Category Archives: War On Drugs

A task force of police, prosecutors, public defenders and Tenderloin community members pulled together by the city to figure out how to stem the tide of drug-dealing released its recommendations this week after a year and a half of work.

Create a new city-run body to coordinate efforts by dozens of Tenderloin organizations, police and the District Attorneys office to increase safety.

Allocate more funds for community safety and train community workers on de-escalation techniques and how to care for people who have trauma.

Offer treatment to people who deal drugs to feed their addiction. Enforce harsher consequences on repeat offenders who deal drugs but have no substance abuse problems - not longer sentences, but other measures such as possibly automatically revoking probation.

Create a 24/7 treatment center in the Tenderloin that takes away some of the existing barriers of wait lists and documentation, reach out to the community to make them aware of the options and offer therapy, as many people seeking drug treatment also struggle with mental illness.

Prioritize housing for people during and after drug treatment.

Create multiple safe drug-use sites where individuals can consume drugs in the presence of staff who monitor for overdoses, provide cleaning materials and refer to treatment. Such sites exist around the world but arent yet sanctioned in the U.S.

The task force is driven by a sense of urgency as the citys drug crisis has risen to a frightening new level, its report said. Overdose drug deaths multiplied from 259 in 2018, to 441 in 2019, to 712 in 2020. Fatalities this year are on pace to surpass last years, largely because of the potent opioid fentanyl. Most of the deaths occurred in District 6, which encompasses the Tenderloin, Civic Center, Mid-Market, and South of Market neighborhoods.

The insanely easy access to highly addictive and deadly drugs in San Franciscos Tenderloin district right now is shameful, said Max Young, a task force member and father who said the situation hurts families in the neighborhood.

Young closed his bar Mr. Smiths on 7th Street in 2019 because of rampant street drug dealing and said the same drug dealers remain outside his still-closed bar.

As long as we allow these guys to sell with impunity anywhere in the Tenderloin and not have any consequences, its never going to get better, he said.

Before the pandemic, there were about 24,500 injection drug users in the city, with an estimated 4,000 homeless, addicted and mentally ill.

The Task Force was created in late 2019 by legislation from Supervisor Matt Haney amid concerns that there wasnt a plan to deal with street drug dealing, he said. It included representatives from the District Attorneys Office, Police Department and Public Defenders Office as well as nine community members and the Department of Public Health.

A majority of the task force backed six recommendations, but not everyone agreed with all of them.

The failed War on Drugs has taught us that we cannot incarcerate our way out of this problem, and we need to continue to focus on new approaches, including comprehensive public health innovations, said Rachel Marshall with the District Attorneys office.

Stanford University Professor of Psychiatry Keith Humphreys, who focuses on addiction medicine public policy, said he was struck and impressed that a group in service-focused San Francisco urged stopping drug dealing as a law enforcement responsibility.

Its grappling with the reality that yes, there are people who deal drugs who are low-level addicted people and I feel really bad for them and I want to help them, Humphreys said. And there are a lot of people who are comfortable making money off doing something that kills people.

Haney said he supported all the recommendations.

The status quo is entirely unacceptable and is having devastating impacts on these neighborhoods, he said. We have to have the resolve to change it.

Public Defender Mano Raju took issue with the reports recommendations to focus on policing and prosecution as part of a broader strategy.

He said overcriminalizing and overpolicing Black, brown, poor and immigrant community members who are often victims of trafficking, duress, or acting out of dire conditions of poverty or illness, plays an outsized factor in the alarming level of desperation on our streets.

This reports recommendations to divert even more public resources to policing and prosecuting communities who so desperately need housing, employment opportunities, and public health care should be rigorously interrogated on its logic and motivations, he added.

Mallory Moench is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mallory.moench@sfchronicle.com Twitter@mallorymoench

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Here's how SF plans to tackle 'unacceptable' drug crisis in the Tenderloin - San Francisco Chronicle

Politicians are finally realizing what the public has known for years: Legalizing cannabis can positively support our economy, communities, and people

Nick Kovacevich| Opinion Contributor

The future of marijuana legalization

Heres what you need to know about the future of marijuana legalization in the United States, from its racist beginnings to today.

Just the FAQs, USA TODAY

With the Democrats in full control of Congress and the White House, the odds for real cannabis reform, such as full federal legalization, have never been higher. For years, cannabis has delivered a strong track record of creating jobs,tax revenue,and restorative justicein communities disproportionately affected by the War on Drugs. Its also been hugely popular with the American people, where more than 91% of adults are in favor of legalizing cannabis for either medical or adult recreational use.

And yet, despite all this, there has hardly been any momentum at the federal level to legalize cannabis until now, that is.

President Joe Biden has openly stated that he supports decriminalization and the legalization of medical cannabis.

He reaffirmed the former at a town hall earlier this year where he stated that no one should go to jail for the use of a drug, especially as it relates to addressing racial disparities in the enforcement of drugs. And hes not the only one.

In the lower chamber of Congress, U.S. House Judiciary Chair Jerry Nadler recently reintroduced a social justice-focused cannabis legalization bill, known as the MORE Act.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has voiced his support for major cannabis reform, including decriminalizing possession, expunging criminal records, and reinvesting in the communities hardest hit by the failed War on Drugs.

He has been working closely with Democrat Sens. Cory Booker and Ron Wyden to introduce a more comprehensive cannabis reform bill that would end cannabis prohibition and promote social justice, similar to the MORE Act.

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Im a big fighter for racial justice, and the marijuana laws have been one of the biggest examples of racial injustice, and so to change them makes sense, said Schumer. And that fits in with all of the movement now to bring equality in the policing, in economics and in everything else. Our bill is, in a certain sense, at the nexus of racial justice, individual freedom, and states rights.

When you look at the numbers and the people affected by this failed War on Drugs, its hard not to argue why cannabis should be legalized.

Alexander Soros: Nixon's war on drugs has failed for half a century. Its time to end it

According to the Last Prisoner Project, a non-profit organization dedicated to cannabis criminal justice reform:

New Jersey police, for example, have filed more than 6,000 charges for minor cannabis possession in the three months since nearly 3 million voters approved the legalization of cannabis on November 3, 2020.Thats right after voters have legalized it and despite the fact that lawmakers and Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat, have been working hard to create and implement a framework for a legal industry.

The state spends, on average, $143 million annually to enforce cannabis prohibition, and its not only a poor use of resources, but it also exacerbates the negative impacts this war has already caused.

