Category Archives: War On Drugs

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton shake hands at the conclusion of their town hall debate in St. Louis, Mo., October 9, 2016. (Lucy Nicholson/REUTERS )

As I head into the Winter Meeting of the (sigh, deep breath) network of conservative groups affiliated with Charles Koch, that they would prefer people stop calling the Koch Network, perhaps it is good to pause and look at how the two parties have changed in the past decade . . . because they have indeed changed.

Is American Politics Really Realigning towards the Left Wing?

The headline of Eric Levitzs essay in New York Magazine, The Left-Wing Realignment of American Politics Has Already Begun, is both more accurate and less accurate than it appears.

The crux of Levitzs argument is that not only has the Democratic party moved to the left, to the point where the centrists of this primary are running on positions that would have been extremely progressive twelve years ago, but also that the 2020 edition of the Republican party is to the left of where it used to be:

But a broader swath of the GOP iswarming to small-bore, family-based social welfare policies, includingrefundable child tax credits for working parentsandmodest forms of paid family leave. Kevin McCarthys climate bill may be a mere stunt, but the House Minority Leader is not alone in signaling a heretical interest in (nonmilitary) industrial policy; Republican senatorsJosh Hawley and Marco Rubiohave made similar noises in recent months, with the Florida senatorissuing a reporton the harms of neoliberal financialization that actually cited the work of socialist economists. In other words, while Republicans remain happy to do the bidding of libertarian billionaires when it suits their political interests, they appear more willing to opportunistically flout the Koch Networks preferences than they were during the Obama years.

Republicans like Rubio and the others are trying to apply their pro-family principles to economics, and it is indeed going in some surprising directions, as Levitz observes. But even if theyre ending up in a similar place, theyre taking a different route to get there.

(As noted yesterday, people really dont pay close attention to what the Koch network actually wants to do. They really want a deal on Dreamers, supported a bill that passed giving legal status to thousands of undocumented farm workers, they want to bring troops home from Afghanistan and to have a lighter U.S. military footprint abroad, and they helped push through criminal-justice reform last year.)

Ways the Republicans Are Drifting to the Left

Levitz primarily focuses on economic policy and climate change, but there are definitely some other clear examples of the Republican party shifting to the left. The number of Republicans who oppose gay marriage continues to drop, and in the eyes of most GOP lawmakers, the Obergefell case resolved the issue for the foreseeable future. Republicans are much more supportive of legalizing marijuana and other drugs than they used to be, and much more wary about the costs and benefits of the war on drugs. GOP governors were some of the first adopters of criminal-justice reforms. (I suspect theres an only Nixon could go to China effect; nobody was going to accuse Rick Perry or Chris Christie of being soft on crime.)

The GOP under Trump is more populist, at least in its rhetoric. Perhaps the most significant change, particularly from the Tea Party era to the Trump one, was the dramatic illustration that Republican opposition to deficit spending and rapidly increasing debt was a mile wide and an inch deep. A lot of Republicans, both in the grassroots and in office, said they opposed runaway spending . . . but they werent really willing to do much about it. And under Trump, Republican complaints about trillion-per-year deficits are practically muted.

But those of us who still think giant runaway debts are going to create problems down the road, as interest payments become a bigger and bigger portion of the federal government, have to confront a painful truth: Many Americans dont care. They cant see the problem. They cant touch it. At some point, the numbers become so big, they become difficult to imagine.

Many Americans can understand (and may have experienced) owing money to a credit card company or the bank for an unpaid mortgage or car payments, or student loans, or even some tough guy named Vinny knocking at their door over that loan they took when their gambling got out of hand. But they cannot get their heads around the fact that as of Wednesday, the American government owes $23,205,218,318,274 dollars and one penny. That is $23 trillion. Our government takes in roughly $3 trillion in tax revenue for a year. If everyone in America agreed tomorrow to have the U.S. government stop all new spending, and we never spent any money on anything, and we somehow collected all the same level of taxes from volunteer IRS agents, and we somehow made up for all of the federal workers who would not be paying income taxes . . . it would still take us nearly eight years to pay off all that we currently owe.

