Category Archives: War On Drugs

Under a state Senate proposal to regulate the possession of drugs across Washington, first-time offenders may face more jail time than they would have under the old felony drug law that the state Supreme Court threw out as racist and unconstitutional a couple years ago, signaling a reboot of the failed war on drugs in a state controlled by Democrats.

With this years legislative session scheduled to end Sunday, lawmakers in the House and Senate continue dickering around with the details that each chamber proposed in their respective bills on the issue. The debate now centers on whether to make drug possession a misdemeanor or a gross misdemeanor. Either way, the new law will add an estimated 12,000 cases to overburdened court dockets across the state, and it will likely be a far cry from the transformative policy some Democratic lawmakers envisioned in the aftermath of the Courts ruling in State v. Blake.

After that ruling, lawmakers created a short-term drug possession misdemeanor in 2021. In addition to recriminalizing possession, the law directed cops to divert people to treatment at least twice before prosecutors could charge them. It expires in July.

But now, we are continuing the war on drugs, said state Senator Manka Dhingra (D-Redmond). This year, Dhringa, who chairs the senates Law & Justice Committee, proposed legislation to decriminalize drugs and treat substance use disorder within the public health care system, but she couldnt even get that bill out of her own committeesuch was the mood on the topic in her caucus. At this point, she said, shes just negotiating ways to minimize harm.

Conservative Senate Democrats and their Republican colleagues crushed the chance for decriminalization early in the session. Senator Jesse Salomon (D-Shoreline) put into the Senate bill, which passed in March, mandatory minimum jail sentences for people who didnt comply with treatment.

In the Houses version, which the Senate will likely reject, lawmakers removed the mandatory minimums and reduced the charge for drug possession from a gross misdemeanor to a misdemeanor; the former carries a maximum sentence of 364 days in jail, and the latter carries a maximum of 90 days in jail.

If the Senate rejects the Houses version, then the bill will likely go to a conference committee, where a small group of lawmakers will negotiate a final version before presenting it to both chambers for a final vote.

State Representative Roger Goodman (D-Kirkland) argued against the more severe misdemeanor charge because the maximum sentence for a gross misdemeanor would be longer than the jail time a first-time offender faced when the state treated drug possession as a Class C felony.

Though state law sets the maximum penalty for a Class C felony at five years or a $10,000 fine, the most recent sentencing grid classifies possession as a Level I offense, and it prescribes zero to six months in jail for violators with two or fewer prior convictions.

Dhingra said administrative concernsnot moral concerns or evidence-based reasoningprimarily drive some Democratic lawmakers to want the harsher sentence. For a prosecutor to charge someone with drug possession, the state crime lab must confirm the nature of the substance that person was carrying. The House bill encourages the lab to complete drug analysis in less than 45 days, but prosecutors may need more than a year to confirm someone possessed drugs, she said. State law sets the statute of limitations at two years for gross misdemeanors and at one year for misdemeanors, so the harsher charge would give the state more time to analyze substances.

That said, Dhingra acknowledged that some people in the Senate want the gross misdemeanor because they incorrectly believe harsher penalties will motivate a person to comply with treatment.

A sentence of 90 days is enough, said Lisa Daugaard, director of the Public Defender Association. Most of the harm done to people is done in the first 90 days of jail. Everything is gone at that point. Jobs, housing, child custody, and pretty much anything you were working on is gone, she added.

For a bill criminalizing substance abuse, Daugaard does see some positives in the House version of the law. While the House bill would repeal the requirement for police to refer people to treatment twice before arrest, lawmakers included language encouraging police to refer people to treatment rather than take them to jail.

The bill also does not specify which type of treatment regime the state would require people to complete to avoid jail. So people could enter programs focused on harm reduction rather than abstinence.

In the House version of the bill, the court has the option to send someone charged with simple drug possession through pretrial diversion. If the person engages in treatment or services for six months, then the court is required to dismiss the charge against the person.

Daugaard said policies such as these show a better understanding of how treatment and harm-reduction work. Recovery is an ongoing process and not something a person really completes.

Goodman said he anticipates lawmakers to send a finalized version bill to the floor Saturday afternoon. Both chambers will need to pass the bill, and then it will need to go to the governor for his signature.

If lawmakers do not pass a bill, the current stop-gap law will end and the state will be left with a patchwork of different drug possession laws. House members could use that result as leverage to fight for decriminalization, but Goodman doesnt think politicians would allow the bill to fail.

Goodman hopes more people will support a public health approach to substance abuse in a year or two, after the panic and disorder coming out of the pandemic subsides, and he argues that the country is on the path to decriminalization.

Maybe thats just my wishful thinking, Goodman said.

Original post:

We Are Continuing the War on Drugs - The Stranger

This 4/20, we want to talk about a tool that can be used to address the horrific consequences of the war on drugs: clemency.

Throughout U.S. history, presidents, and governors have had the power to grant clemency, either by pardoning people of their crimes or reducing their sentences. Clemency can be used as a check on the criminal legal system, which often imposes unjustifiably harsh sentences and disproportionately criminalizes Black and Brown people, disabled people, and poor people. As Americans grapple with the racism and punitive spirit that fueled mass incarceration, more and more advocates have called on chief executives to use their power to confront racial injustice and end imprisonment that is no longer just or justified.

Few issues highlight the importance of clemency more than the unequal treatment of drug convictions. Of the 1.9 million people who are currently incarcerated in the U.S.,191,000 are in jail or prison for drug related convictions. Today, many of these convictions would be erroneous, as many states adopt public health approaches to drug use and move towards legalizing marijuana in particular.

Today, we are going to look at the redemptive hope clemency can provide, both to people and the criminal legal system as a whole. We are joined by Kemba Smith, who received clemency in 2000 and has been a prominent criminal justice reform advocate ever since, and Cynthia Roseberry, Acting Director of the ACLUs Justice Division and key leader on Clemency 2014, a historic initiative of more than 4,000 lawyers who represented over 36,000 clients as they went through the presidential clemency process.

Continued here:

Clemency Is One Answer to the War On Drugs | American Civil ... - ACLU

Naomi Burke-Shyne, executive director of Harm Reduction International

Fifty years into the world war on drugs, the drugs are winning. Global levels of drug use and production, as well as drug-related deaths and incarcerations, are at all-time highs.

Leading proponents of drug-policy reform who have gathered at the International Harm Reduction Conference in Melbourne this week say the evidence is in that it is time for the world to adopt a new approach.

The irony of the profound failure of the war on drugs is that it has actually driven the illicit production of more and more substances and has led to more toxic drug supply, said Naomi Burke-Shyne, executive director of Harm Reduction International, the UK-based drug-policy justice NGO that convened the conference.

In order to save lives, we must offer overdose prevention and supervised space for people injecting drugs; together with pill testing to understand the potency, adulteration or toxicity of a substance, she said.