Not only are we wrongly imprisoning tens of thousands of people a year who are convicted of an activity that is no longer a crime but we are also spending billions of dollars trying to enforce an antiquated movement that has disproportionately affected communities of color, and no longer represents the views of the overwhelming majority of American people.

I have been working in the legal cannabis industry for more than a decadeand my company,KushCo Holdings, stands to benefit from legalization.However, despite whatever financial benefit that may exist, our greatest goal is justice for those impacted by this failed War on Drugs, which has mostly disenfranchised people of color.

For pure racial and social justice alone, cannabis should be federally legalized and soon. Republicans had a crucial chance to make things right under the Trump administration, but chose not to promote justice, despite Republican congressmen David Joyce and Don Young introducing a bill that would legalize cannabis federally in a manner similar to alcohol. While the effort was seen by some cannabis policy experts as an encouraging step forward, it woefully lacks any meaningful social justice provision.

Brittany Barnett: Release people incarcerated under draconian marijuana laws

This leaves PresidentBiden and the new Democrat-controlled Congress to clean up decades worth of bad policy and serious injustice.

But legalizing cannabis isnt all about ending injustice.

Given the devastating economic damage COVID-19 has caused and is continuing to cause state and federal budgets have been decimated, unemployment remains high,and our economy is in need of a massive catalyst to accelerate the road to recovery. Even obstinate opponents of cannabis cannot deny the industrys profoundly positive impact on the U.S. economy, having employed 321,000 Americans in 2021,and generating more than $3 billion in tax revenue in 2020 alone.

States and localities are clearly benefiting on all social and economic fronts, and its time we move forward with cannabis.

Overall, there has never been a more critical time to legalize cannabis federally, as we recover from a damaging pandemic, while proactively addressing some of the social unrest that has afflicted our nation in recent months. The numbers speak for themselves, but more importantly, its just the right thing to do. Fortunately, more politicians are finally coming around to realizing and accepting what virtually the entire American public has known for years now: Legalizing cannabis can positively support our economy, communities, and people.

Nick Kovacevich is co-founder, chairman, and CEO of KushCo HoldingsInc. Follow him on Twitter:@nickkovacevich

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Cannabis reform? It's the right time for full federal legalization to help economy and people - USA TODAY

Within the United States, the momentum for drug policy reform continues to accelerate. At least one in three people in the United States live in states where the recreational use of cannabis is legal. Several bills have been submitted to Congress tolegalize cannabisand todecriminalize all drugsat the federal level. The focus on ensuring social justice, racial equity, resisting corporate capture, and reparations for communities harmed by the war on drugs is a more recent and very welcome phenomenon. In addition, harm reduction now features among the top drug policy priorities of the new administration, with a new $30 million fund dedicated to scale-up services.

The winds of change are blowing in the United States. But it would be a travesty for the United States to promote progressive reforms at home while imposing repressive and inhumane measures elsewhere.

As the arch-enforcer of the war on drugs, the United States now has the moral and political responsibility to proactively promote drug policies that are grounded in health and social justice, and above all in human rights.

This would mean moving away from providing international funding and political cover for the harsh enforcement of disproportionate drug laws, the militarization of drug control, aerial spraying and forced eradication, discriminatory policing practices, forced treatment programs, drug courts, and mass incarceration.

But it also means promoting positive reforms, discussing reparations for communities that have suffered the brunt of repressive drug control to the international level, fully recognizing the ancestral rights of Indigenous communities worldwide, and endorsing and funding life-saving harm reduction services both at home and abroad. These are not unrealistic fantasies, but real and concrete policies that are already being adopted in some U.S. states, often with overwhelming popular support.

On June 26, 2021,thousands of activistsaround the world mobilized for the 9thSupport. Dont Punish Global Day of Actionand rejected the traditionally self-congratulatory message of theUNs World Drug Day. They united with one clear, strong, and urgent message: it is time to end the war on drugs. Fifty years after Nixons administration strengthened heavy-handed international prohibition through UN drug treaties, with devastating consequences, the current U.S. presidential administration has an opportunity to begin to right the wrongs of history and start a real conversation on dismantling the global prohibition regime.

Read more from the original source:

How the United States Fueled a Global Drug War, and Why It Must End - Open Society Foundations

Over four years after her sons were killed in government anti-drug operations, Llore Pasco called on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to pursue its probe on the Duterte administration's bloody drug war.

On Maki Pulido's 24 Oras report, Pasco said she was willing to wait as long as it takes to get justice for her sons Juan Carlos Lozano, who died in Diliman, Quezon City during an August 10, 2017 anti-drug operation, and Crisanto Lozano who was killed in Diliman, Quezon City in a May 12, 2017 police operation.

"Para po talaga makamit po natin ang hustisya kahit ito po ay tumagal pa, laan po kaming maghintay," Pasco said.

(To finally get justice, we'll wait however long it takes.)

The ICC earlier urged alleged victims of President Rodrigo Dutertes war on drugs to submit their views, concerns, and expectations which will be used for the consideration of ICC judges, who will decide on a possible full investigation into the controversial anti-drug campaign.

It was former ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda who urged the ICC to conduct a full-blown investigation into the supposed crimes against humanity committed in Duterte's drug war.

Her successor ICC prosecutor Karim Khan is expected to take over once the international court allows an investigation into the anti-drug campaign.

Security issues

However, unlike Pasco, some families of drug war victims were hesitant about testifying against the government's drug war probe because they feared for their safety, according to an expert from New York-based watchdog Human Rights Watch (HRW).

"They are facing tremendous security issues. Marami sa kanila takot lumabas, takot magsalita," Carlos Conde, HRW senior researcher in the Philippines, warned.

(A lot of them are scared about exposing themselves, are frightened to speak up.)

Lawyer Kristina Conti of the National Union of People's Lawyers (NUPL) said they are going to areas where there are drug war victims to help them submit their views and concerns to the ICC.

She said other groups are also making similar efforts to submit allegations of inhumane acts in the drug war such as vigilante killings and illegal detentions.

Jurisdiction remains

Retired ICC Judge Raul Pangalangan, meanwhile, said despite the Philippines' withdrawal from the Rome Statute in March 2019, the ICC still has jurisdiction and may proceed with its investigation.

"The court maintains jurisdiction even after withdrawal, it retains jurisdiction over all crimes committed in its territory while it is still a member of the Rome statute," said Pangalangan.