Spending hawks argued with the rest of the country until they are blue in the face, urging them to solve or at least begin to address the problem. No matter what they say or do, Americans refuse to see as a problem or at least they refused to vote as if they saw it as a problem. The Republicans didnt reverse their position on the debt so much as drop it. The electorate had made it painfully clear that there wasnt any political upside whatever cuts were proposed were always going to be painted as cruel and heartless by their opponents, and the Democrats were always going to argue the country could afford anything it wanted and pay for it by taxing the rich.

Ways Republicans Are Drifting to the Right

But to make the argument that the GOP is moving to the left is to look only at a select group of issues. On several fronts, Republicans are more rightward than they were in the past. There are very few pro-gun-control Republicans anymore, and very few outspoken pro-choice Republicans. The Republican Majority for Choice shut its doors, its leaders proclaiming that they were leaving the GOP. The old moderate Republicans became Democrats Arlen Specter, Charlie Crist, Mike Bloomberg, Lincoln Chafee.

The first aim of the Trump administration was a sweeping tax cut, and it is hard to imagine a Republican congressman signing onto any future budget deal that included tax increases.

The Trump administration may be a mixed bag on deregulation that leaves some conservatives disappointed, but its not like the Republicans have fundamentally changed their beliefs about the harm of red tape or the efficiency of the federal bureaucracy. The perceived leniency in criminal-justice reform proposals are a reflection that the past tough-on-crime policies worked so well that theyre probably outdated and no longer needed. The GOP is still, by and large, the party of cops. Trump has made the partys rhetoric more enthusiastic about infrastructure in the most general sense, but this is largely an updated version of the longstanding bipartisan tradition of spending taxpayer money to build big stuff in their districts. Remember Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska and Representative Bud Schuster of Pennsylvania?

The Ways the Democrats Have Drifted Or Sprinted to the Left

By most measures, Democrats have taken at least one big step to the left both during and since the Obama administration. There is no Democratic Leadership Council anymore, pushing for a more centrist approach. There are very few pro-gun Democrats; back in 2010, North Carolina Democratic representative Heath Shuler and Dan Boren, a former representative from Indiana, spoke at the National Rifle Associations annual meeting. Dan Lipinski is, functionally, the last pro-life Democrat in Congress.

Bernie Sanders was not taken seriously by many Democrats, and certainly not seen as a potential presidential nominee, during the Clinton, Bush, or early Obama eras. For most of the past generation, Democrats vehemently denied being socialists, they didnt embrace the label. The Green New Deal would not have been proposed in any previous presidency.

(Theory: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortezs rise to such a prominent role in Democratic politics partially reflects the lack of a figure such as Barack Obama or either of the Clintons atop the party and defining its identity and terms of debate. Think about it: From 1992, the Democrats have nominated Bill Clinton, Bill Clinton, Bill Clintons running mate in Al Gore, John Kerry, Barack Obama, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton. Thats an entire generation of Democrats who have had, for most of their lives, Bill, Hillary, or Barack setting the course for the party.)

A Few Ways Democrats Have Somewhat Drifted to the Right

But if you look hard, you can find some idiosyncrasies. As many of us noted throughout Trumps rise, he has never been a consistent, down-the-line conservative, and was a big donor to Democrats for many years. This means on any given day, Trump can propose an idea that is not conservative by any means but many Democrats so consistently loathe Trump that they oppose whatever hes proposing. A CBS poll in 2018 found 78 percent of Republicans supported federal aids to farmers being affected by tariffs, while only 39 percent did. (Motivated reasoning around Trump is so powerful, he can get Democrats to oppose new federal entitlement programs and he can get Republicans to support them.)

