug bust, her character, Bridget Meyer, becomes consumed with getting the drug under control. But as a woman of color in law enforcement, she is stymied by her DEA superiors and representatives from Purdue Pharma, the company that made the drug.

Its a powerful portrait of the people affected by the opioid crisis and an exploration of how it got so bad. It comes at a particularly important moment, too: In early September, the Sacklers, the family that owned Purdue Pharma, were released from liability in lawsuits involving opioids. In exchange, the family agreed to pay $4.5 billion, which will mostly go to addiction treatment and prevention programs in the U.S., and to dissolve the company. After decades of a mounting opioid crisis spurred by OxyContin, critics said the ruling amounted to very little accountability for the family and their company.

The new series is also a subtle indictment of the racism and sexism embedded in companies and government agencies that made it harder to push back against the powerful interest groups that perpetuated the opioid crisis. I spoke with Dawson over Zoom about why the main person her character was based on didnt want to participate in the series and how the racism and sexism her family experienced shaped her role.

Thank God for the people who go, No, I will not bow down, This is wrong and something needs to change, she said. Not everybodys capable of it.

This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity. Watch video clips of the interview above or click here.

Katelyn Fossett: How did you prepare for the role?

Rosario Dawson: I read Dopesick and a couple of other books that [Dopesick series creator] Danny [Strong] recommended that he had researched. My character is kind of a few different storylines put together in one. And I asked about the cast of people that was used to create Bridget.

I did the more basic online research about the DEA and how the structure works. I think what was great about it was Bridget as a character and as a person, and about the cost of being the Cassandra and seeing something happen and not being able to convince other people to not let in this Trojan horse in and to fight back. I think that was probably the more compelling thing.

Some of the people that [Strong] had tried to resource for this character didnt even want to talk. One of the main people that my character is based off of is just so burnt out from all of it, that she was just like, I dont want to touch this with a 10-foot pole. And it was just fascinating. Not having that person to speak to actually spoke volumes about this character that Im playing and the toll that this whole thing seeing this tsunami and doing her best to try to prevent it and and to protect people what that cost her personally.

Fossett: The thing that struck me as I was watching the episodes was how male and white this world of pharmaceuticals and regulation is most of the doctors, the lawyers, the pharmaceutical sales representatives are white and male. And then you have Bridget Meyer, a woman and a person of color and someone who is pushing back on everything that is happening with OxyContin. Do you think being an outsider in some ways made her more likely to push back on these powerful interests?

Dawson: Oh yeah. Theres one scene with a young boy. She thinks shes taking down an adult addict. And its this child, and its one of the big Aha! moments about just how insidious and scary and profound this tragedy is and how its unfolding. And in that scene, I talk about where Bridget comes from, which is a community that was devastated by the crack-cocaine disparities in how the laws were enacted, and the three-strikes rule, and how generations of people have been affected by how we addressed that crisis and the failed war on drugs.

And its that idea of you know, a Cory Booker who is in the Senate and is fighting for police reform and all kinds of things because hes actually living in Newark and in the community that hes trying to help and work with. And thats not true for most of the senators, or any of them. (Dawson is in a relationship with Booker.)

When people talk about the statistics of how valuable it is to have more diversity in your workplace, its true. When you dont have a voice that authentically comes from a certain space, your default position isnt going to include that.

So I think it is critical to represent a woman like Bridget in this space at that particular time and how that exceptionally put a toll on her because she was really fighting an uphill battle in so many different ways just to be even taken seriously when what was at stake was very serious. And the fact that she wasnt that charming, and didnt how to work the room and massage the egos, that cost her being able to be as effective as she wanted to be. If she had been a man, she would have been listened to differently. They wouldnt have killed the messenger.

Fossett: Yeah, it seems like the opioid crisis has not really penetrated our culture in the way that a lot of other big crises or wars, for instance, have. Is that a part of what appealed to you about the script in the story?

Dawson: Its really powerful to have a story that helps to share all of that and hopefully give us a different perspective and ground from which to act next. Like the SACKLER Act being passed! (The bill would prohibit non-debtor companies from enjoying protections from lawsuits that debtor companies can take advantage of during the bankruptcy process.) There are things legislatively that we can do that can make a real difference that if we get enough people to kind of push can shift the tide.

Fossett: We talked about Bridget Meyer being a woman of color and how that maybe made her more likely to go against these powerful forces. Is there anything in your own life that you tapped into when you drew strength from being a woman of color?

Dawson: There is a scene in which my character feels like shes making real progress, and shes been promoted, and shes done some really interesting things that have put Purdue and the Sacklers feet to the fire, and theyre actually willing to come to the table. And then, as shes finding out that her tactics are working, shes also being told shes not invited to the meeting.

And it just made me think so much of my grandmother. My great-grandmother worked for the Ladies International Garment Workers Union, and my grandmother used to help her with the union organizing. They stood up with stature and dignity in the face of really inhumane treatment.