Malacaang, however, said it was confident that ICC prosecutors would not be able to build a case for crimes against humanity against Duterte because the government will ignore the proceedings.

The ICC can do whatever it wants, but there is a chamber of ICC which already said na huwag na mag-imbestiga kung walang cooperation ng state [don't push through with the investigation if the state won't cooperate], said presidential spokesperson Harry Roque. Consuelo Marquez/DVM, GMA News

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Mother of 2 killed drug suspects urges ICC to pursue war on drugs probe - GMA News Online

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Mim Shafer, head of the health department at Mission High School in San Francisco, and a teacher of three health classes, was disappointed with the school districts drug-prevention curriculum. She felt it was stuck in a Just Say No model from the 1980s, failed to acknowledge the differences between types of drugs, and didnt prepare teenagers for real life scenarios in which drug use occurs.

We teach a really radical sexual health curriculum, we have this awesome, body-positive way we teach nutrition, she says. How come its in a district where were accessing all this radical, engaging curriculum that our drug and alcohol unit is like, please just dont do this?

In 2019, Shafer was asked if she wanted to volunteer her class for an experimental curriculum one that went beyond prevention and taught teens how to minimize the harm of drug use, including recognizing an overdose and administering naloxone. She jumped at the chance.

Two years since the pilot ended, Shafer is still teaching the curriculum and says her students find it more engaging. Its very conversation-based, and I think theres a lot of very cool ways that students get to sort of follow other interests, she says, including student projects looking at the war on drugs, looking at state-by-state zero tolerance laws and exploring drug myths.

Beginning in 2019, five schools in the San Francisco Unified School District became among the first in the nation to adopt a drug curriculum for teenagers based on the principle of harm reduction. The 15-lesson curriculum, Safety First: Real Drug Education For Teens, was published by the non-profit Drug Policy Alliance and, after incorporating feedback from the 2019 SFUSD pilot, was published for free on its website.

The curriculum was designed as an antidote to abstinence-based and preventive curricula popularized in the 1980s and which still proliferate. Rather than just saying no, Safety First focuses on the history of drug policy, the physical and social effects of different drugs on the brain, and potential consequences for use, covering alcohol, illicit and prescription drugs, as well as casually used drugs like caffeine. It also teaches kids how to independently research drugs.

While the curriculum advises teenagers that abstinence from drugs is the safest approach, it advises students on minimizing potential negative effects. It also provides historical background about the war on drugs and its disparate impact on mostly poor Black and Latino communities.

The designer of the curriculum, Marsha Rosenbaum, is a long-time executive at Drug Policy Alliance, and lessons extend on the themes of her widely read 1998 op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle, written as a letter to her son upon entering high school. In the letter Rosenbaum tells her son that rather than trying to scare him into not using drugs she would, tell you a little about what I have learned, hoping this will lead you to make wise choices.

She began developing Safety First into a full classroom lesson plan in 2016. DPA piloted the curriculum in a single classroom at Bard High School in New York in 2018 and in Spring of 2019 it was piloted at five schools in SFUSD.

Sasha Simon, who has overseen the Safety First curriculum since 2017 and now works for DPA as a consultant, says that SFUSD was chosen because the school already has a less punitive drug policy, directing students to outside resources instead of penalizing them for drug use. The five schools Simon and DPA chose for the pilot were also chosen for their racial diversity and because many students were low-income, in contrast to the student body of their first successful pilot at Bard High School, whose students are whiter and more affluent.

Simon says the district was taking a financial risk by opting into Safety First; In California, its easier for schools to adopt drug curricula with an abstinence or prevention-centered approach, because the programs are eligible for state grants. Through the states Tobacco Use Prevention Education program, Californias county offices of education received $5.4 million of grants for preventive tobacco and drug curricula in the 2019-2020 school year. Simon says that while SFUSDs prior curriculum was eligible for this funding, Safety First is not.

Cheryl Nelson, a teacher on special assignment in SFUSD who was a liaison between Drug Policy Alliance and the district, says she spoke to many teachers who were frustrated with the districts previous drug curriculum. (Nelson added she was not speaking as a representative of the school district but rather speaking to her personal experience with drug education curricula.)

Teachers would say to me, Im lying to the students, so much of the drug curriculum asks teachers to stand there and not implement best practices, she says. It felt not true, judgmental, archaic, she says of the curriculum.

Steven Sussbaum, a researcher who was the creator of SFUSDs previous drug curriculum, Towards No Drug Abuse, or TND for short, defended the curriculum to Next City, saying it had shown preventive effects for hard drug use in 7 of 7 randomized controlled trials between the years 1992-2012. He says that the program has remained timely because the effects are replicated over a long period of time.

We do revise the TND curriculum slightly to keep up with the times, either regarding information on our website or in the manual to the extent that we maintain the evidence-base, Sussbaum wrote in an e-mail.

While searching for funding to write a new drug curriculum, Nelson was put in touch with Rosenbaum at DPA, who was developing the Safety First lesson plan. Nelson offered feedback, and DPA eventually asked her about piloting the program in SFUSD schools.

Erin Hiltbrand Hall was one of the teachers Nelson reached out to about teaching Safety First in 2019. She teaches at Balboa High School, where the student body is about 50 percent Asian-American, 30 percent Latinx and over 60 percent qualify for free or reduced lunch, a program for low-income households. It was always kind of difficult to find something that was relevant to students that didnt contribute to stigma, she says.

(Sussbaum, who developed the TND curriculum, told Next City he is not blind to addiction stigma concerns, and sent a study he authored this year on addiction stigma.)

Hall says Safety First was more relevant to her students than the old curriculum. Were certainly not encouraging teenagers to use drugs, but theres the reality that people are curious and they try and do things for a number of reasons, Hall says. If we can provide teenagers with factual information where they can make the best decision for them and their body, I think thats fantastic.

Shafer, at Mission High School, says the students have wildly different reactions to the curriculum. Her students are 90 percent students of color, about 50 percent of whom are Latinx, and 80 percent are eligible for free and reduced lunch.

Thirty 14 year olds have very different life experiences and very different levels of familiarity, she says of a typical class. Theres definitely kids who talk about narcan, talk about fentanyl right away, Shafer says. Theres kids who are like, drugs are bad so Im just not going to use them. She says the students would also integrate pop culture into the conversations, like the year the students related the lessons back to the Netflix show 13 Reasons Why.