While it probably reflects a reflexive opposition to whatever Trump is doing at the moment, more Democrats say they support free trade now. Similarly, Democrats hawkishness on Putin is indisputably a variant of anti-Trump-ism, but it will probably be a long while before Democrats respond to calls for a tougher stand on Russia by scoffing: The 80s called, they want their foreign policy back. If you simply looked at the issues of aid to farmers, approach to Russia, and free trade, you might think the Democrats were the conservative party.

ADDENDUM: Okay, Budweiser. I think youve won the Best Super Bowl ad competition already.

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Surprising Party Changes in the Past Decade - National Review

The US Congress funds the drug war each year despite knowing for decades about the wars ineffectiveness and disastrous consequences. How and why such a war continues has long been a matter of debate:

To say that the war on drugs has failed is not understanding something. It is true that for 40 years, the war on drugs has failed in its stated objectives. Everyone knows that prevention and treatment is the most efficient way to address the drug problem, and that foreign operations are the most inefficient way. One has to wonder just what is in the minds of the planners given the amount of evidence that what they are trying to achieve doesnt work. The drug war has not failed. Its consequences are intentional both within the United States and in the hemisphere.Noam Chomsky, 2012, [QuoteKindle p. 19].

In his 2019 book, Drug War Pathologies, Embedded Corporatism and U.S. Drug Enforcement in the Americas, Jamaican born author and researcher Horace A. Bartilow says the consequences may not have been intentional. He provides statistical and other evidence that focuses blame for the current drug war on transnational corporations doing business primarily in Latin America:

While drug prohibition is an important component of the U.S. national security state (National Security Act of 1947, P.L. 114-113, Sec 101, 50 U.S.C. 3001), it has evolved into a larger corporatist regime that is predicated on protecting the operations of free market capitalism. American drug enforcement has now become the security face of corporate capitalism and is an important vehicle for leveraging corporate penetration into foreign markets as well as facilitating international cooperation to combat threats to capitalism that arise from drug trafficking. The principal actors in this corporatist regime are American transnational corporations. The regime also includes policy think tanks, some members of Congress, civil society organizations, religious and political leaders in the African American community, and foreign governments that partner with the United States in the overseas prosecution of the drug war. [Kindle p. 2]

American policy makers, and the larger drug enforcement regime to which they belong, are addicted less to the drug wars policy failures than to its budgetary successes, in the sense that they have been largely successful in their perennial ability to increase the drug wars budget. [Kindle p. 21]

With the Citizens United Supreme Court decision allowing dark money donations to politicians, transnational corporations operating in Latin America will have many new opportunities this political season to further exploit the drug war and its victims.

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Corporate Successes in the Drug War - Drug WarRant

When a group of powerful, legal stimulants burst onto the drug scene in the UK and U.S. a decade ago, they caused a media frenzy.

In Britain, mephedrone came virtually out of nowhere in 2009 to become a hugely popular drug with university students, clubbers and rural teenagers. Dubbed "meow meow" by newspapers and sold online as plant food, it was the killer drug that made people rip off their own scrotums. Yet behind the hype, to young people using it, the drug ticked all the boxes: it was legal, it got you very high and you didnt have to buy it from a street dealer. You could buy it online and get it delivered to your front door in 24 hours.

Meanwhile in the U.S., mephedrone and other synthetic cathinones such as methylone and MDPVsome of which were sold as bath saltsand later alpha-PVP, which became known as "flakka," became popular. Some of these drugs were either mixed in with, or replaced, the MDMA that fueled the EDM scene. Others inspired media coverage around their alleged ability to turn people into flesh-eating zombies (though it was later discovered that particular attacker had only used weed).

But then these drugstechnically called synthetic cathinonesvanished from the mainstream. Synthetic cathinones were banned in the UK and U.S. in 2010 and 2011, swiftly removing their unique selling point as a legal hit. Meanwhile, the purity of the drugs they were designed to replicate, such as MDMA and cocaine, had begun to rise. Cathinones fell out of favor with most users and dealers. Instead they went underground in the UK and U.S., used in the main by much smaller, more socially excluded populations, such as the street homeless and long-term drug injectors, as well as in chemsex scenes.