My grandmother used to say all the time, I may speak with an accent, but I dont think with one. She was the senior secretary to the vice president of Swiss Bank Corporation at the World Trade Center. And I think about her going from deep Brooklyn trains and busses to get to work. The fact that she had to say that all the time ... what was she encountering every day? How many times did she have to hear a certain comment and be like, I'll be right back, and go and cry in the bathroom, and then put her game face back on and go back out there because no one else was going to do it for her?

I think a lot of people can recognize when the powerful treat you like crap, and you know youre right. And so youve got to tough it out and keep persevering. Thats such a real thing. But thank God for the people who go, No, I will not bow down. I will not play nice. I will not excuse this or ignore that. This is wrong and something needs to change. And not everybodys capable of it, but a [person like] Bridget Meyer was. But it still took a toll.

The cost of this crisis has been on so many people. And misogyny and racism and prejudice and discrimination added to how terrible this was. This would have been very different if our society operated differently. But here we are, and were still pushing back against that. And so it gives us leverage, because look at how differently we look at that moment now, and how much more differently we will look at it in 20 years and 30 years when equity is even more normalized.

House, Senate Democrats at odds over whether to slash paid leave plan, by POLITICOs Eleanor Mueller: Senate leadership is considering slashing funding for paid leave in Democrats reconciliation package to $300 billion, four sources told POLITICO, as part of a broader push to bring down the bills price tag to appease moderates.

Thats about $200 billion, or about 40 percent, less than what the House approved. To get there, policymakers would need to make major changes to the House-drafted language, illustrating the kind of tradeoffs Democrats are being forced to consider and the type of schisms that's creating between moderates and progressives.

Weve been touting this as being transformational in terms of creating job opportunities for women, Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) said in an interview. It would be dastardly if the approach is one that is just going to be slash-and-burn the House bill, because that will mean that nothing is transformational.

Divided Supreme Court considers who can defend abortion restrictions, by Alice Miranda Ollstein for POLITICO: A divided Supreme Court on Tuesday weighed which state officials can defend abortion bans in court a procedural question with implications that extend beyond reproductive health in states where the governor and attorney general hail from opposing parties.

The arguments marked the first abortion case to be argued in full before the courts 6-3 conservative majority and centered on whether Republican Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron could defend his states ban on some forms of abortion after two courts found it unconstitutional and Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear refused to defend it further.

A decision, which is expected next summer, could extend beyond abortion to Covid mandates, gun control laws and even election results.

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This Is How Everyday Sexism Could Stop You From Getting That Promotion, by Jessica Nordell for the New York Times: When the computer scientist and mathematician Lenore Blum announced her resignation from Carnegie Mellon University in 2018, the community was jolted. A distinguished professor, shed helped found the Association for Women in Mathematics, and made seminal contributions to the field. But she said she found herself steadily marginalized from a center shed help create blocked from important decisions, dismissed and ignored. She explained at the time: Subtle biases and micro-aggressions pile up, few of which on their own rise to the level of lets take action, but are insidious nonetheless.

Its an experience many women can relate to. But how much does everyday sexism at work matter? Most would agree that outright discrimination when it comes to hiring and advancement is a bad thing, but what about the small indignities that women experience day after day? The expectation that they be unfailingly helpful; the golf rounds and networking opportunities theyre not invited to; the siphoning off of credit for their work by others; unfair performance reviews that penalize them for the same behavior thats applauded in men; the manterrupting?

When I was researching my book The End of Bias: A Beginning I wanted to understand the collective impact of these less visible forms of bias, but data were hard to come by. Bias doesnt happen once or twice; it happens day after day, week after week. To explore the aggregate impact of routine gender bias over time, I teamed up with Kenny Joseph, a computer science professor at the University at Buffalo, and a graduate student there, Yuhao Du, to create a computer simulation of a workplace. We call our simulated workplace NormCorp.

Research: Women Leaders Took on Even More Invisible Work During the Pandemic, by Marianne Cooper for Harvard Business Review: The events of the last year and a half have put intense pressure on companies to do more to support employees and act on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Women leaders are meeting this moment and taking on the extra work that comes with it but theyre not getting recognized or rewarded for it. As a result, this mission-critical work is in danger of being relegated to office housework: Necessary tasks and activities that benefit the company but go unrecognized, are underappreciated, and dont lead to career advancement. Thats a main finding from the new 2021 Women in the Workplace report by LeanIn.org and McKinsey & Company, which I co-authored.

The report on the state of women in corporate America surveyed more than 400 companies and more than 65,000 employees in professional jobs from the entry level to the C-suite. The survey found that at all levels of management, women showed up as better leaders, more consistently supporting employees and championing DEI. Compared to men in similar roles, women managers invest more in helping employees navigate work-life challenges, ensuring workloads are manageable, and providing emotional support. ...

But this work is taxing the people who are disproportionately doing it. Whats more is that this work is going unrecognized. Only about a quarter of employees say that the extra work theyre doing is formally recognized (for example, in performance reviews) either a great deal or a substantial amount. This disconnect raises an important question: If companies think this work is so critical, why arent they recognizing and rewarding it?

Washingtons Most Powerful Women 2021, by Jane Recker in Washingtonian: Power in Washington is a complicated thing to quantify. Some people have it by virtue of the office they hold. Others maintain it by virtue of their reputations, no matter what their business card might read. And in a political city, many of the most powerful among us owe their clout to voters either the constituents who elect them directly or the national electorate who picks the government every four years.