Helen Clark, chair of the Global Commission and Drug Policy and former prime minister of New Zealand, called the war on drugs a complete failure.

The war on drugs is completely counterproductive. It has failed, and we need to try new approaches, she told the conference. Drug use continues to grow around the world, millions of people are imprisoned for drug possession and millions more are unnecessarily contracting HIV and hepatitis C because of lack of access to effective harm reduction measures.

Human beings have been using substances, for whatever reason, for thousands of years, Clarke said. Were not dealing with new issues here. Were dealing with totally inappropriate and wrong ways of tackling them.

People who inject drugs in medically supervised settings are less likely to overdose, share needles, report emergency room visits, or develop abscesses when compared to people without access to such facilities, according to a new study presented to the conference on Tuesday by researchers from the French Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM).

The 12-month study is the first-ever controlled trial on the efficacy and impacts of medically supervised injection rooms, which are hygienic facilities where people struggling with addiction can inject drugs under the watchful eye of medical staff. These facilities are government-operated, stocked with drug-testing kits and overdose-prevention medications like naloxone, and allow patients to access other health services like mental health support, blood tests and essential primary care.

People can get tested for hepatitis and get started on treatment within two hours, there are sexual reproductive health services for women, lawyers dropping around, housing officers, Burke-Shyne said. Yes, the space has drug consumption, but I think that really underplays how important the holistic approach to supporting vulnerable communities is.

The study compared the behaviour of people who injected drugs in the supervised injection sites in Paris and Strasbourg to users in Bordeaux and Marseille, where no centers exist. In addition to the benefits to health and overdose reduction, the study found that people with access to supervised injection services were also far less likely to inject in public spaces or commit crimes.

Today, 16 countries around the world officially operate medically supervised injection rooms. These include the Netherlands, the United States, Canada, Australia and Switzerland which pioneered the approach by legalizing prescription heroin in 1994.

Results from a control study at New York Citys new supervised injection site are expected by the end of June.

Medically supervised injection rooms, the medicine naloxone to reverse overdoses, and drug checking technology work, Burke-Shyne said. They are public health no-brainers.

As the consequences of the push by Purdue Pharma to mainstream the prescription of high doses of the opiate pain-medication, Oxycontin, continues to ravage the United States, a new lethal drug has taken over: fentanyl.

The synthetic opiate, which is up to 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine, was identified in 66% of US drug overdose deaths in 2021. The growing inflitration of fentanyl in the countrys drug supply has resulted in many users unintentionally taking the drug with deadly consequences.

In New York City, where drug overdose deaths have nearly tripled since 2015, only 18% of people who inject drugs reported intentional fentanyl use, yet over 80% tested urine-positive for fentanyl, according to new toxicology data presented by researchers from the University of New York (NYU) on Tuesday.

Fentanyl is used by cartels and drug-smuggling networks to cheapen their up-front costs for heroin, which is more expensive to produce. Cutting heroin with fentanyl greatly increases their profit margins at the cost of heightened danger for users unaware their supply is mixed with a far more potent drug.

Drug-testing facilities, such as medically supervised injection rooms, can greatly reduce peoples risk of overdosing by providing clarity on the composition of the drugs they are injecting. Intentional use of fentanyl was associated with more severe substance use disorders, high drug use frequency, and recent overdoses, the study found.

No one should die of an overdose, Burke-Shyne said. Drug consumption rooms should be accessible; they should be where people need them. Its that simple.

More than 1,500 people die from opiate overdoses every week in the United States. In the year leading up to March 2022, a staggering 110,366 people lost their lives to drug overdoses nearly 20 times the per capita death rate of the European Union.

Medical advances in recent years have made hepatitis C highly treatable. While the medications are affordable in most low- and middle-income countries, chronic underinvestment in hepatitis C and harm prevention programmes have handicapped efforts to eradicate the disease.

On Tuesday, UNITAID announced a $31 million commitment to prevent hepatitis C in high-risk populations like people who inject drugs and people in prisons. The investment represents a 20% increase in global harm prevention efforts, which UNITAID said will also assist health systems in curbing the transmission of other blood-borne diseases like HIV.

While people who inject drugs make up just 10% of the worlds 58 million people infected with hepatitis-C, injecting drugs contribute to 43% of new infections. Eighty percent of people infected with hepatitis-C live in low- and middle-income countries.

Criminalisation has long been a hallmark of the war on drugs, but advocates say the practice of confining high-risk populations to prisons actually multiplies the risk of infection.

Criminalising drug use only serves to overpopulate the prison services and the risks, therefore, multiply, said Kgalema Motlanthe, former president of South Africa and a commissioner at the Global Commission on Drug Policy. Those who are literally sleeping over each other in prisons that are overcrowded end up really being exposed to more risks.

Jason Grebeley, head of the University of New South Wales Hepatitis C and Drug Use Group, added that the health benefits of decriminalisation are often overlooked.

Its really critical that we think about the fact that decriminalisation could actually play a major role in reducing a range of harms for people who inject drugs, he said.

Image Credits: Conor Ashleigh/Harm Reduction International.

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As Evidence Mounts That 'War On Drugs' Has Failed, Harm ... - Health Policy Watch

The headquarters of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands Mike Corder/AP hide caption

The headquarters of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands

MANILA, Philippines On a bright stage in a rented-out high school auditorium, Amelia Santos grieves openly before the audience.

Clutching a wireless microphone, the 55-year-old from Caloocan City, an area in Metro Manila's north, recalls the day she returned home from work in September 2016 and was told her husband, Edward Narvarte, had been killed.

"Somebody went to my house and told me, 'Go to your husband because he was killed, he was shot a lot of times by the police,'" she says. "When I arrived, there were police... and I saw the dead bodies of the victims, my husband was one of them."

Her family has not been the same, Santos tells the audience. Her children are scared and depressed and she is alone and afraid. Authorities linked her husband to a notorious Philippine drug lord, she says a connection Santos denies.

With tears streaming down her face and her voice quivering with a mix of outrage and sadness, Santos recalls asking God, "Why? Why did this happen to us?"

"I will not stop until justice has been served," she says.

Santos is not alone. Almost all of the nearly 20 people onstage in this play, titled EJK Teatro, have lost a loved one to the Philippine government's so-called war on drugs launched by former President Rodrigo Duterte in 2016.

Amelia Santos, 55, holds up a portrait of her late husband, Edward Navarte, during a recent performance. Santos says her husband was targeted in a 2016 extrajudicial killing by police as part of the Philippines' war on drugs. Ashley Westerman for NPR hide caption

Amelia Santos, 55, holds up a portrait of her late husband, Edward Navarte, during a recent performance. Santos says her husband was targeted in a 2016 extrajudicial killing by police as part of the Philippines' war on drugs.