While synthetic cathinones are mainly drugs of historical note now in the UK and U.S., their arrival having kick-started the modern online drug trade, elsewhere on the planet they have become major drug market players. Now, a decade after becoming the go-to drugs of a new generation of young party kids in the U.S. and UK, mephedrone and other synthetic cathinones are now all over Russia, Eastern Europe and some countries in Asia.

While Silicon Valley millionaires pay $1,000 a night for organic magic mushrooms with a trip guide, and middle-class Londoners pick up deluxe cocaine for 100 a gram in West End bars, people living in relative poverty are snorting and injecting the psychoactive equivalents of knock-off designer clothes to get their stimulant high. Cathinones of varying quality and toxicity have become part of a new wave of cheap highs feeding the bargain basement of an increasingly divided global drug market.

So how did they come to dominate traditional drugs in some parts of the world?

Until four years ago, most prohibited substances entered Russia through its seaports. Cocaine from South America, ecstasy from the Netherlands and amphetamine from Belgiumall of them arrived in St. Petersburg and Ust-Luga to disperse to Russian cities and European transit destinations.

But in 2016, the situation in Russia changed. A huge clampdown on the smuggling trade, of everything from illegal furs to alcohol and drugs, and the arrest of key smugglers momentarily strangled the supply of banned substances in the country. Well-established dealing networks were lost. Drugs imported from Europe such as ecstasy, amphetamine and cannabis stopped going through ports so easily. With diminished supply, these drugs soared in price.

Wholesale drug suppliers came to the conclusion that Russia needed a new product. The criteria were simple: its manufacture should be easy and inexpensive, and the potency strong. Despite it having been banned in Russia in 2010, mephedrone was their solution.

Russian police raided a drug lab near Moscow Jan 17, 2020, and seized at least 66 kg of mephedrone and 600 liters of liquid containing synthetic drugs. IMAGE: Russian Federal Security ServiceTASS via Getty Images

Russia has little data on drug prevalence, forensics, drug-related deaths and convictions. But the evidence from online markets, police seizures and drug experts indicates cathinones have risen to usurp a variety of drug scenes in Russia. Earlier this month a clandestine lab outside Moscow producing mephedrone for online sales was busted. Police arrested five suspects and found 66 kg of mephedrone, 600 litres of liquid containing synthetic drugs and precursor chemicals.

On Hydra, the largest Russian darknet market, mephedrone is more popular than weed. There are more clandestine online shops selling mephedrone than any other drug and the most drug reviews on the site are about mephedrone.

Teenagers wear Metallica-logo "Mephedrone" t-shirts, while the musician Mukka has a song called Girl With A Bob Cut, with the chorus: "In my yard, there is a girl with a bob cut walking/She loves mephedrone, she loves mephedrone. And I am so in love with her." The video, which has 11 million views, features a couple meeting in a club and getting trashed before the girl ODs and is buried the next day by her lover in the snow.

On the encrypted messenger app Telegram, numerous channels talk about using mephedrone and alpha-PVP. Many of these mini-blogs are written in Beatnik style, like cult Russian underground writer Bayan Shiryanov, and describe addiction to cathinones. Some have 10,000 subscribers and act as entry points into online drug markets.

Mom, we are all sick with mephedrone, less often alpha, writes Deep in sin. You and Iwe go crazy for these two and die on withdrawal. The authors are mostly teenage girls, or people who pretend to be teenage girls, hoping to get cash by posting referral links to shops or by leaving their card number and asking people to donate.