That last factor is a reason why this years Most Powerful Women list is replete with new names not only did the government change, but the new administration put a lot more women into top jobs, starting with the vice-presidency.

Of course, not all power resides in high-profile arenas like politics. Some of the most powerful women on our list might be able to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue unnoticed while still causing people to tremble in whatever other world they help shape.

Read more here.

Two new biographies of Fannie Lou Hamer are coming out, and they both sound fantastic.

Kenyatta T. Brunson will be the new CEO of N Street Village, the largest provider of homelessness services for women in D.C. Neda Brown is now director for the Caribbean and Summit of the Americas at the National Security Council. She most recently was a student at the National War College and has spent almost 20 years at the State Department as a career foreign service officer. Sarit Catz is now an SVP at ATHOS Pr. She previously was a partner at Eldion.

Sakura Komiyama Amend is joining SKDK as a managing director. She previously was a U.S.-based comms executive for En+ Group. Sara Schapiro joins the Federation of American Scientists as a senior fellow and its first director of education, workforce and talent. Schapiro previously served as the vice president of education at PBS. ...

Ambar Mentor-Truppa, Katherine Brandon, Kimberly Davis-Wells and Tania Mercado are joining Fenton Communications as VPs. Mentor-Truppa previously was VP of comms at the Shriver Center on Poverty Law. Brandon previously led comms and advocacy for Together For Girls. Davis-Wells previously was lead consultant for the City of Oakland Human Services Department. Mercado previously was a VP at SKDK.

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Rosario Dawson on sexism, racism and the opioid crisis - Politico

As protests against the Vietnam War and support for the civil rights movement surged across the United States in 1971, President Richard Nixon stood in the White House on June 17 and addressed the nation, declaring the War on Drugs. Nixon called drugs public enemy number one.

John Ehrlichman, who served as a domestic policy aid to Nixon, claimed that the War on Drugs was politically and racially motivated in a 2016 interview with Harper Magazine.

The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar and Black people, Ehrlichman stated in the interview. We knew we couldnt make it illegal to be either against the war or Black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings and vilify them night after night on the evening news.

Though some have since expressed doubt over Ehrlichmans account, statistics dont lie and the numbers are harrowing. According to a 2021 Associated Press report, the U.S. prison population in state and federal prisons rose from 240,593 to 1.43 million Americans from 1975 to 2019. Out of those incarcerated in 2019, about one out of five was imprisoned for drug related charges. In 2020, Black Americans made up 24% of those arrested for drug-related crimes, despite making up 13% of the population.

The War on Drugs was said to be declared for the sake of public safety, but it has similarly failed in this mission. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, overdose deaths increased by 30.4% in 2020 and have gradually climbed since 1998.

Following Nixons 1971 actions, mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses became a part of the criminal justice system in 1986 under President Ronald Reagan. The U.S. Congress passed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act and funded the War on Drugs with $1.7 billion, according to Britannica. This change in public policy caused incarceration rates to quickly grow in the past 40 years, and has continued to disproportionately impact minority groups.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom abolished minimum mandatory sentencing on Oct. 5, when Newsom signed Senate Bill 73, amending rules of the justice system created in 1986 during the Anti-Drug Abuse Act, a law that targeted crack cocaine and gave out far harsher sentencing for users of crack cocaine than powder cocaine. This racially motivated policy targeted low-income Americans and minority groups that were more likely to use crack cocaine than the substantially more expensive cocaine prefered by white Americans and the upper class.

SB 73, set to take effect on January 1, 2022, was written by California Senator Scott Wiener with the intent of reducing mass imprisonment of Americans convicted for nonviolent drug crimes and providing alternative methods of treatment for those convicted, according to The Drug Policy Alliance. The approach of treating drugs like a public health problem instead of a crime issue has proven successful in countries like Portugal, which decriminalized possession of all drugs in 2000.

War on Drugs policies are ineffective, inhumane and expensive. SB 73 ends mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug offenses, and gives judges more options to allow people to stay out of jail, Wiener said in a statement when introducing the bill last year.

Law enforcement who believe the mandatory sentences better communities and keep citizens safe have openly expressed their opposition to the bill. Meanwhile, research suggests that mandatory minimums have not been successful in deterring crime, as its supporters suggest. It similarly doesnt keep those incarcerated from becoming repeat offenders. Californias Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation 2021 study has found that the rate of how many people become re-offenders after going to prison has averaged around 50% over the past ten years.

An additional problem with mandatory minimums is that they take away the judges discretion in determining punishment for cases where a minor penalty would be more applicable for less serious crimes or for a particular individuals situation.

Allowing judges the discretion to order supervised probation as opposed to jail time is a step in the right direction to address the racial inequities in our criminal justice system, said Jeanette Zanipatin, California State Director for Drug Policy Alliance.

While in favor of SB 73, the editorial board believes that more funding to organizations offering community substance abuse resources along with more affordable beds in rehabilitation centers is needed to successfully fight the harmful effects of drug addiction, thus decreasing incarceration numbers in the U.S.