The cast of EJK Teatro poses onstage with Roman Catholic priest Flaviano Villanueva (5th from left), founder of Program Paghilom, and European Union Special Representative on Human Rights Eamon Gilmore (center) following a performance. Ashley Westerman for NPR hide caption

The cast of EJK Teatro poses onstage with Roman Catholic priest Flaviano Villanueva (5th from left), founder of Program Paghilom, and European Union Special Representative on Human Rights Eamon Gilmore (center) following a performance.

EJK stands for extrajudicial killing. The play is part of the nonprofit Arnold Janssen Kalinga Foundation's Program Paghilom, which has been helping victims' families since 2016. Performing onstage is a sort of cathartic therapy for those who want to bring attention to critical issues in the Philippines. From inflation woes and environmental issues to the drug war and fears of a takeover by China, this eclectic performance a nearly hour-long mix of scripted lines, unscripted monologues and lots of music and dancing pulls no punches.

The day NPR attended, human rights campaigners, victims' family members and their supporters were joined in the audience by a delegation from the European Union, including EU Special Representative on Human Rights Eamon Gilmore.

The performance comes at a time when the slow wheels of justice appear to be starting to turn in the drug war.

Last month, the International Criminal Court denied an appeal by the Philippine government for the court to suspend collecting evidence for its investigation into alleged crimes against humanity committed during the seven-year war on drugs.

The denial of this appeal, analysts say, will inevitably bring government officials into the scope of the investigation putting current President Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. in a tough bind politically, as his vice president is Duterte's daughter and she is a political ally who helped him secure the nation's top office last May.

The denial came two months after the ICC declared that the Philippines' own investigation into the drug war a tactic by Duterte to slow down the ICC investigation was not sufficient and that the court would resume the probe it attempted to launch in 2021.

A relative holds the hand of Jonathan Sevilla, who was shot dead by unknown attackers, at a morgue in Malabon, Metro Manila, Philippines, March 23, 2018. Ezra Acayan/NurPhoto via Getty Images hide caption

A relative holds the hand of Jonathan Sevilla, who was shot dead by unknown attackers, at a morgue in Malabon, Metro Manila, Philippines, March 23, 2018.

Nanette Castillo grieves next to the dead body of her son Aldrin, an alleged drug user killed by unidentified assailants, in Manila, Oct. 3, 2017. Noel Celis/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Nanette Castillo grieves next to the dead body of her son Aldrin, an alleged drug user killed by unidentified assailants, in Manila, Oct. 3, 2017.

Philippine officials say that some 6,200 people have died in anti-drug operations since Duterte launched the war on drugs. Human rights groups and the United Nations estimate the number could be much higher, with most killed by police or vigilantes.

It is these extrajudicial killings that the ICC is looking to investigate, and now the ICC Office of the Prosecutor can move forward in collecting evidence while a second appeal to throw out the investigation entirely is pending, says Aurora Parong, co-chair of the Philippines Coalition for the International Criminal Court.

Evidence, she says, includes information such as interviews and testimony from victims' families. The court will also be able to start asking the government for information, "and after they have collected all that evidence, they should be able to identify a possible suspect who will be charged," she says.

Many human rights campaigners and legal experts say Duterte is the person responsible. However, obtaining evidence such as communications between officials and police and testimony from officials will be a challenge, given that President Marcos has said his government will not cooperate with the ICC.

"I do not see what their jurisdiction is," Marcos told reporters in January. "I feel we have our police, in our judiciary a good system. We do not need any assistance from any outside entity."

Analysts say this jurisdiction argument is faulty, because even though Duterte withdrew the Philippines from the ICC in 2018, the alleged human rights abuses of the drug war began earlier so the ICC can still investigate them.

Still, Marcos has vowed to "disengage with the ICC" and has banned its investigators from entering the country.

This stance puts Marcos in a difficult spot politically as he works to both charm internationally and keep his own house in order, says Jean Encinas-Franco, a political scientist at the University of the Philippines Diliman.

Since taking office in May 2022, Marcos, the son of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos, has traveled abroad in an attempt to secure economic and security agreements which he hopes will rehabilitate his family name following his father's peaceful 1986 ouster in what's known as the "People Power Revolution."

Shanty dwellers living inside the cemetery look at bodies being buried on Jan. 24, 2017 in Manila, Philippines. Many bodies of victims of extrajudicial killings lie unclaimed in a morgue amid an upsurge in fatalities from the drug war. Dondi Tawatao/Getty Images hide caption

Shanty dwellers living inside the cemetery look at bodies being buried on Jan. 24, 2017 in Manila, Philippines. Many bodies of victims of extrajudicial killings lie unclaimed in a morgue amid an upsurge in fatalities from the drug war.

Relatives and friends carry the coffin of Kian Loyd Delos Santos during his funeral in Caloocan, Metro Manila, Philippines, Aug. 26, 2017. Ezra Acayan/NurPhoto via Getty Images hide caption

Relatives and friends carry the coffin of Kian Loyd Delos Santos during his funeral in Caloocan, Metro Manila, Philippines, Aug. 26, 2017.

But his stance on the ICC investigation "brings back the violent history of his father," Encinas-Franco says. That violent history included torture, extrajudicial killings and the targeting of political opponents, journalists and activists.

Domestically, Marcos knows he owes his presidential victory to his alliance with the Duterte family, she says particularly Vice President Sara Duterte, daughter of the former president. Riding the coattails of her father's popularity, Duterte helped Marcos secure a landslide victory last year.

"I think Marcos Jr. would not want to antagonize Sara Duterte's supporters at this point in his administration," Encinas-Franco says.

Both Rodrigo Duterte and the anti-drug campaign as a policy are still popular particularly among low-income voters. And it is these ordinary Filipinos that Marcos is probably banking on, Encinas-Franco says: "I think it would be very easy for him to sort of explain in simplistic terms that the ICC is encroaching on the Philippines' sovereignty."

But not all ordinary Filipinos will buy the sovereignty argument from Marcos especially those who've been deeply affected by the war on drugs.

People like Amelia Santos, who has wrapped up her performance back at the auditorium. This was her first time onstage, she says.

"I wasn't able to express much after my husband died, to say everything that's inside," Santos says. "I am relieved."

Like other victims' loved ones, Santos is waiting to see what justice if any the ICC investigation brings.

More here:

Families of victims await justice as the ICC reopens Philippines drug ... - NPR

One of the hottest new ideas in Republican politics is, apparently, launching a war in Mexico.

Three recent articles in Rolling Stone, Politico, and Semafor traced the rise of the proposal from obscurity to the partys highest levels, finding ample evidence of the ideas popularity in the GOP ranks. Former President Donald Trump, for example, has been asking for a battle plan to attack Mexico, specifically targeting drug cartel strongholds in the country. Every single declared Republican presidential candidate has endorsed treating cartels like terrorist organizations. And in both the House and the Senate, leading Republicans have proposed authorizing the use of military force in Mexico to fight cartels.