According to data analysis from a Telegram channel called DrugStat, prices for a gram of mephedrone in Russia start from $25. In contrast, a gram of cocaine starts from $130. Synthesis of mephedrone in Russia can get as cheap as 30 cents a gram from what I've heard, said Andrey Kaganskikh, a freelance Russian journalist who has investigated Russias drug problem. Prices for mephedrone dont differ that much around the country because it can be synthesized almost anywhere. Underground labs making synthetic cathinones have also been found in Eastern Europe. Since 2013, a number of factories related to cathinone production have been dismantled in Poland and Slovakia.

As with the drugs they are slowly replacing, synthetic cathinones come with risks. Their ingredients are far more varied and unpredictable than their traditional counterparts. Because most are habit-forming, and have been adopted by injectors, they have been responsible for a rise in acute psychosis, blood-borne infections, and deaths in the regions in which they are used.

According to Nikolay Tumanov, a Russian doctor-narcologist, cathinones can cause "anxiety, pseudo-depressive disorders, sleep disturbances, aggressiveness, panic attacks, in fact a destabilization of the nervous system." While synthetic cathinones have been linked to a significant number of deaths in Eastern Europe, many of these are poly-drug poisonings, making the risk difficult to gauge.

Cathinones, mainly mephedrone and alpha-PVP, have also gained a market foothold in Georgia, a country situated at the juncture of Western Asia and Eastern Europe.

Since Georgia declared independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, personal freedom is valued highly and the country now has a flourishing, young electronic dance music scene. Here, the media calls mephedrone killer salt after several fatal overdoses linked to mephedrone at clubs and festivals in 2017, resulting in the drug being banned in 2018. Even though it has an even more dangerous reputation than mephedrone, alpha-PVP has become prevalent in the country among students and older users who often vape or inject the drug.

In Georgia, unlike in many countries, cathinones are not just cheap substitutes for other drugs, they are rival products. On Matanga, a popular clearnet website for buying illegal drugs, both mephedrone and alpha-PVP are more expensive than MDMA. The potency of alpha-PVP, which makes it more cost-effective than mephedrone and cocaine, likely explains its popularity in a country where the minimum wage now amounts to only $7 a month.

In Poland, mephedrone has become a growing problem among young people, according to the number of patients admitted to Nowowiejski Hospital in Warsaw after a mephedrone binge, which rose steadily between 2010 and 2018. The 8kg seizure of mephedrone in Pozna last year and other recent seizures across the country indicate a strong market for the drug, which is probably the result of how easy it is to synthesize, said the Social Drug Policy Initiatives Jerzy Afanasjew.

On the Polish drug market, mephedrone is more of a brand than a specific substance, says Afanasjew. What survived the blanket ban on new psychoactive substances are mostly mephedrone analogues, like 4-CMC, but nobody really knows, because users simply refer to the new analogues as crystal. Nobody cares if it's mephedrone if it works like a speedy euphoric party drug.

Eastern Europes affair with cathinones is not all-encompassing. For example, drug prevalence data shows Czechs and Slovaks, who neighbor Poland to the north, have not taken to them. Up until recently, despite the rise of cathinones in Russia, Ukraine has resisted cathinones. However, experts in Ukraine said that mephedrone has seen a steady growth due to its low cost and strong euphoric effect, and word of mouth increases its popularity every month.

While the epicenter of global synthetic cathinone use appears to be on Europes eastern fringes, these drugs have also been taken up in other parts of the world. Synthetic cathinone abuse is the fastest-growing drug problem in the small east Asian country of Taiwan, according to the latest statistics from the countrys Food and Drug Administration.

Little is known on cathinone use in Taiwan, although most users are young men. The drugs have been linked to an alarming rise in fatal ODs. Mephedrone, produced in nearby China, is the most detected cathinone in Taiwan, followed by methylone, while new derivatives have recently been added to the controlled illicit substances list. Cathinones are sold online as cute products such as Rainbow Little Devil and Hello Kitty and often advertised as containing "organic ingredients." Police have seized the drugs packaged as coffee, candy, cookies or chocolate.