The editorial board further believes that better education surrounding drugs and addiction is necessary to improve this issue, beyond the Just Say No '' rhetoric commonly repeated in public schools and institutions.

Children in the substance abuse prevention program, Drug Abuse Resistance Education, commonly known as D.A.R.E., were just as likely to use drugs than those who didnt participate, according to Scientific American. Today, more schools and organizations are embracing harm reduction-based strategies to offer students and community members the education needed to take their safety into their own hands when it comes to drug use.

The editorial board believes that education centralized around factual information of drug use, in order to gain knowledge on the repercussions of these illegal substances is the best alternative to prevent drug crime. We agree with accurate and individual judging of non-violent drug crime cases, rather than immediately labeling users as criminals through mandatory jail time.

For addiction help and community resources, please visit Orange Coast Colleges substance abuse webpage.

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EDITORIAL: SB 73 will end 'War on Drugs' in California - Coast Report

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Rafe Godfrey: America's real 'forever war' is the War on Drugs - Charleston Gazette-Mail

The Fall International Seminar Series,A New Normal in a Global Context, continues at noon, Wednesday,October 20, with Dr. Mike Hendrickstalk on Central American Migration and the War on Drugs.The event will be presented as a live Zoom webinar which is free and open to the public.Advance registration is requiredto receive the Zoom link.

Hendricks presentationCentral American Migration and the War on Drugsdemonstrates how things like globalization, neoliberalism, and increases in technology have led to an increase in global drug trafficking in recent years.Hendricks will show how the global drug prohibition regimeandthe United States War on Drugshavefailedtostop the supply of drugsbecause the demand for drugs in developed countries (e.g., the United States)has never waned. After discussing the many facets of this issue, Hendricks will end the presentation with a brief discussion onsome potential routes to mitigate the narco-refugee problemin Central America.

Hendricks is an assistant professor in the Department of Politics and Government at ISU. His primary research interests include resistance movements to large extractive projects in the developing world,Chinese investments in the developing world, and peacekeeping effectiveness. Hendricksholds a Ph.D. (2019) and an M.A. (2016) in comparative politics and international relations from the Department of Political Science at the University of Missouri. During his time in graduate school, Hendricks also completed a minor in international development and four certificates: grantsmanship, nonprofit management, public management, and global public affairs. Prior to graduate school, Hendricks served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Nicaragua (2011-2013) and China (2014). Hendricks earned his B.A. from the University of Delaware in 2011. He studied international relations with a concentration on international development. He also completed three minors: Spanish, business, and history.

The International Seminar Series has become one of the most popular internationally focused events on the Illinois State campus and continues to provide international perspectives on critical issues around the world.This semester, the series is a collaboration between theOffice of International Studies and Programs and the Department of Politics and Government. The faculty coordinator isDr. T.Y. Wang, University Professor and chair of theDepartment of Politics and Government.

The series continues with webinars at noon each Wednesday through November 3, 2021. Seminarseries events are free and open to the public:Advance registrationis required to receive the log-in link. Those who have questions or who need an accommodation to participate fully should contactInternationalSeminar@IllinoisState.eduor call (309) 438-5276.

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Central American Migration and the War on Drugs - Illinois State University News

On 11 May 2017, Crisanto Lozano set off early in the morning from his home in Manila. He was going to renew his security guard licence, a requirement for his profession. By afternoon, he still hadnt returned, nor was he picking up his phone. Then the family realised that Crisantos younger brother, Juan Carlos, was also missing.

The next day, they heard news that two bodies had been discovered nearby. The brothers had been shot dead during a police operation.

If they died with sickness, maybe I can accept with a free feeling in my heart, says their mother, Llore Pasco. Instead, she says, they were killed by police officers who were operating with brazen impunity under the instruction of Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte.

After declaring a so-called war on drugs, he had repeatedly called for drug addicts, and anyone involved in the drug trade, to be killed. If you know of any addicts, go ahead and kill them yourself, as getting their parents to do it would be too painful, Duterte said a speech after taking office in 2016.

Of course the policemen shoot and shoot and shoot, Pasco says. Because he ordered kill, kill, kill.

The ICC prosecutor estimates as many as 30,000 people were killed between July 2016 and March 2019.

For more than four years, Pasco, a massage therapist and now an activist with the alliance Rise Up for Life and for Rights, has fought for accountability, and to bring an end to the killings. Along with six other mothers, she was among the first to publicly submit a petition to the international criminal court (ICC) calling for Dutertes indictment.

Last month, the ICC confirmed that it would proceed with an investigation into possible crimes against humanity committed during Dutertes war on drugs, stating that it appeared to be a widespread and systematic attack against the civilian population. The announcement was probably the best news on the human rights front since the fall of Marcos, says Carlos Conde, a senior Philippines researcher at Human Rights Watch.

For Pasco and other mothers, the ICC statement offered a glimmer of hope. It is really like half of the sun is shining upon us, she says.