These proposals are typically billed as responses to the fentanyl overdose crisis. Roughly 107,000 Americans died from opioid overdoses in 2021, the last year data was available, a 15 percent increase over the 2020 death total. Of those deaths, a majority were attributable to fentanyl a synthetic opioid painkiller considerably stronger than heroin. This is a major problem, and coming up with some kind of policy response is as important as it is difficult.

But launching cross-border raids into the territory of the USs neighbor and third-largest trading partner, a vital partner on many issues, is just about the worst one. The US and Latin American partners have been waging a literal war on drugs for decades; military campaigns like Plan Colombia have repeatedly failed to stop narcotics from entering the United States. Attacks on Mexican soil seem no more promising and considerably more likely to backfire in dangerous ways.

In reporting this piece, I spoke to four different experts on foreign policy and/or the Mexican border from across the ideological spectrum; not one of them thought these proposals contained anything like a workable idea. The planning would embarrass Paul Wolfowitz, quipped Justin Logan, the director of defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute.

What this exposes, more than anything else, is an important way the Republican party hasnt changed in the Trump era.

As much as Trump billed himself as a kind of isolationist critic of the Republican foreign policy consensus, his actual track record as president shows that he was quite willing to use force aggressively. He used force in somewhat different ways, and for different reasons, than his predecessors but very clearly accepted that some of Americas big foreign policy problems could be solved by bombing them into oblivion.

The enthusiasm for a new Mexican-American war illustrates the same sort of principle. It marries a longtime idea on the center-right mainstream, the war on drugs, to the Trumpist concerns about illegal immigration and the decline in quality of life for the white working class and claims that the troops can solve them both.

In one sense, the surge in proposals to use force in Mexico is both a new and extremely dangerous development. But in another sense, its old Republican wine in a Trump Vineyards bottle.

The vogue for war in Mexico seems to date back to the late Trump presidency. In 2019, after the Sinaloa cartel brutally murdered nine US citizens, President Trump announced that he would designate the cartels as foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs). He tweeted that Mexico, with the help of the United States, [should] wage WAR on the drug cartels and wipe them off the face of the earth.

Designating a group as an FTO is complicated; it requires that cartels have a political motivation for their violence, which isnt really the case. Nor is it clear that it would do very much aside from creating a headache for federal counterterrorism agents, who would now have to decide whether a gang member purchasing weed from a cartel was engaging in material support for terrorism (a federal crime).

Perhaps for these reasons, the designation never happened. But Trump still wanted to wage war on the cartels as if they were terrorists. In 2020, the president reportedly asked Defense Secretary Mark Esper twice if the military could shoot missiles into Mexico to destroy the drug labs.

Per Espers memoir, Trump argued that the Mexican government could not stop the cartels on their own they dont have control of their own country and that destroying narcotics manufacturing labs would be a swift and painless operation. We could just shoot some Patriot missiles and take out the labs, quietly, the president reportedly said. No one would know it was us.

The idea is so outlandish that Esper at first thought Trump was joking. First of all, Patriot missiles cant do this: theyre surface-to-air missiles designed to shoot down enemy aircraft. Presumably, Trump meant some form of cruise missile, but such a strike would make it exceptionally obvious who hit the laboratories. Most fundamentally, bombing a few drug manufacturing labs would not end trafficking into the United States. Even if the US had good enough intelligence to target most of them, the cartels would simply rebuild them.

Its worth dwelling on this Trump proposal not only because of its absurdity, but because it helps illustrate why some on the right have moved on to more ambitious war plans.

In their logic, if the cartels are a violent threat to the US homeland akin to ISIS, then it follows that the US should do what it did with ISIS: take away the territory that they control and use it as a base to operate. In the case of ISIS, that meant airstrikes in tandem with local Iraqi and Syrian fighters who could take back the territory held by the terrorist group. But according to Mexico hawks, the Mexican government and its security forces have been corrupted by the cartels unable or unwilling to wage war on drug and human traffickers.

As a diagnosis, thats not entirely wrong. Leftist Mexican President Andrs Manuel Lpez Obrador, widely known as AMLO, has been more willing to use force against cartels than his hugs not bullets campaign slogan would suggest. But he has failed to address the cartels growing clout, which includes significant penetration of the Mexican government. A recent tranche of leaked documents revealed, among other things, that Mexican soldiers ordered to fight cartels were actually selling guns to them.

Mexicos failure to stop the cartels is a major motivating factor behind an October 2022 policy proposal written by Ken Cuccinelli, an immigration hardliner who served as acting deputy secretary of Homeland Security in the last two years of the Trump administration. In the paper, written for the Trumpy Center for Renewing America think tank, Cuccinelli calls for a defensive war against cartels facilitating drug trafficking and undocumented migration.

The proposal is thin on military detail. It proposes that the President should conduct specific military operations to destroy the cartels, but does not specify what exactly those operations would look like aside from involving special forces and airstrikes. If that fails, he argues for deploying unspecified elements of the Marines, Army, Navy, Air Force and Coast Guard to Mexico.

The proposal fails to answer basic questions. For example: How many troops would an operation require, and where would they be deployed? What would the casualties look like on both sides? How would a US troop presence suppress drug trafficking and production when it failed to do so in Afghanistan? If the cartels start using locations where American troops arent, does the war expand to more parts of Mexico or even other countries? And would any gains be sustained after a US withdrawal?

Given all the things that have gone wrong with recent American invasions of foreign countries, youd think that the proponents of a new one might want to sweat the details.

And make no mistake: This is an invasion plan. While Cuccinelli repeatedly calls for the Mexican governments cooperation, Cuccinelli explicitly says Mexican refusal shouldnt block American action. It is vital that Mexico not be led to believe that they have veto power to prevent the US from taking the actions necessary to secure its borders and people, he writes.

Cuccinellis paper, for all its murkiness, is actually the most developed of the many different proposals for going to war in Mexico floating around. Even actual proposed legislation on the topic is vaguer.

In the Senate, Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and John Kennedy (R-LA) have proposed designating nine cartels as foreign terrorist groups. The text of the legislation does not provide any explicit permission to use military force or any framework for its use, but Graham said in a press conference that his intent is to authorize it in some unspecified fashion.

[We will] give the military the authority to go after these organizations wherever they exist. Not to invade Mexico. Not to shoot Mexican airplanes down. But to destroy drug labs that are poisoning Americans, he said.

Sen. Lindsey Graham speaking in Washington in front of posters depicting cartels and terrorist groups.

Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call/Getty Images

Reps. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) and Mike Waltz (R-FL) have written a more specific Authorization for Use of Military Force for the cartels, one modeled on the laws that permitted the use of force against the Taliban and Saddam Husseins Iraq. Like Graham, Crenshaw insists that any use of force wouldnt constitute an invasion that he primarily envisions the military assisting with surveillance of cartels, and that any bombings or troop deployments would be coordinated with the Mexican government.