While abstinence-based and preventive approaches are still the norm in high schools, even the dominant drug prevention campaign of the 1980s has had to shift focus to a less rigid approach after studies showed it was not successful at prevention. Drug Abuse Resistance Education, or D.A.R.E, a once ubiquitous program from the era that partnered with police departments, recently adopted a new curriculum, still aimed at preventing drug use, although it is now more interactive than before.

D.A.R.E. opposes marijuana legalization, and classes are still led by police officers, despite criticism that this approach is inappropriate in schools where teenagers have had negative experiences with the criminal justice system.

In an e-mail, Ashley Frazier, Director of Curriculum at D.A.R.E., disputed the characterization of the program by DPA, saying it is not an abstinence program, and does not require or suggest the pledging of any oaths, to police officers or anyone else, a reference to a claim made on DPAs website.

To claims that D.A.R.E. is out of touch, Frazier says, what seems out of touch is the idea that all kids experiment with drugs, which is not borne out by any large sample data. Most kids dont use drugs. She says that most D.A.R.E. participants are fifth graders, and It just isnt a great audience for harm reduction efforts. Those are better aimed at population (sic) who are experiencing or at high risk of experiencing substance use disorder. A request for data on how many D.A.R.E. participants are teenagers was not returned, but there are lesson plans on the D.A.R.E. website for middle school and high school students.

Frazier says that rather than abstinence, D.A.R.E. is now aimed at, learning to assess their context, identify potential risk, weigh the potential for negative consequences, and make decisions that align with the future they want.

But Simon says many health curricula have changed their branding yet still arent thinking past prevention. Most health education policies are written with abstinence in mind, or minimally with prevention in mind, or preventing at all costs, she says. Even if thats not whats directly stated, that is absolutely the goal.

Simon says that the focus on decision-making that D.A.R.E. has recently adopted is limited, as the only decision students are prepared for is to say no. If youre looking for a million ways to say no, what happens when they say yes? Simon asks.

Safety First doesnt use prevention as a metric. Instead, it focuses instead on drug knowledge and critical thinking, and says an evaluation showed students media literacy had improved; teens were less likely to believe that only one online resource was enough to understand the use of a drug, Simon says.

Shafer says the focus on research skills is one of the salient points of Safety First. They know to vet articles when they find them, she says. Shafers students also have a personal connection to the material, as Marsha Rosenbaums now adult son, Johnny, leads a surf club at the high school. Rosenbaum made a visit to the school to talk more about the letter she wrote to her son twenty years ago.

And Shafer says she hasnt gotten pushback from parents. I havent heard much from parents other than the standard, Im so glad youre talking to them about this, she says.

This article originally appeared at Next City and is published in partnership with the Solutions Journalism Exchange

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'Safety First' Drug Education Program Acknowledges the Failings of 'Just Say No' - The 74

MANILA, Philippines With the Duterte administration vowing not to cooperate, it will be challenging for the International Criminal Court to investigate the alleged crimes against humanity committed during the course of the war on drugs in the Philippines, but a human rights lawyer said that hurdle can be conquered.

Hindi siya magiging balakid sa pagpapatuloy ng imbestigasyon, Center for International Law fellow Ross Tugade told Philstar.com in an interview. Kailangan lang maging creative ang Office of the Prosecutor at resourceful na rin sa paggamit ng ebidensya na na-submit na sa kanila leading towards the request to open an investigation on the drug war.

(It wont be an obstacle to the investigation. The Office of the Prosecutor just has to be creative and resourceful in using evidence that has been submitted to them leading towards the request to open an investigation on the drug war.)

Tugade said what the ICCs OTP can do is to rely on submissions from relevant sources or interested parties who would give it evidence which would support charges which could be filed before the international tribunal.

The OTP, then led by Fatou Bensouda, requested last June 14 that the ICCs pre-trial chamber allow a full investigation into the Duterte administrations war on drugs, which according to government data has left 6,117 dead as of April 30.

While a probe has yet to be authorized, President Rodrigo Duterte said last week his administration will not cooperate in a possible investigation into the countrys deadly drug war and that he will only face a Philippine court with a Filipino judge.

The Philippines withdrew in 2018 from the Rome Statute the treaty that established the ICC after Bensouda launched a preliminary examination into the war on drugs.

Tugade said this means that the Philippines can no longer be compelled to hand over whoever will be ordered arrested by the ICC. But it does not mean that the investigation would no longer continue.

Aandar pa rin siya under the Office of the Prosecutor, yong opisina na ngayon ay ino-occupy na ng bagong prosecutor, si Karim Khan. Siya ang magda-direct ng investigations tungkol sa drug war before the ICC, she said.

(The investigation will continue under the Office of the Prosecutor, the office which is now occupied by a new prosecutor, Karim Khan. He will direct the investigations about the drug war before the ICC.)

The push of the ICCs OTP for a full-blown investigation into the drug war has sparked hope among the families of those killed during its course.

Sobrang masayang-masaya, kasi parang nagkaroon kami ng pag-asa sa laban namin na to. Hindi lang sa laban ko, kundi sa laban ng lahat ng mga biktima ng pamamaslang dito sa Pilipinas, said Jane Lee, whose husband was killed in March 2017.

(I was very happy because we found hope in our battle. Not only in my battle, but also the battles of all the victims of the killings here in the Philippines.)

But the road toward a possible conviction before the ICC is long and arduous, which is why Tugade said the public must manage their expectations.

Kailangan nating bantayan ang proseso at kailangan rin nating, siguro, maging patient doon sa buong process sapagkat ang ICC ay isang korte na maaring magdesisyon pabor sa mga biktima o pabor sa mga akusado pagkatapos nitong tingnan ang ebidensya na ipepresenta before it, she said.

(We need to be vigilant about the process and we also need to be patient with the whole process because the ICC is a court that may decide in favor of the victims or in favor of the accused after it has looked at all the evidence presented before it.)

Lee hopes, however, that they would not be denied justice.

Hindi naman nila mababalik yung buhay ng mga mahal namin sa buhay. Sa totoo lang, kahit na anong hustisya yong makamit namin, hindi yon mapapantayan yong sakit, hindi mapapantayan yong hirap na dinanas namin, yong torture, she said.

(They wont be able to bring back the lives of our loved ones. In reality, any kind of justice wont would not be enough to compensate for the hurt, the pain, the torture that we experienced.)