It was in August 2018 that the mothers, who organise through Rise Up for Life and Rights, which has documented hundreds of drugs-war cases, first submitted their testimonies to the ICC. The group was apprehensive, says Kristina Conti, a lawyer from the National Union of Peoples Lawyers (NUPL), who represents the families. At that time this was the height of the killings, she adds. Many other mothers had been unwilling to speak out, fearing that more of their relatives could be targeted.

Lawyers working on drug war cases have also faced severe security risks. Under Dutertes presidency, 61 lawyers have been killed, including some of Contis colleagues. Earlier this year, Angelo Karlo Guillen, also a NUPL lawyer, was stabbed in the head. Fortunately, he survived the attack.

The large number of cases that lawyers work on means it is hard to determine exactly why they have been targeted, Conti says, but many of those killed have been involved in drugs cases. There is a general fear it is unsaid really but to take on the defence of drugs cases is asking for the death sentence. Youre putting a target to your own head.

Despite the risks, the families resolved to publicly petition the ICC, believing this was the only way to bring an end to the killings. I think this kind of bravery or tenacity on the part of just a few of the mothers carried over, Conti says. Hope is contagious.

When the ICC announced an initial inquiry in 2018, Duterte responded by withdrawing from the court, and threatening to arrest the then-prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, if she stepped foot in the country. The withdrawal, however, did not take effect until March 2019, and so the ICC still retains jurisdiction from the start of the Philippines membership in 2011 until this point.

Since then, Duterte, who is nearing the end of his six-year term limit, has continued to dismiss the ICC, refusing to cooperate with it and even stating that he wants to slap the judges.

However, he recently abandoned a controversial plan to run as vice-president, which critics said would be a violation of the constitution, and said he would prepare his defence. Many suspect he will be succeeded as president by his daughter Sara Duterte, who could shield him from prosecution. She has denied plans to run and did not file a candidacy last week ahead of Fridays deadline. Substitutions are allowed until 15 November.

It is believed that only one of the deaths linked to anti-drug operations the killing of 17-year-old Kian delos Santos has led to a conviction. Three police were found guilty of murder.

The president is very lucky, Pasco points out, because he has been given a chance to defend himself. Her own children were denied the right to do so.

Pasco was told her sons had been involved in a robbery, and that they were shot because they had tried to fight back against the police. The narrative is grimly familiar to activists and human rights lawyers; the same justification that victims fought back is routinely given by Philippine police to defend extra-judicial killings carried out during their operations. According to the ICC, this claim is consistently undermined by other information relating to drugs-war killings.

Both Pascos sons had, in the past, used drugs, but had since stopped doing so, she said. Crisanto, 34, who was married with four children, was working in another province as a security guard. He would return home once a month, when he received his salary, to see the family. Juan Carlos, 31, was working as a janitor and labourer. He was a sweet son, she says. Whenever he was paid he would try to give some of his wages to her, and, when she refused, he would treat his nieces and nephew instead. He didnt need to marry, he would tell them, because they were already his family.

When Duterte came to power, both sons responded to official calls for drug users to surrender to their local authorities for rehabilitation. Many other victims of the drugs operations had done the same, believing they would be spared from the police crackdowns. The opposite was true. They were not being helped, they were being killed, says deaconess Rubylin Litao, a coordinator for Rise Up for Life and Rights.

Pasco is aware, she adds, that it will be a long fight for justice. Our opponent, our enemy is not just an ordinary person, it is the head of the state of the Philippines, and also his cronies.

With Duterte and potentially his successor, if they are sympathetic to him refusing members of the ICC access to the Philippines, the work of activists, human rights lawyers and families on the ground, who will need to gather evidence, will become even more important.

Pasco hopes that other mothers will come forwards. Why should we be afraid? They should be afraid, because we are telling the truth. This is what is really happening here in the Philippines, Pasco says. Even now, she adds, the killings continue, but less attention is paid to such deaths because of the pandemic.

We have to show courage, go out and show our testimony so that we can win soon in this struggle.

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We have to show courage: the Philippines mothers taking Duterte and his war on drugs to court - The Guardian

Ciudad Juarez, MEXICO Over the past 10 years, the makeup of Mexico's criminal landscape has shifted from a handful of big cartels and some splinter groups to more than 400 gangs operating all over the country, many of them with ties to the US.

A 2008 intelligence report by the Mexican army detailed the first fragmentation of what then was Mexico's ruling cartel: Arturo Beltran Leyva's split from "The Federation of Sinaloa," which was run by Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman and Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada.

Beltran Leyva founded his own cartel, naming it after himself, but by the end of 2009, Mexican Marines working with US agents had located Arturo Beltran, killing him in a raid in the resort city of Cuernavaca, just south of Mexico City.

The fragmentation has continued since then. Now more than 400 gangs operate in Mexico, according to the most recent report by Lantia Intelligence, a Mexican consulting agency specializing in criminal organizations and security analysis.

"Today most of these 400 criminal cells are coalitions more than independent groups," according to Eduardo Guerrero, director of Lantia, which maintains a database on gangs updated monthly.

Guerrero said the fragmentation was a direct consequence of the "war against cartels" that right-wing Mexican President Felipe Calderon escalated soon after taking office in 2006.