But there are no such restrictions in the actual legislation, which authorizes the president to use all necessary and appropriate force against cartel targets specifically permitting its use against foreign nations deemed to have trafficked fentanyl into the United States. This opens the door to direct attacks on, lets say, Mexican soldiers who are on the take from Sinaloa.

Nor would Mexicos president ever cooperate with a US incursion. After these congressional proposals began bubbling in March, AMLO understandably erupted in fury at the thought of US military action inside his country.

They have the arrogance to say that if we dont fight crime in Mexico, theyre going to pass an initiative in Congress so the armed forces of the US intervene in our territory, AMLO said in a press conference. We wont allow it. And not only are we not going to allow it, were denouncing it.

So how could military force be used to destroy drug labs in Mexico without either bombing the country or invading it? Graham and Crenshaw dont really say.

The bottom line is, very simply, that these are not intellectually serious proposals. At this stage, theyre barely even policy proposals at all. This is something even some of the harshest conservative critics of Bidens Mexico policy acknowledge.

[People] just throw this stuff out Yeah, bomb em! Call them all terrorists! without a lot of thought, says Todd Bensman, a senior national security fellow at the restrictionist Center for Immigration Studies.

Its tempting, given the thinness of these proposals, to simply dismiss them as political nothings: empty gestures of being strong on crime and strong on border security.

Many of these proposals conflate drug trafficking, undocumented migration, and violence as various different problems caused by cartels that could be solved with sufficient amounts of American ordnance. That makes little sense as a policy matter each has different contours, even if the cartels have a hand in all of them but makes perfect sense as a political matter, as it conjures a picture of a lawless border that the Biden administration is failing to secure out of sheer fecklessness.

But dismissing this rhetoric as purely political would be a mistake.

For one thing, ideas like this have a tendency to go from absurdities to policy. When Trump first called for a total and complete shutdown on Muslim immigration to the United States in 2015, it was widely rejected by Republicans and Democrats alike. During his presidency, Trump repeatedly tried to do it at first causing chaos at American airports and, ultimately, successfully implementing a version of it.

Given that the former president is once again the prohibitive favorite in the 2024 race, and that he is reportedly asking for battle plans for a war on the cartels, the proposal needs to be taken at least somewhat seriously.

Moreover, the fact that these ideas have gained so much traction in the past month accelerating after another brutal murder of Americans by cartels illustrates some profoundly important things about the state of the Republican party.

Dara Lind, a senior fellow at the pro-migration American Immigration Council (and my former Vox colleague), sees the vogue for using force as an outgrowth of broader Republican ideology: the ongoing conflation of migration with invasion and the idea that fentanyl importation is a deliberate plot to weaken America. On these theories, cartels and the Mexican government (through its inaction) are facilitating nothing less than the broad-based destruction of American communities.

This kind of apocalyptic picture of the United States, a country whose middle class is being destroyed by drugs and undocumented migrants driving down wages, is an archetypical Trump-era Republican theme. Again and again, the populist right mentions drugs and immigration along with the decline of manufacturing and the rise of wokeness as some of the root causes of terminal American decline.

But as well tailored as invade Mexico is to the Trump era, its not a wholly new impulse. Waging literal war on drugs outside of Americas borders is a very old idea, one with significant bipartisan support. For Republicans in particular, casting themselves as tough on drugs and crime in contrast to weak Democrats predates Trumps rise by decades.

So too does a willingness to launch a unilateral ground invasion in the name of fighting non-state actors that allegedly threaten American national security.

Trump, in theory, was supposed to be a break with that kind of hawkishness: he ran in part on his (false) claim to have opposed the war in Iraq. Yet time and again in his presidency, we saw that the strangely widespread idea of Donald the Dove was essentially false: Trump was no less willing to use force than other post-Cold War presidents, just willing to do it for somewhat different reasons.

A new Mexican-American war would be every bit as reckless as the Iraq war, quite possibly more so, since Mexico is literally Americas neighbor. That its become popular again shows both how the focus of the Republican party has changed in the past 20 years and the ways in which its essential hawkishness has not.

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Why Trump and other Republicans want to go to war in Mexico - Vox.com

Queensland parliament is poised to pass legislative changes that will divert thousands of people out of the courts and into health and education programs each year in a landmark shift in the state's approach to illicit substances that new polling shows has popular support.

The police drug diversion program for cannabis will be expanded to include all drugs, meaning people found with small personal quantities of substances like heroin and methamphetamines will be given three chances to avoid criminal charges.

The impact of the changes will be widespread prompting a call for more resources for "already swamped" health services.

Under the new laws, police will issue a warning on the first occasion and offer a place in a diversionary program, run by health care workers, on the second and third occasions.

If drugs were found a fourth time, police would issue a court notice.

Anyone facing criminal charges, or who has already been to jail for drug offences, would be ineligible for diversion.

According to 2019 data from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, one in six Australians used an illicit drug in the previous 12 months.

The state government estimates 17,000 Queenslanders could avoid prosecution in the first year of implementation with the majority never having contact with police again.

For those with problematic drug use, the early intervention by support services might prove life changing.

Brisbane woman Sally* spent years addicted to heroin, which became a way to deal with trauma and low self-esteem.

The 38-year-old ended up in the justice system and spent time in jail.

"The first time I think it was for a month and that was for failing a urine test," she said.

"You start accumulating possession charges, multiple possession charges, and that makes you more targeted for policing and you slowly become more 'othered' from society."

Sally said she has been off heroin for more than three years and is working and studying.

But the legacy of those convictions still taints many aspects of her life, from her employment and housing prospects to her sense of identity.

"The worst and most long-lasting impacts from my drug use were as a result of the social and legal consequences rather than the drug use itself," she said.

She hopes the shift to a health-based approach will provide support for those who need it.

"It could have helped me stay out of prison and pursue my goals it wouldn't have taken me this long journey to function in society," she said.

Emma Kill is the CEO of Queensland Injectors for Advocacy and Action (QuIVAA), the state's peak organisation for people who use drugs and a member of the Queensland Mental Health Commission's advisory council.

She said the changes are a "monumental decision" to "improve the lives of people who use drugs and their communities".

"This is happening in most countries around the world, most countries have forms of diversion, this is a first for Queensland and it's pretty significant," she said.

Ms Kill said Queensland has many people embroiled in the justice system for minor drug use.

"The war on drugs hasn't worked and it's not going to work, so this is a new approach and it's based in evidence and research.

"People don't seek help at the moment because of stigma. When they walk into a hospital or they walk into a health service, they're afraid they're going to get discriminated against and they don't open up.

"This is a real opportunity for people to start engaging with the services."

AMA Queensland president Maria Boulton said there is "overwhelming consensus" for a health-based response to minor drug possession.

The shift has the support of the Queensland Police Commissioner Katarina Carroll and her post-Fitzgerald-era predecessors.