She continued, Kaya yong hustisya na kaya na lamang ibigay, sana huwag nang ipagkait pa sa amin.

(I hope that the justice that can be given would not be denied to us.)

Continue reading here:

ICC probe into 'drug war' can proceed without government cooperation lawyer - Philstar.com

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: We begin today with a deadly scourge striking down people at an alarming rate. No, its not COVID; its drug overdoses. Over 92,000 people died from overdoses in the United States in the 12-month period ending in November the most since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began keeping track over two decades ago. Many experts cite two factors for the surge in deaths: the pandemic and the increasing availability of fentanyl and other synthetic opioids. This all comes as the nation marks 50 years since President Richard Nixon declared a war on drugs June 17th, 1971.

We begin todays show with someone who lost her sister to an overdose just as the pandemic was starting. Maya Schenwar joins us from Chicago, where she works as editor-in-chief of the news website Truthout. Her sister Keeley died of a drug overdose in February 2020 at the age of 29. Mayas piece about her death is just out; its headlined My Sister Died of an Overdose. Defunding the Police Might Have Saved Her. Maya is the co-author of Prison by Any Other Name and author of Locked Down, Locked Out: Why Prison Doesnt Work and How We Can Do Better.

Maya, welcome to Democracy Now! Our condolences on the death of your sister. The story you tell is heartrending. Tell us the story of Keeley, how she lived she is also a mother and how she died.

MAYA SCHENWAR: Absolutely. Thank you for having me.

You know, my sister Keeley was, as you said, a wonderful mother, a writer, an animal lover and a friend. And she died last year, thanks to a long cycle of criminalization. Keeley was incarcerated for the first time when she was 15. And for the next 14 years, she was just cycling in and out of jail and prison, as well as alternatives, like electronic monitoring and drug treatment. And the things that she was arrested for were always related to her addiction, even when they werent drug charges. So, she would go to prison. She would become even more deeply traumatized, because thats what prison does it traumatizes people. And she would emerge with even fewer opportunities and options. And then she would just go back to heavily using heroin to help deal with that pain.

And I want to point out real quick: So, heroin, in a vacuum, just like any other drug, is not the problem. People, I think, can use most stigmatized drugs and be OK, you know, even the most stigmatized drugs like heroin. But people are not supported in using drugs and being OK, because theyre criminalized.

So, while Keeley was incarcerated, horrible things happened to her, like anyone whos locked up. She experienced violence that was perpetrated by guards. She experienced the daily violence that everyone experiences of strip searches and medical neglect, and really just being called by a number instead of by your name. And also she experienced giving birth to her baby while she was incarcerated, and a prison guard was just sitting there watching her give birth.

And when Keeley returned to using heroin after her time in prison or a mandated treatment program, each time, she was at a much greater risk of overdose. And this is something I really want to emphasize. This is true for so many people who use drugs who are released from prison. So, within the first couple of weeks after being released, someones risk of overdose is almost 13 times higher than it is for the rest of the population. And thats partly because your tolerance for the drug is lower, because you havent been using.

So, last year, my sister was in a drug treatment program, a drug court program, so a mandatory treatment, and it was based around abstinence, not using the drug, and so her tolerance was reduced. And she was also very scared of being rearrested, because she knew that that would mean returning to prison and being separated from her daughter again. And so she was avoiding seeking any kind of medical help, because it could mean police involvement. So, at that point [inaudible]

JUAN GONZLEZ: Maya, I wanted to ask you, in terms of

MAYA SCHENWAR: Yeah.

JUAN GONZLEZ: When she was out of prison, what kind of medical or therapeutic help did she receive during those periods of time? And also, youve said that her interactions with police made her situation worse, not better. If you could talk about that, as well?

MAYA SCHENWAR: Yeah, absolutely. So, while she was out of prison, she would occasionally receive some support. She tried to be engaged in medication-assisted treatment, which has proven to support people with heroin addictions. But so much of the treatment that she experienced was based around surveillance and policing. And this is something that we see with many, many people who are criminalized and also use drugs, because its inside of the criminal legal system, so we see substance use as a problem that is within the criminal system even if were not sending people to jail.

And so, when people are sent to a mandated drug treatment center, when treatment is mandated, the research shows that thats not actually effective in helping people recover. And also we have to think about, ethically, you know, whether we should be putting people in a position where theyre mandated to do certain things with their bodies and their minds.

And so, Keeley was always surveilled. And she was not able to do the things that many of us are able to do to create a meaningful life. You know, she wasnt given opportunities to pursue her interests, to be with her family in a sustained way. Many of these treatments actually separated her from her family and confined her, just like prison.

And then, the thing I mention often about policing and the role that it played in her death was she became so afraid of being rearrested. And this is a very common fear among people who use drugs, and particularly among marginalized people who use drugs Black people, Indigenous people, trans people, people with disabilities and mental health diagnoses. You know, police are targeting them very, very heavily, so its a warranted fear. And so, seeking any kind of medical attention, particularly calling 911, can put you at risk for police contact, and that can lead to a return to incarceration. So, even when, in theory, there are options available and people say, Well, why didnt you seek help? its like, Well, you know, why would you seek help if the threat of punishment and torture and trauma is just hanging over your head every single second of the day?

JUAN GONZLEZ: And I wanted to ask you in 2019, Keeley was sentenced to two years in drug court. Explain what that means. And what happened to her after that?

MAYA SCHENWAR: Yeah. So, drug court is a diversion. So, the idea is that someone will be diverted either pretrial or sentenced to treatment instead of prison. And this option has grown substantially in popularity over the past few years. And its something that Biden has heavily promoted. Its often a thing that generates bipartisan enthusiasm.

But what people arent acknowledging is its still criminalization. So it still involves arresting people. Just arrest is a trauma. Its within the criminal legal system, which is built on foundations of white supremacy, and so its still targeting people of color, targeting Black people. Its still operating within a mindset of surveillance, so drug testing people constantly. Its still operating within a model of abstinence, which we know is not actually the best way to help people survive.

And so, even though we know all these things, were endorsing this program, I think, because partly, because its so hard to break out of this punishment mindset. And we need to challenge ourselves and say, What are we doing? Why are we supporting criminalization at the expense of peoples actual survival and ability to find support and ability to find resources?