"The DEA advised Calderon to start a strategic fragmentation between cartels, but Mexico police forces were not prepared, and the narcos bought the police [at] every level," Guerrero said, referring to pervasive corruption.

American officials have also pointed to that US-supported strategy as a driver of violence in recent years.

The Sinaloa and Jalisco Nueva Generacion cartels "are the biggest players in Mexico today, with a lot of partners," Guerrero told Insider.

The Sinaloa Cartel has split into more than 37 "small and medium sized cells," according to the Lantia report obtained by Insider.

The Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generacion, which was formed by a faction of the Sinaloa Cartel, operates with more than 36 cells around the country.

Major criminal groups mostly have horizontal rather than hierarchical structures, Guerrero said. The Sinaloa Cartel in particular is believed to be more adaptable because it operates as a group of cooperating factions.

"But in some cases, especially with those small gangs, they do have a chain of command," Guerrero said.

Not all cells cooperate with the larger group to which they're linked. Cartel Nueva Plaza, a Jalisco cartel cell with strong ties to Asia and the US, is believed to have challenged the Jalisco cartel on its home turf in Guadalajara, spurring a wave of bloodshed there in 2018.

The Lantia report also describes once-powerful organizations like Los Zetas, the Gulf Cartel, Beltran Leyva, and Familia Michoacana as almost nonexistent, having fragmented into about 50 different groups with operations in 16 of Mexico's 32 states.

The proliferation of small gangs and the presence of powerful criminal organizations have overwhelmed Mexican law enforcement, according to security experts.

"The criminal organizations in Mexico are extremely empowered by the fact that they think there is no threat to them by the Mexican state," said Manelich Castilla, who was the head of Mexico's Federal Police before it was folded into the country's new National Guard in 2019.

Castilla acknowledged that Mexico's law-enforcement authorities are actively participating in organized crime and that "there are no solid authorities, especially at a local level."

"The fentanyl business changed everything. Since it is so profitable and it moves in such small quantities, fentanyl made cartels much more empowered and rich, overwhelming all levels of authorities," he said.

Castilla said the small gangs proliferating in Mexico are not a threat to established cartels but rather support their power.

"They work under their directions, not against them. The roughest threat is for Mexican local authorities. Cartels that might not have had a strong local presence in many cities now do, and this is totally overwhelming," he said.

Larger cartels might also be empowered by having local alliances in cities where they operate. A Sinaloa Cartel operative in Culiacan, the capital of Sinaloa state, said the cartel didn't feel a threat from gangs or small organized groups.

"They will never be a threat. We are the ones paying their bills, asking them to support our organizations, and what they get in return more than money is the support of a strong organization like the Sinaloa," the operative told Insider, speaking anonymously to avoid retaliation.

The operative said that these local gangs "look for us to have a brand behind them. Otherwise they are on their own."

Criminal organizations have gained "a lot of power" and co-opted officials at many levels in recent years, but they aren't able to threaten the power of the Mexican state, Castilla said.

"It is a lie to believe that some of these organizations overpower the capacity of the Mexican state. They don't have the infrastructure or the training as Mexican law enforcement does," Castilla told Insider.

The issue, Castilla said, is the approach that Mexican President Andrs Manuel Lpez Obrador has taken to fighting organized crime.

Lpez Obrador, elected in 2018, has been criticized for adopting a non-confrontational security strategy, which he has referred to as "hugs not guns."

Lpez Obrador "is trying to pacify the country with other ways than confrontation, and this has been very much used by criminals to get stronger," Castilla said.

See the rest here:

Fragmentation caused by Mexico's war on drugs created 400 new gangs - Business Insider

The menace of drug addiction has spread fast among the youth of India as supply drives the demand.

The arrest of Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khans son Aryan Khan by the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) has once again thrown the spotlight on the drug menace in India.

Late September 2021, 3,000 kilograms of heroin were caught at the Mundra Port in Gujarat. Reportedly, the large quantity of drug shipment came from Afghanistan. The menace of drugs in India came into the limelight last year in 2020 during the investigations behind the death of Sushant Singh Rajput. Let me be brutally honest, the menace of drug addiction has spread fast among the youth of India. This is because supply drives the demand. India is wedged between the worlds two largest areas of illicit opium production, the Golden Crescent and the Golden Triangle.

Thailand, Myanmar, Vietnam and Laos form the regions of The Golden Triangle Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran form the regions of The Golden Crescent. This proximity has traditionally been viewed as a source of vulnerability, since it has made India both a destination and a transit route for opiates produced in these regions.

This fact continues to be important in defining drug trafficking trends in the subcontinent. However, the extent to which heroin seized in the country can be sourced to the diversion of licit opium grown in the country is a matter which continues to be debated. According to the World Drug Report 2021, prescription drugs, their ingredients or precursors are being increasingly diverted for recreational use in Indiathe largest manufacturer of generic drugs in the world.

As one of the biggest manufacturers of potassium permanganate, a precursor chemical, there is a growing suspicion that the processing of cocaine may be shifted by drug cartel from South America to India.