Dr Boulton said the financial savings made by police and the courts should be "reallocated" to Queensland Health for drug treatment services.

"It is critical that our already swamped diversion services are properly resourced to treat the estimated 17,000 people who will access this program in the first year," she said.

The Alcohol and Drug Foundation said a new poll "suggests a clear majority of Queenslanders from the Gold Coast to Cairns are supportive of a health-based response to personal drug use, such as no action, a caution or warning only, referral to treatment or a fine".

The survey, conducted on September 22, contacted 6,123 people in the state electorates of Barron River, Broadwater, Maiwar, Cairns, Kawana, McConnell, Moggill, South Brisbane, Mundingburra and Townsville.

Support for a non-punitive response to cannabis possession was strongest in the inner-Brisbane seat of McConnell at 94.9 per cent of respondents.

There was less support in the seats of Broadwater and Townsville for a health-based approach to heroin and methamphetamine possession, but it was still above 50 per cent.

An LNP spokesman said the opposition will wait until the legislation is debated before MPs decide how to vote.

The Palaszczuk government's majority means the legislation will pass regardless.

* Name changed to protect privacy

This article contains content that is only available in the web version.

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New Queensland drug laws will keep thousands of people out of justice system, advocates say - ABC News

Some of the most popular strains of cannabis sound more like ice cream flavors than plants: Blue Dream, Girl Scout Cookies, Sour Diesel, Strawberry Fields, Granddaddy Purple.

They would fit right into the freezer case with the funky names of some of Ben & Jerry's most iconic products, including Chunky Monkey, Phish Food and Chubby Hubby. But Ben Cohen, Ben & Jerry's cofounder, took a decidedly more mellow approach with his new Vermont cannabis company, Ben's Best Blnz.

His pre-rolled joints come in five carefully crafted formulas designed to deliver specific states of mind: Focus, ECS (enhanced, creative and stimulating), Cloud 9, Kick Back, and Dream Sweet Dreams. Each of these Blended SloSmokes is supposed to do what the name says.

Cohen entered the cannabis business to bring something different to the party both operationally and philosophically. Blended SloSmokes embrace the latest innovation in weed, emphasizing terpenes over THC to create a more effects-driven experience. The products are expected to land at Vermont's medical cannabis dispensaries around May 1 and in the retail market a few weeks later.

With Ben's Best Blnz, aka B3, Cohen will carry on the social and political activism he started at Ben & Jerry's to raise awareness and money for progressive causes ranging from voter and LGBTQ+ rights to climate and racial justice. Cohen plans to use the earnings from B3 to correct what he sees as the longtime injustice of U.S. drug policy, giving back to the marginalized communities most harmed by it. Cohen remains a Ben & Jerry's employee, with the title of cofounder, though he has no involvement in running the ice cream business today, he said.

B3 is registered in Vermont as a 501c3 tax-exempt entity. Cohen said he'll draw no salary or profit from the business. B3 will distribute 80 percent of its proceeds as grants and loans to Black cannabis entrepreneurs, 10 percent to the Burlington-based Vermont Racial Justice Alliance, and 10 percent to the Last Prisoner Project, a national effort to release individuals incarcerated on cannabis-related charges and expunge their records.

B3 itself isn't licensed in Vermont to cultivate, manufacture or sell cannabis. It makes money by selling the rights to use the Ben's Best Blnz brand, product formulas and package designs to small, mostly minority-owned weed growers, processors and distributors. For the moment, Cohen is concentrating on building the business in Vermont, though he has plans to eventually expand the model to other states.

"It was Black people, mostly, that got screwed over by the war on drugs," Cohen said. "So we're trying to use as many Black vendors as we can."

As when he and Jerry Greenfield founded their eponymous ice cream company in Burlington in 1978, Cohen grew his latest enterprise from an unfilled niche in the marketplace.

"I was sitting around a campfire with a friend of mine, smoking some pot," Cohen said. They both agreed: "The problem with pot today is that it's just too fucking strong," Cohen said. "You can't have the experience of enjoying the process of getting high, because you take one or two tokes and you're done."

In college, Cohen said, he'd pass around a joint with THC content between 4 and 8 percent and slowly get stoned. Most weed for sale today has 20 to 30 percent THC, the element of cannabis that gets consumers high.

"Somebody oughta come up with a brand of pot called 'Mediocre Marijuana,'" Cohen said his friend suggested. "I couldn't get the idea out of my head, so I decided to actually start a business that would put out this moderate-THC pot."

High levels of THC have dominated the cannabis market, Cohen said.

"Most people are first familiar with THC," he said. "So what ended up happening was that people who wanted to buy pot would go into dispensaries and say, 'I want the highest THC you got.' That's all they knew."

B3, on the other hand, touts "terpene-forward" pre-rolls. THC gets you high, but the terpenes determine the kind of high you get. As Cohen likes to say, "Terpenes make the music. THC is the volume." (The THC content in Blended SloSmokes ranges from 6 to 8 percent.)

Cohen brought in Chris Walsh, a former owner of downtown Burlington nightclub Nectar's, to help him formulate B3's products. Walsh is a cannabis industry veteran who spent a year in Jamaica growing weed for the University of the West Indies medical school, which was studying terpenes. In Burlington, he helped start Green State Gardener, a cultivation shop in the South End, and Upstate Elevator Supply, a company producing CBD- and now THC-infused beverages, edibles and other products. Walsh also serves on the advisory committee to the Vermont Cannabis Control Board, which governs the state's cannabis industry.

"You can't go wrong with Ben Cohen creating a product for himself," Walsh said. "A lot of famous products were created by people that wanted something that they couldn't find."

Cohen, Walsh and B3's development team blew through many attempts to come up with the right formulas for the Blended SloSmokes. Working in a lab that Walsh referred to as the "bat cave," in an undisclosed Vermont spot, they used a gas chromatograph to measure and analyze the chemical components. They balanced major cannabis terpenes such as myrcene and limonene with cannabidiol, cannabigerol and THC, using different strains of flower to create the blend that gives the joints the desired effect, reliably.

"In almost any other industry, a brand stands for a consistent product," Cohen said. "But in the pot industry, that's not the case."

To check that the blends delivered the intended results, Walsh put together a testing panel of weed smokers of various ages, some heavier users than others.

"We had a couple of J. Peterman types in the group," Walsh said, referring to the eccentric, globe-trotting parodied version of the founder of the real-life J. Peterman Company on the TV series "Seinfeld." "They would say, 'This evokes that weekend I spent in the Serengeti. I smell fresh-cut grass and lion dung.'"

Cohen recognizes that he got his business ventures backward: He should have started his pot company first and then, once followers were overcome by the munchies, sold them ice cream.