You know, I think one really sad thing about all the money that is going into drug policing and drug courts and all of these resources, not only are harming and killing people, but, like the defund police movement has brought up again and again, what could we have if we diverted those resources and spent even more resources, as well, on things like housing and education and noncoercive healthcare and mental healthcare and more recreational opportunities and the arts and ways for people to live meaningful and livable lives and have all kinds of options to support their survival? Thats where we should be directing our energy.

AMY GOODMAN: Maya, Id like to go back to June 2014, when your sister, Keeley Schenwar, participated in a panel discussion in Chicago on breastfeeding and incarceration. Keeley read a poem she wrote for her baby daughter while she was incarcerated. Keeley gave birth while she was in prison, was taken away from her newborn daughter only after 24 hours with her.

KEELEY SCHENWAR: It took me over a month to start writing. Its so hard for me to think about all Ive already put you through. Nurses give me updates when the counselors here let me call. They say youre almost 10 pounds, starting to feel better, and that you love your baths.

Im not the one that holds you when you cry or the one that you look at when you open your eyes. It kills me to know that the reality is Im not a part of your life. I brought you into a world full of great things that are surrounded with pain, that which you already know too well, and I have no choice but to let you handle it all on your own and without a mother.

I guess youre not alone. It doesnt make sense or, it doesnt matter, nothing about this feels right. Although I know you wont remember this, I cant help but wonder if you feel the emptiness I carry day and night without you close or anywhere in sight.

I know my handwriting is sometimes sloppy, but its late, and Im writing in the background of the dim prison hallway lights. Im about to miss your first Halloween, just as Ive missed these last two months. I wish none of this was I wish none of this was true, but deep inside, really underneath a whole lot, I know I need to tell you nothing but the truth, which also includes that I love you. Ill spend the rest of my life making this up to you.

AMY GOODMAN: Thats Keeley Schenwar back in 2014. I am so sorry, Maya, how difficult this is for you, which makes it all the more brave for you to have written this piece in Truthout and to tell your sisters stories and her truths. As we talk about her baby being taken away from her so quickly, can you talk about her terror to get help because she was always afraid shed lose her baby, that theyd take her baby from her, and what you think needs to happen now, and if Cori Bushs new resolution, that she just introduced into Congress, the Peoples Response Act, which would send unarmed, trained professionals to respond to mental health and substance abuse crises instead of police, would make a difference?

MAYA SCHENWAR: Yes. Thank you, Amy. Thank you for playing that poem. I am overwhelmed. The poem is so beautiful. But it shouldnt have had to be written.

Tearing a mother away from her newborn baby is one of the most violent acts in the universe. And its perpetrated by our legal system. And I think when we think about the terror of Keeley and so many mothers and parents who use drugs and, more generally, who are criminalized, we have to think about this double punishment, the fact that not only are they under threat of being put into torture chambers prisons but also theyre under threat of this deep, deep, wrenching punishment of being torn away. And, of course, for Keeley, that was also the trauma of actually being pregnant and giving birth behind bars.

And when we look forward and think about, Well, what can be done? I think the number one thing we need to be thinking about is end criminalization and policing. And, you know, this might sound like something were doing away with instead of introducing, but I think its generative, because criminalization and incarceration are traumatizing and torturing people, and theyre also putting us in the mindset that this is all we can do, that this is our go-to solution. Well, you cant actually administer treatment through a system like that. And as weve discussed, police are actually making it less likely that people are going to seek emergency help when they really need it.

And so, I think that, within that, we also need to look at some of the other demands that are being made by organizers working to defund the police and to defend Black lives. And I think that Cori Bushs legislation does encompass some of that. We need to be fueling resources toward priorities that affirm life, and that includes housing, education, food, healthcare. These things would absolutely reduce overdoses, in addition to all the other many benefits they would have and the ways in which they would build toward creating a more flourishing and meaningful and equitable society. And I think creating nonpolice emergency responses is definitely something we should be funding and fueling. I believe Cori Bushs bill actually puts funding into existing programs, which is good, and we also need to be lifting up and funding and supporting all of the mutual aid efforts and the efforts that have actually been created by people who use drugs to support people in their survival, come up with creative harm reduction techniques and actually bring those to the community.

And I think that, in addition I just want to say real quickly that actually legalizing drugs, and doing that in a way thats informed by racial justice, that grants reparations to people most impacted by the drug war, that also has to happen, too, as were talking about all these issues with people dealing with contaminated drugs, people dealing with overdoses when they didnt even realize what amount they were taking. So I think its all of these things together, with a mindset of freedom and supporting people in their survival, a mindset of healing and liberation, instead of the idea that you can confine and surveil and police people into so-called recovery.

AMY GOODMAN: Maya Schenwar, I want to thank you so much for being with us. Again, this is a conversation we will continue. Maya is editor-in-chief of Truthout. Her sister Keeley died of a drug overdose in February 2020 at the age of 29. Mayas piece about her death is just out. Well link to it. Its headlined My Sister Died of an Overdose. Defunding the Police Might Have Saved Her. Maya Schenwar is co-author of Prison by Any Other Name and author of Locked Down, Locked Out: Why Prison Doesnt Work and How We Can Do Better.

Next up, well speak with Democratic Congressmember Nikema Williams of Georgia about her Abolition Amendment to end forced prison labor. Well also talk with her about voting rights and infrastructure spending. Stay with us.

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Maya Schenwar's Sister Died of an Overdose. She Says Defunding the Police Might Have Saved Her - Democracy Now!

That's an interesting development. Precisely because I remember when I used to study the Soviet Union, there was such profound sense of they pretend to pay us, we pretend to work. Everyone gave lip service to the system, but the system was incredibly and profoundly inefficient. Now it is certainly true that state-owned enterprises in China are less profitable and less efficient in deployment of capital and productivity than the private sector in China is. And yet, we are seeing with authoritarian surveillance, that the ability of the Chinese government to align individual citizens' behavior with what is considered patriotic goes so much more deeply into day-to-day living than it ever could have in the Soviet Union.

And this is something I think that is creating much more confidence on the part of the communist party, that they're getting it right, that their system works. And certainly, coming out of the pandemic faster than other major countries in the world, even though it started in China, even though they covered up the original human to human transmission. The fact that they could engage in surveillance and lockdowns that allowed the economy to get back up and running, over a year ago at this point, well ahead of that of the United States, of Europe, of other countries in the world, is providing a lot of optimism and enthusiasm that 100 years on, the Chinese Communist Party is not just robust, but it's actually a system increasingly to be emulated.