India is shockingly also linked to shipment of drugs sold on the 19 major darkness markets analysed over 2011-2020. The Magnitude of Substance Use in India 2019 Report released by the All India Institute of Medical Sciences revealed: The report revealed that Cannabis and Opioids are the commonly used substances in India. About 2.8% of the population (3.1 crore individuals) reports having used any cannabis product within the previous the general population (more than 10%).

Cannabis and Opioids are the next commonly used substances in India. About 2.8% of the population (3.1 crore individuals) reports having used any cannabis product within the previous year. The use of cannabis was further differentiated between the legal form of cannabis(bhang) and other illegal cannabis products (ganja and charas). Use of these cannabis products was observed to be about 2% (approximately 2.2 crore persons) for bhang and about 1.2% (approximately 1.3 crore persons) for illegal cannabis products, ganja and charas. States with the highest prevalence of cannabis use are Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Sikkim, Chhattisgarh and Delhi. About 2.1% of the countrys population (2.26 crore individuals) use opioids which includes opium (or its variants like poppy husk known as doda/phukki), Heroin (or its impure form smack or brown sugar) and a variety of pharmaceutical opioids.

Nationally, the most common opioid used is Heroin (1.14%) followed by pharmaceutical opioids (0.96%) and Opium (0.52%). Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Manipur and Mizoram have the highest prevalence of opioid use in the general population (more than 10%). The survey indicated that a sizeable number of individuals use Sedatives and Inhalants. About 1.08% of 10-75 year old Indians (approximately 1.18 crore people) are current users of sedatives (non-medical, non- prescription use). States with the highest prevalence of current Sedative use are Sikkim, Nagaland, Manipur and Mizoram. However, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Punjab, Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat are the top five states which house the largest populations of people using sedatives. Inhalants (overall prevalence 0.7%) are the only category of substances for which the prevalence of current use among children and adolescents is higher (1.17%) than adults (0.58%). Other categories of drugs such as, Cocaine (0.10%) Amphetamine Type Stimulants 0.18%) and Hallucinogens(0.12%) are used by a small proportion of countrys population.

A far higher proportion of Heroin users are dependent on opioids when compared with users of other opioids like Opium and Pharmaceutical Opioids. Of the total estimated approximately 77 lakh people with opioid use disorders (harmful or dependent pattern) in the country, more than half are contributed by just a few states: Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat. However, in terms of percentage of population affected, the top states in the country are those in the north east (Mizoram, Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Manipur) along with Punjab, Haryana and Delhi.

A sizeable number of people using other drugs like sedatives and inhalants also need help. In the general population, about 0.20% of Indians need help for their sedative use problems. At the national level, an estimated 4.6 lakh children and 18 lakh adults need help for their inhalant use (harmful use / dependence).

In terms of absolute numbers, states with high population of children needing help for inhalant use are: Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Delhi and Haryana. The number of people dependent on cocaine, ATS and Hallucinogens is extremely small in comparison to the size of countrys population. Nationally, it is estimated that there are about 8.5 Lakh People Who Inject Drugs (PWID). Opioid group of drugs are predominantly injected by PWID (heroin 46% and pharmaceutical opioids 46%). A substantial proportion of PWID report risky injecting practices. High numbers of PWID are estimated in Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Delhi, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Haryana, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Manipur and Nagaland.

A very small proportion of Indians are estimated to be current users of cocaine (Males 0.18%, Females 0.01%). This would mean about 10.7 lakh current users of cocaine in the country. The proportion of people using cocaine in harmful and dependent pattern is also correspondingly small (0.03%, or 3.2 lakh individuals). States with sizeable numbers of current cocaine users are Maharashtra (90,000), Punjab (27,000), Rajasthan (10,000) and Karnataka (8000).

Between 2010-2019, the number of people using drugs around the world increased by 22%, owing in part to an increase in the global population. Around 275 million people used drugs worldwide last year, while over 36 million people suffered from drug use disorders. Opioids continue to account for the largest burden of disease attributed to drug use. A rise in the non-medical use of pharmaceutical drugs was also observed during the coronavirus pandemic. Access to drugs has also become simpler than ever with online sales, and major drug markets on the dark web are now worth some USD 315 million annually.

In Asia, China and India are mainly linked to shipment of drugs sold on the 19 major darknet markets analysed over 2011-2020. In a recent media report, the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) has red-flagged Mumbai as the cocaine capital of India saying that other metropolitan cities are not lagging behind with the drug mafia spreading its tentacles in India, Canada and Australia. Shockingly, as much as 2499 kilograms of cocaine seized in the past two years in Sri Lanka, Port Elizabeth and Panama had India as its destination. The international market for this lethal drug is Rs 5 crore per kilogram, according to media reports. India must get serious on its war on drugs. Now, with the Taliban in control of Afghanistan, the menace of drugs will rise in India because the supply from Afghanistan will increase.

Savio Rodrigues is the founder and editor-in-chief of Goa Chronicle.

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India needs to be serious about its war on drugs - The Sunday Guardian

There's a drug war on TV. It has nothing to do with cocaine or heroin but does involve an addiction the pharmaceutical industry's compulsion to charge Americans an average 3.4 times more for brand-name drugs than people in other countries pay. Step 1 in the rehab program is to let Medicare negotiate prescription drug prices.