In 2012, mephedrone took off in India, where it was branded poor mans cocaine. At the same time, what were called loophole drugsa name for legal highs containing mainly synthetic cathinones and synthetic cannabinoidswere being widely distributed and abused in Japan. In both countries, these drugs were responsible for a high number of arrests and admissions into psychiatric hospitals. But since new legislation and heavy police crackdowns, cathinones are no longer so cheap and readily available. However, the quantity of mephedrone seized and reported by the Indian Narcotics Control Bureau in recent years, for example a 50g haul in Mumbai earlier this month, indicates that its still a common drug.

Synthetic cathinones are not just being used around the world to substitute recreational drugs, but as alternatives to heroin. Anya Sarang, President of the Andrey Rylkov Foundation for Health and Social Justice in Moscow, said alpha-PVP is popular among injecting users in Russia because it is more cost-effective than other drugs. In Russia, using alpha-PVP is not a matter of choice or personal preferences but rather a marker of poverty, she said.

A similar scenario has likely occurred in Georgia. Natia Natenadze, a Master of Addiction Studies, says web bought alpha-PVP is now more on the Georgian drug market than heroin.

In Poland, drug injectors are mainlining cathinones despite the blanket ban and crackdown on legal high shops. According to Bartosz Michalewski, who works with drug users on a daily basis at the Monar clinic in Krakow, "100 percent of them are shooting cathinones." He said they are usually people who are living on the streets who are injecting cathinones because heroin is harder to get hold of in the city.

In both Hungary and Romania, shortages in the availability of heroin in 2010 and 2011, along with the increased availability of cathinones sold as "legal highs" in headshops and online shops, meant that cathinones have now largely replaced traditional drugs among injecting users.

The switch to cheap cathinones was most notable within poor, segregated Roma communities in the two countries, where people are severely disadvantaged on every levelhousing, education, employment, and health. Cathinones like pentedrone (a more MDMA-like, liver-toxic drug than mephedrone) and lesser-known cathinone analogues are common here. They are often sold in branded packets, usually in combination with other drugs, yet few people know exactly what's in them, as the government rarely tests them.

Unlike heroin or amphetamines, whose effects are longer-lasting, users of cathinones need repeated hits, so often shoot up three to ten times per day. Alina Dumitriu, a drug outreach worker at ARAS (the Romanian Anti-AIDS Association) in Bucharest, Romania told VICE that the more chaotic use of cathinones have increased needle sharing, making users even more vulnerable to infections such as HIV, hepatitis and tuberculosis. In addition, the consequences of injecting cathinoneslike skin erosion and large holes at overused injecting sitespredisposes users to cellulitis and other potentially serious bacterial infections.

Harm reduction services in Hungary are also facing similar problems, which have been exacerbated by a lack of financial resources, according to Peter Sarosi, a human rights activist and drug policy expert. NGOs that provide harm reduction programs in some of the most impoverished parts of Budapest, which are home to many Roma people who live in deep poverty, have had funding and support from Hungarys right wing government cut to shreds. Since closing down the two largest harm reduction programs, thousands of high-risk drug users have become invisible to the treatment system, so it is impossible to keep track of infection rates such as an HIV outbreak.

Estimates of cathinone use across the world, especially in countries that do not routinely test seized drugs or new psychoactive substances, are highly likely to be the tip of the iceberg.

In many countries, data on synthetic cathinone use is either lacking or entirely absent. In addition, drug-detection dogs and routine urine drug screens do not detect synthetic cathinones, meaning the scale of their global use may be largely underestimated. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime have identified close to 170 synthetic cathinones on their drug markets since 2009. However, only a handful of these are well known.

The law, it seems, is being played for a fool. Strict narco-policy has not only failed to stem the flow of these drugs in Eastern Europe and Taiwan, it is the reason new and dangerous cathinones are being introduced on the black market. As most countries continue to wage a war on drugs, the question is not whether cathinones will continue to spread, but which ones, and where they will take hold.