And in this regard, it was really interesting to see this new state council white paper that just came out on the party's 100-year quest for human rights protection as they call it. It's an important theme that I suspect we will see mentioned by President Xi in his upcoming speech as a General Secretary of the Communist Party. And we're increasingly seeing numbers of high-level officials calling for China to share its governance model internationally because it's so successful. Something that we have not seen from China historically. And that's one of the things I'm going to find most important about the events of the coming week, is whether or not we end up in a greater ideological confrontation as opposed to just an economic or technological one. Which is what we've seen of course from the US and China intensifying, but nonetheless limited over the course of the past years.

So I think that if you're looking at this from China's perspective, your saying we've had extraordinary economic growth, our political system is very consolidated, the West doesn't really know what it stands for. Coming out of the pandemic, we feel good about where we stand. Issues like Hong Kong, the Uyghurs, Taiwan, which are extremely controversial and leading to a lot of criticism, rightfully in my view, from the United States and other democracies. Inside mainland China, the average Chinese citizen actually is very aligned with what the Chinese government is saying. And that's not only because they control the media. I mean, if you look at the treatment of the Uyghurs and the fact that their rights have been stripped away, and there's been forcible cultural assimilation, integration, antinatalist policies of late, even sterilizations. And of course, these reeducation camps with over a million Uyghurs in place.

The average Chinese, and I've spoken to a lot of Chinese citizens about this, say this is a group that had radicals in their midst. They would engage in irredentist sentiment to break up mainland China. They had a secessionist movement, they supported terrorism, there was violence against Chinese citizens, and we needed to react. And how was the reaction where you have those reactions, there's clearly going to be, if you want to make an omelet, you're going to break some eggs. Of course, there were probably people that were caught up in all of this. But ultimately there's no longer threat from the Uyghurs to China. And how is that different from what the Americans did say after 9/11? How's it different from Guantanamo Bay? I would argue it's quite different in the sense that the scale is staggering, it's happening inside Chinese territory. But again, it's important to understand that from the perspective of Chinese citizens, it is seen as a legitimate Chinese government response. So I think the first big point is we think about the 100th Communist Party plenum is just how strong Chinese domestic patriotism presently is.

There's two other points I would mention. There's also the lionization of Xi Jinping himself. If you look at the official textbooks on the history of the Communist Party, Xi has personally been elevated well beyond that of any leader since Mao. And there's increasingly a white washing of the cultural revolution. There is increasingly this sense that the Great Leap Forward, which was a policy disaster inside China of the level of those we saw with the Great Famine under Stalin, is now something that you really can't criticize anymore. So this sense that history should be rewritten to support the domestic victors, something that is downright Orwellian, but is increasing the table stakes inside China is something I find disturbing. Not only because I think it's bad for the harmonious rise of Chinese society over time, but also because it will lead to more confrontation between China and those of other countries around the world that have a broader and more or open policy debate and media debate and political debate.

And then finally, there's the question of, to what extent China's next five, 10 years are going to be as easy to continue to grow as we've seen over the course of the last 50. 100 years you can't really use that as a benchmark because before China started globalizing, there was much more profound difficulty inside China. It was a low-income country with massive human depredation and war. But when I see where China is heading in the next 10 years compared to the last 50, it feels like there is a lot more winds of change against China's progress.

What do I mean by that? Well, the last 50 years, China was interested in integrating more into the global economy. It embraced globalization. At the same time, the West, the United States and allies, wanted China to integrate into the WTO, integrate into a global supply chain where China was increasingly the factory for low-cost labor and goods to export all over the world. And both of those things rowing in harmony made it so much easier for China to grow, on average, almost double digits over the course of the last 30, 40 years. Unprecedented in the history of humanity for an economy of that scale.

Now, as I think about the coming five, 10 years, neither of those two things apply. Globalization is starting to turn inward, low-cost labor no longer so low cost in China. The United States focusing more on industrial policy, on insourcing, on supporting American labor. Not on China being the factory of the world. So the massive advantage that China had is not only less of an advantage in a post-industrial revolution, but also the West is increasingly not aligned with China's integration and economic success. Now, there certainly are actors in the West that are very aligned with it. There's a big difference between a lot of American corporates that are still betting more and more over time on China's economy than the US government and many allied governments in the Quad, in Asia, the UK, many Europeans in Europe. But still, structurally, this is going to be a lot harder for China going forward.

And the fact that the five-year plan is now all about dual circulation, which is focused more on Chinese demand and focused more on Chinese control of supply chain is the opposite of what China was able to prioritize to get to the economic power that it presently accumulates. The fact that that is happening in an environment where Chinese demographics are more constrained and Chinese debt is growing to levels that have been unsustainable for middle income economies over the course of the last 50 years, for me, makes the risks to China in the next five, 10 years skew more to the downside than the upside. A lot of uncertainty, but as I'm thinking about how to assess Xi Jinping's big plenary speech coming up this week, that's what I'm thinking about.

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The Graphic Truth: Did the war on drugs work? - GZERO Media

contributed photoHeavily armed police search a truck.

Fifty years ago this month, on June 17, 1971, President Richard Nixon declared a full scale attack on drug use. It was the beginning of the War on Drugs.

Nixon and many presidents since promised the War on Drugs would save lives. Trillions of dollars later, incarceration and preventable overdose deaths have skyrocketed and continue to rise.

After generations of broken lives, broken families, and broken dreams, we must end it now.

Nixons War on Drugs turned out to be a war on people. Once he saw there was no political benefit in drug treatment, he declared an all-out war on the drug menace with a federal Drug Enforcement Agency and stiffer penalties. This helped Nixon target his political enemies.

As White House advisor John Erlichman explained, 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.

Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Erlichman asked. Of course we did.

Nixons tough on crime stance did not save his presidency, but his War on Drugs and its disproportionate impacts on Americas poorest communities continued. Leaders from Ronald Reagan to BIll Clinton and Joe Biden, when he was still a tough-on-crime senator from Delaware, have spent billions on this failed policy, knowing all it buys them is short-term political gain.

The DEAs budget is $3.1 billion today, with many billions more spent on incarceration and military drug enforcement. Yet 2020 was the worst year in history for overdose deaths.

President Biden now tells us he wants to break from the failed policies of the past to improve the lives of regular people. He calls for green jobs and infrastructure, and expanded access to health care. Will he also, finally, call for an end to the War on Drugs, and invest in public health measures to save lives?