But pot wasn't legal, and wouldn't be anywhere in the United States for another 40 years, when Cohen and Greenfield met as seventh graders in Long Island, N.Y. They were the slowest runners in gym class when they hatched the idea to sell ice cream their drug of choice at the time, Cohen said. Cohen's limited sense of smell, a condition called anosmia, compelled him toward concoctions with big chunks and a creamy mouthfeel.

Vermont still hadn't approved the adult-use sale of cannabis when Cohen had the idea for his new venture more than three years ago.

He started it in Colorado, the first state to legalize nonmedical cannabis sales, but it had barely gotten off the ground when the pandemic hit. So he moved the company to his home state of Vermont and continued to develop the products.

B3's first local production and distribution partner is Lee Stowell, a former Wall Street junk bond broker and now general manager of Grassroots Vermont, a medical cannabis production facility and dispensary in Brandon. Cannabis giant iAnthus, a multistate operator based in New York and Toronto, currently owns Grassroots Vermont, but Stowell is in the process of buying out the larger entity and earning the state Cannabis Control Board's approval to sell adult-use weed. (Walsh spent years as Grassroots' president and previously served on iAnthus' board.) The deal with B3 will give Stowell, who is white, a big boost, she said.

"I'm very excited to see how the market responds, because Vermonters love Ben. Vermonters love his ice cream," Stowell said. "I think Vermonters are gonna say this is a differentiating product."

C&C Higher Love is another B3 partner, a for-profit marketing company owned by Walsh and Craig Mitchell, a well-known local DJ and Black gay activist with experience in the "legacy" cannabis market. While Walsh develops and explains B3's products to potential partners, Mitchell handles selling them to medical and retail cannabis dispensaries.

Mitchell has to educate those "budtenders behind the counters" not only on lower-THC weed but also on B3's social justice objectives.

"People are reaching out like crazy," Mitchell said. "We want our products on shelves, and we want it to be prominent. We want them to commit to what we're doing and the mission behind what we're doing."

While the product names aren't so colorful, the Blended SloSmokes come in plastic-free boxes with vivid, neon colors and groovy designs by local Black graphic artist Eddie Opara. Available in recyclable tins and glass tubes, B3's organically grown pot is vacuum-packed and nitrogen flushed to keep air out and stay fresh.

B3 plans to have other products, including a rotating selection of limited-edition, high-THC buds of single-strain, not blended, cannabis. A discerning team of five testers decides if a particular flower makes the cut.

A line of full-spectrum vaping cartridges is pending, as B3 awaits a July 1 change in state law that now imposes a 92 percent wholesale tax on all vaping products to discourage e-cigarette use. Edibles are likely to emerge down the road, as well.

Just don't expect a cannabis ice cream. Cohen said he's done with products that require such extreme temperature control even though he recommends that B3 customers store their weed in the refrigerator to maintain freshness.

"One of the nice things about pot, as opposed to ice cream," he said, "is you don't have to keep it frozen."

Continued here:

Ben Cohen's Cannabis Company Tries to Undo the Harm of the War ... - Seven Days

More than half of the U. S.have some form of cannabis legalization program, whether its recreational or medical. But even with cannabis programs growing more than 40,000 individuals are incarcerated in the U.S. on marijuana-related charges.

Racial disparities in policing are proven in all states regardless of legalization. According to the marijuana law reform nonprofit, NORML, nearly 13,000, adults and just over 1,000 juveniles were arrested for possession of marijuana in 2021.

NORMLs data shows Black individuals are five times more likely to be arrested than white people for cannabis-related charges in Pennsylvania, even though cannabis use is roughly the same for both groups.

If we had to think of a more just world it would be Black and Brown people being able to legally grow, produce, distribute, deliver, or sell cannabis products, Tauid Chappel, founder of Philly CannaBusiness Association, said. That money generated supports their businesses but also goes back into the communities that have been destabilized and devalued by the war on drugs and puts resources into those communities to help them get healthy again.

The war on drugs has been affecting communities of color since the Nixon administration. With state after state ending cannabis prohibition, how can communities that have been damaged benefit from legalization?

One thing you can do is pardon and expunge and obviously pardoning and expunging means de-incarcerating, said former Pennsylvania State Senator Daylin Leach. Stop punishing people for a crime that is not a crime anymore, thats number one. Number two, you have to provide some economic opportunities to communities that were not only adversely affected by cannabis prohibition, but in fact, targeted.

On Oct. 6, 2022, President Joe Biden pardoned thousands convicted of marijuana possession, and promised to examine its drug classification. This pardon does not expunge convictions but allows individuals to regain civil liberties such as the right to vote, sit on a jury, and hold public office. Biden also wants governors to pardon for state marijuana violations as fewer than 800 cases are brought to federal court. However, the Marshall Project estimates nearly 30,000 state cases exist nationwide.

Zachary Uzupis, executive director of Bucks County NORML, said, Even after all of the pardons get processed, there will still be many who deserve to be pardoned who are not part of it. It is the hope of Bucks County NORML that cannabis victims, i.e., people who are imprisoned by cannabis sentencing are set free from those crimes with their records expunged, unequivocally. I would go so far as to say that these people deserve reparations for their lives being ruined. But thats an unrealistic wish. Instead, I hope that these people are released as quickly as possible and that the people who are out of prison their records are expunged immediately.

Cannabis is predicted to be a $100 billion dollar industry by 2030. Yet as of 2021, only 13.1 percent of industry executives are minorities. Social equity programs are put in place by cannabis companies or states, where cannabis is legal for medical or adult use to help ensure those with convictions prior to legalization have a chance to participate.

If it is going the way its going, it will be very white, male-dominated, Chappel said. [Philly CannaBusiness] goal is to make it as diverse as possible.

Restorative justice programs give back to the communities and people disadvantaged by cannabis prohibition. In New York state these individuals will have priority in the marijuana regulation and taxation act. Social justice initiatives are built into the bill, including restorative justice. Nearly 40% of the funds accumulated from the sale of recreational marijuana will be dispersed to nonprofit organizations in communities affected most by the war on drugs and will help to fund job placement programs, housing, and financial literacy. The bill also will work toward plans to create diversity and equity in ownership and employment in the cannabis market, although there may be issues with these policies.

Dr. Matt Reid, assistant professor of sociology and criminology, said In terms of communities, depending on how they structure legalization, tax money can go to schools I would like to see, if they legalize it, some of that tax money go toward restorative justice programs. So, expungement programs, and ways for people who were arrested for weed to seek normalcy.

As reported by the Marijuana Policy Project $538.7 million from taxes on cannabis were used to improve Colorados public school system. In Connecticut, nearly 60% of cannabis tax revenue will fund social equity programs supporting workforce education, community funding, and individual access to business.

After years of redlining policies, Evanston, Illinois voted to pass a historic program to fund housing reparations for Black residents. Funds will come from the first $10 million in revenue from the citys tax on the sale of recreational marijuana.