The drug makers, represented by Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, or PhRMA, the main industry lobbying group, are running scare ads where seniors fret that they'd be denied lifesaving drugs if Congress applies brakes on what they can charge Medicare. In opposition, the leading interest group for older Americans is sponsoring ads in support of price negotiations. The AARP insists its elderly members would still get the drugs they need, pay lower premiums and get new benefits.

The AARP is right. Most Democrats agree, and so did Donald Trump when he first ran for president.

"We are not allowed to negotiate drug prices. Can you believe it?" candidate Trump said in 2016. "We pay about $300 billion more than we are supposed to, than if we negotiated the price. So there's $300 billion on Day One we solve."

Upon getting elected, Trump made a top drug-company executive head of Health and Human Services, and the campaign promise vanished. But we can now update his figure on savings to at least $450 billion over 10 years, based on Congressional Budget Office numbers.

Most of those savings wouldn't leave the Medicare program but, as the budget plan says, go to providing dental, hearing and vision coverage. And beneficiaries would enjoy a $14 billion cut in their Part D premiums by 2029, according to the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

Then there are the taxpayers. General revenues that is, federal income taxes cover 71 percent of the costs of Medicare Part D, and states another 12 percent.

This proposal hardly starves the pharmaceutical companies of revenues. It would cap the prices charged Medicare at 120 percent of those paid in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan and the United Kingdom. In other words, we could still be paying more than these other rich countries. The difference is that drug makers could no longer gouge Americans with impunity.

The proposed Medicare cap would have reduced U.S. spending on insulins and 50 top brand-name drugs by 52 percent during 2020 a savings of $83.5 billion, according to a RAND Corporation report. (The Veterans Administration has long negotiated prices and pays 54 percent less for drugs than does Medicare.)

PhRMA's public relations department recently wrote that efforts to stop drug makers from charging the federal health insurance program for the elderly whatever they want "should enrage every senior who relies on Medicare for their life-saving medicines."

Actually, they're not enraged. An AARP survey finds that 87 pecent of Americans 50 and older support letting Medicare negotiate drug prices. And nearly 90 percent of the general public wants it, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation poll.

One PhRMA ad falsely claims that politicians will "decide which medicines you can and can't get." The budget bill does no such thing. It would not require a prescription drug formulary. Insurers offering Medicare drug plans would still decide what drugs to cover. The negotiations would apply to only a few drugs that account for the highest spending and that lack generic competitors.

Lawmakers intent on protecting the drug-pricing racket include some Democrats. What most have in common with like-minded Republicans is open palms at the bottom of Big Pharma's money chute.

At some point, Americans will stop playing the world's suckers. Letting Medicare negotiate drug prices would be a fine place to start recovering our self-respect.

Follow Froma Harrop on Twitter @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com.

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FROMA HARROP: We can stop being the world's suckers on drug prices - The Bakersfield Californian

October 8, 2021 | 10:33am

MANILA, Philippines In the face of Philippine government officials insisting on non-cooperation with international probers, International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan vowed to uncover the truth in President Rodrigo Dutertes bloody war on drugs.

In a statement late Thursday night (Manila time), Khan issued a statement weeks after the ICCs Pre-Trial Chamber approved his offices request to launch an investigation into allegations of crimes against humanity in the Philippines.

My investigation will seek to uncover the truth and aim to ensure accountability. We will focus our efforts on ensuring a successful, independent and impartial investigation, Khan said.

Khan also asserted that, as affirmed by the Pre-Trial Chamber, his offices investigation will cover alleged crimes in the country from November 2011 to March 2019, when the Philippines withdrawal took effect.

The probe will also cover alleged killings in Davao City between 2011 and 2016, when he was in the local government of the southern Philippine city.

The Duterte government has been adamant about insisting that the ICC has no jurisdiction over the country. Officials have also maintained that they will not cooperate with international probers.

But Khan said that his office remains willing to constructively engage with national authorities in accordance with the principle of complementarity and our obligations under the Statute,

The ICC prosecutor also said he will count on the cooperation of States Parties, civil society and other partners so it may give justice to victims and affected communities.

Khan added: I equally look forward to exploring opportunities for greater engagement and dialogue between my Office and the Asia-Pacific region.

RELATED:After announcing retirement from politics, Duterte says he will prepare defense for ICC probe

Retired ICC Judge Raul Pangalangan earlier said that the international tribunal can employ alternative ways to gather evidence in its investigation.

Social media posts may be used, and the ICC may also fly witnesses to The Hague. Online mechanisms can be used too if the investigator cannot physically come to the country.

Even before the PTC approved the request of the ICCs Office of the Prosecutor for a full investigation, witnesses as well askin of "drug war"victims have also been submitting their testimonies to the tribunal.

The OTP, in what has been called former Prosecutor Fatou Bensoundas valedictory, noted that the office is "[a]ware of the complex operational challenges"that they will face if their request for the probe is approved.

[W]e have also been taking a number of measures to collect and preserve evidence, in anticipation of a possible investigation, she added.

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ICC prosecutor vows to uncover truth in Duterte 'war on drugs' - Philstar.com