There is hope. In February, Bidens Office on National Drug Control Policy announced top priorities including enhancing evidence-based harm reduction efforts and confronting racial equity issues related to drug policy.

This is a historic break from the punish first drug policies that have caused so much heartbreak. It came after Peoples Action, a national grassroots network, led more than 200 drug and health-focused groups to call for an end to the War on Drugs in favor of evidence-based solutions rooted in racial and economic justice and compassion.

But words are not enough. President Biden needs to follow through on his campaign promises to decriminalize drug use and offer treatment to drug users. He should throw his full weight behind the Mainstreaming Addiction Treatment (MAT) Act, so health care providers can prescribe treatments for addiction.

But President Bidens approach to drug policy thus far has been one step forward, two steps back. He says he supports the best solutions, but retreats when he fears a political cost like when he extended the blanket scheduling of fentanyl, which increases overdose deaths and imposes harsh penalties on users.

Does Biden have the courage it will take to truly end the War on Drugs?

Local communities arent waiting for an answer.

Vermont just became the first state to decriminalize small amounts of buprenorphine, a prescription drug that eases addiction. New York State just said it will no longer punish those who carry clean syringes. And in Portsmouth, Ohio, community members defeated their police departments bid to buy a $256,000 armored tank, so that money can go towards saving lives.

But we need leadership from the top. President Biden, its time, once and for all, to end the War on Drugs and invest in the best public health strategies that will save lives. Its up to you.

Ellen Glover is the Campaign Director for Drug Policy, Harm Reduction, and Criminal Justice for Peoples Action, a national network of grassroots groups with more than a million members. This op-ed was distributed by OtherWords.org.

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End the War on Drugs | News, Sports, Jobs - Marshalltown Times Republican

It's been fifty years since the United States declared one of the costliest wars in its history a trillion-dollar campaign waged at home and abroad, which continues to grind on today.

In June of 1971, President Richard Nixon, alarmed by the rise of permissive hippy culture and drug use, unleashed what would become known as the "war on drugs," a tough-on-crime approach that melded law enforcement, military action, and a public messaging campaign that both scared and scolded.

Aiming to reduce American drug use, it severely criminalized consumption in the US, while attacking international cartels' capacity to produce and export illicit narcotics, in particular from Latin America.

Did it work? We take a look at three of the war's major "battlefields" today.

The producer: Colombia. In the 1980s Colombia became the center of the global cocaine trade, which helped fuel the decades-long conflict between FARC guerillas, drug cartels, paramilitaries, and the Colombian government.

In 2000, Washington and Bogot inked the multibillion-dollar Plan Colombia, in which the US trained and equipped Colombian soldiers to crush militants and quash the drug trade. To its credit, Plan Colombia helped force the FARC to negotiate a landmark peace deal in 2016 but there has been no discernable success against drugs. Coca cultivation is near all-time highs, vastly surpassing levels seen even during the heyday of Pablo Escobar. And Colombian authorities are still making record cocaine busts.

The political problem is that the government hasn't met pledges to help farmers replace coca crops with legal ones. Doing so would mean providing security and economic opportunity in remote regions where the FARC dissolved but narcos filled the vacuum. Instead, the state has focused on US-backed eradication programs: wrecking coca crops either with environmentally-hazardous aerial spraying or, more recently, sending troops in to tear up coca fields, plant by plant. The trouble is, it doesn't work. Congress found in a 2020 report that eradication has produced "dismal results" -- it creates tension between farmers and the state, without diminishing coca cultivation for long.

If the 2016 peace deal is to have any meaning at all, this circle still needs to be squared. In Colombia, the war on drugs is still an obstacle to peace.

The middleman: Mexico. After US feds in the 1980s busted up the Caribbean transit hubs linking Andean producers and American consumers, overland routes through Mexico took off. By one FBI estimate, some 93 percent of drug flows from South America to the US now go via Mexico. These routes are controlled by the murderous and mind-bogglingly well-armed Mexican cartels that effectively run huge swaths of northern Mexico themselves today. Despite some joint US-Mexico successes, like taking down notorious kingpin El Chapo in 2014, the cartels are as powerful as ever.

What's more, cooperation between the DEA and Mexican officials has broken down under the administration of Mexico's prickly nationalist President Andrs Manuel Lpez Obrador.

All of this has contributed to Mexico's soaring homicide rate, one of the world's highest. And that's a big problem for Lpez Obrador. He was elected in 2018 partly on pledges to tackle the violence but so far his "hugs not bullets" approach has yielded more lead than love.

In sum: the US war on drugs has failed to cut the enemy's biggest supply chain.

The consumer: the United States. "Just say no," former US First Lady Nancy Reagan told us. This sizzling egg is your brain on drugs, we learned. And still, decades later, rates of illegal drug use -- of all kinds -- remains high and rising.

Meanwhile, a raft of laws from the 1980s and 1990s -- some written by then-Senator Joe Biden -- heavily criminalized drug possession, causing the prison population to explode. That helped to make US incarceration rate the highest in the entire world. Black and Latino Americans have suffered disproportionately: drug convictions are more frequent and sentences harsher than for whites, though drug use rates are similar across racial groups.

But the politics are shifting. More than 80 percent of Americans of both parties now say the war on drugs has failed, and two-thirds believe it should end. A big majority favors decriminalization of drug offenses.

So far, more than half of US states have decriminalized small amounts of marijuana for personal consumption, and Oregon has done the same even with harder stuff. One of the thorniest debates now is how to ensure that profits from legal drugs go towards helping the communities of color ravaged for decades by drug enforcement.

And on Tuesday the Biden administration -- taking a Trump-era criminal justice reform even further -- endorsed an important bill that would finally eliminate disparities in sentencing between powdered cocaine, a more elite drug, and crack, whose generally-poorer (and Blacker) users have suffered harsher punishments for decades.

Still, the US pours billions into drug-oriented law enforcement annually. A drug arrest is made every 23 seconds, activists say. And overdose deaths have more than tripled in the past twenty years amid a raging opioid crisis kickstarted not by distant cartels, but by American drug companies, including those owned by the now-disgraced Sackler family.

The last line (so to speak): After 50 years, the war on drugs has not, by any reasonable standard, been won. Is there a better way? Let us know here

.

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Has the war on drugs been won yet? - GZERO Media