One medical marijuana patient in Pennsylvania who wished to remain anonymous said, Its pretty bipartisan at this point Everybody wants weed to happen. I dont understand why it doesnt happen. Especially when the government could benefit from taxation and legalization I would like to see decriminalization of most drugs just because then you can have people seek help without fear.

The future of recreational legalization opens up the possibility for people to grow their own cannabis, however, access still remains a problem. Home grow provisions not only allow individuals to grow their own medicine, but also promote financially equitable consumption.

Uzupis said, Any recreational law that goes forward must have a homegrown provision Not only will this provide low cost medicine for people who have a green thumb, but it will also put a check on the multistate operators who are right now more or less operating as an almost oligarchic force, preventing prices from going lower because they control the medium of production.

The 2022 midterm election resulted in a democratic majority with Governor Josh Shapiro, and newly elected U.S. Senator John Fetterman both supporting recreational legalization. Many now wonder when the Keystone State will join the dozens of others ending cannabis prohibition.

Leach is optimistic. I think it is going to be sooner than people may have otherwise thought, hes said. The more states that do it and the more the sky doesnt fall it becomes harder to justify. It becomes harder to sustain this irrational, foolish, and frankly racist policy.

Continued here:

Pt. 2: The war on cannabis - Cabrini College Loquitur

Its been a long, painful road in the seven years since British Columbia declared a public-health emergency because of the rising death toll from illicit-drug overdoses.

Deaths from overdoses back in 2016 were rising sharply, and fentanyl was the cause in about a third of cases far higher than a few years earlier. But no one predicted how bad it would get. Overdose deaths in 2016 reached 994 in B.C., almost double from the year before. And that turned out to be just the start.

What began as a health emergency in one province has since seemed intractable. In B.C. and Alberta, overdoses have killed more people since 2016 than COVID-19 has during the coronavirus pandemic.

The worst year for overdoses came in the middle of the pandemic. In 2021, 2,306 people died in B.C. and 1,852 people in Alberta, the two hardest-hit provinces. The death rate in Ontario was roughly half that of Western Canada, but opioid overdoses still killed 2,866 people in that province in 2021.

As the accompanying chart shows, there was finally some good news last year: The number of overdose deaths fell slightly in 2022, down 1.5 per cent in B.C., 12 per cent in Alberta and an estimated 12.4 per cent in Ontario (complete data have not yet been published online). The three provinces account for most of the overdose deaths in Canada. Fentanyl, once the cause in a minority of cases, now accounts for four out of five deaths.

For years, political leaders moved too slowly to grapple with overdose deaths. In the past year, however, after the terrible spike of deaths in the pandemic propelled by an increasingly toxic supply of street drugs, theres been a renewed policy and funding push, led by B.C. and Alberta.

The end goal has to be the successful treatment of individuals who are trapped in the grip of substance-use disorders. Its a difficult goal, and a long journey for a person to get off dangerous drugs and the merciless grip of strong opioids. But successful treatment requiring a major investment of public money and health care resources means one less person exposed to a potential deadly overdose.

Improving a persons life, by helping them get off drugs, is critical. Keeping people who are currently struggling with drugs alive is just as essential. As we have repeatedly said, a person who dies of a drug overdose cannot seek treatment.

Political leaders are finally taking more action, but there has been sniping between political parties in B.C. and Alberta. Addiction is often entwined with challenges of housing and mental health. The scale and breadth of the issues demand that all policy options be deployed. This means everything from harm reduction whether thats supervised consumption sites, a regulated supply of pharmaceutical drugs or B.C.s new experiment in decriminalization of small amounts of illicit drugs to innovative approaches to treatment. Both B.C. and Alberta, despite differing political rhetoric, are investing in similar treatment strategies.

One glaring issue in treatment is there isnt a cohesive system to deliver it. Many facilities are privately run; some are publicly funded. And theres not much government oversight. Theres also a lack of data such as available spaces, the length of the waiting list, and the success or failure rate.

Alberta has built two specialized treatment centres, with six more to come. B.C. is working on several approaches. One is called the Red Fish Healing Centre, for especially difficult cases, and another is a strategy billed as the Road To Recovery that includes 45 beds set to open this fall at a downtown Vancouver hospital. B.C. Premier David Eby in February told The Globes editorial board that his government is trying to knit together an integrated treatment system, and gather and publish data so people can see where were going and where were struggling.

Drug overdose deaths have finally ticked down. There is cause to hope that the worst may be over. But theres still a long way to go to declare any sort of victory.

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Globe editorial: The tide is turning, but the war on drug overdoses is ... - The Globe and Mail

Eric Clapton announced Monday that his recurring Crossroads Guitar Festival will take place in Los Angeles this fall, with a roster of 41 guest musicians or bands set to take the stage across two nights at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles Sept. 23-24.

Musicians due to perform one or both nights include Santana, the War on Drugs, the John Mayer Trio, ZZ Top, Sheryl Crow, Gary Clark Jr., H.E.R., Buddy Guy, Los Lobos, Vince Gill, Stephen Stills, Jimmy Vaughan, Robbie Robertson, the Del McCoury Band and Joe Bonamassa.

Others announced include John McLaughlin, Albert Lee, Doyle Bramhall II, Keb Mo, Roger McGuinn, Robert Randolph, Jakob Dylan, Sierra Hull, Marcus King, Eric Gales, Sonny Landreth, Pedro Martins, James Bullard, Andy Fairweather Low, Samantha Fish, Ariel Posen, Ben Haggard, Christone Kingfish Ingram, the Bros. Landreth, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Gustavo Satnaolalla, Danial Santiago and Bradley Walker.

With more than three dozen players named for the shows, and more said to be addd later, not all artists will perform both nights but Eric Clapton will perform both nights, a note above the artists roster read. No two-day passes will be sold, so any guitar fans hoping to catch most or all of the announced guests will need to buy individual tickets for both nights.

Its the first time the charitable event will have taken place in L.A., and only the sixth time its happened at all since the first such festival 19 years ago. The inaugural iteration of Claptons signature festival, captured on a DVD and live album, unfolded in Dallas in 2004, followed by festivals in Chicago in 2007 and 2010, New York City in 2013 and Dallas, again, in 2019.

Tickets go on sale Friday at 10 a.m. PT via Ticketmaster.

Guitar Center will be in charge of hosting the Guitar Center Festival Village in Xbox Plaza and Chick Hearn Court at LA Live, adjacent to the arena, with rare items on display and interactive installations from gear manufacturers.

The event benefits the Crossroads Centre in Antigua, founded by Clapton in 1998 to provide treatment for individuals suffering from addiction or alcoholism.

An online auction also benefitting the Crossroads Centre, with guitars donated by festival performers and other items, will take place following the festival for three weeks, culminating in a live auction Oct. 21. Heritage Auctions will conduct the sales.

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Eric Clapton Bringing Crossroads Guitar Festival to L.A., With 41 Guests Ranging From Buddy Guy to the War on Drugs - Variety