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'Bath Salts' Feel Like a Drug From the PastBut They're Still Wreaking Havoc - Free

Common-sense approaches to drug and crime issues often fail to consider the history of policing, forgetting the hard lessons of the war on drugs namely the so-called iron law of prohibition, the idea that as criminalization of drug use ramps up, so does the strength and danger of drug use. Police-based solutions create a kind of arms race between the police and those who sell drugs, leading to increased militarization of both police and crime, as well as putting people who use drugs at risk by compromising the supply of drugs.

Communities should be building their capacity to take care of themselves without police involvement. There are countless opportunities represented by harm reduction strategies such as safe injection sites and serve the people initiatives like free-meal provision, mental-health supports and safe, accessible housing among others. Ultimately, the goal should be removing the conditions that create these issues namely poverty, an inevitable consequence of the settler-colonial capitalist system by implementing policy that works toward full employment, strengthening the social safety net and legalizing drugs.

After all, the drug and crime epidemic is not the product of people making morally poor decisions it is structural and should be approached as such. By beginning with an analysis of the issues that takes the socio-economic structures that produce such issues as its basis, we can move beyond the common-sense moralism the idea that the problem is people choosing to use drugs, or sell them, or participate in any other criminalized activity which only serves to create moral panic, villainizes people that use drugs and has historically proven ineffective in actually helping people.

As part of his anti-crime work with the community organization Point Powerline, Point Douglas community activist Sel Burrows has released part two of his three-part report on recommendations for improving safety in the downtown area. Part one which stressed disrupting criminality through the involvement of downtown residents was released in December, and part three is expected to be released in February.

Part two of the report makes several recommendations on preventing what Burrows refers to as criminal and anti-social behaviour. Many of the recommendations are geared toward building community involvement in enhancing safety downtown which in itself is unproblematic. Where problems begin to appear is in the nature of the involvement being put forward.

Underneath this series of seemingly common sense, easy to implement recommendations is an approach to drugs and safety that primarily benefits property owners who face declining property values from high rates of crime at the cost of people that use drugs and other groups of marginalized people who would likely face the negative impacts of increased policing. When approaching issues of safety, we need to centre on the fact that the police in Canada are a settler-colonial institution that functions to maintain structural oppression by force. The police are an instrument of social control above all else.

Recommendations such as setting up a tipline specifically for taxi drivers to inform police about potential crimes make sense, but only if you accept that policing, and ultimately the law, can be used toward ends that are beneficial to the community not just to property owners. The decades-long experience of the war on drugs has demonstrated that actions based on such assumptions only serve to make drug use more dangerous and increase the militarization of the police, making the city far more dangerous for the marginalized people who usually bear the brunt of police violence.

To be blunt, no property in owners or thieves hands is worth more than the lives of people who use drugs, nor the lives of the marginalized people that tend to live in areas hard-hit by crime. No progressive solution to the current drug and crime epidemic should involve the police, rather, we should be excluding them.

Further, according to a recent poll conducted by the Angus Reid Institute, trust in the criminal justice system in Manitoba is the lowest in the country.

If we want to help make our communities safer, we should start by listening to them to understand why this lack of trust exists, and proceed together from there instead of insisting on continued police involvement even as a last resort as Burrowss report does.

When approaching social issues like crime and drug use, its not enough to count on the systems that produced the issues to resolve them.

We need to go outside of established institutions and build our own working-class institutions. Building a larger police presence may achieve some extent of immediate results, but we need to ask questions about what this does on a structural level.

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Winnipeg's crime will not be solved by cop consultation - The Manitoban

Charlene Liberty, a woman with a history of childhood trauma and mental health diagnoses, has cycled in and out of Rhode Island Adult Corrections Institute (ACI) for several years. The Rhode Island Department of Corrections (RIDOC) has repeatedly subjected her to solitary confinement, a practice that consists of sensory deprivation, social isolation, and eating, sleeping, urinating and defecating in a concrete cell for 22 to 24 hours a day. During solitary recreation time in Rhode Island and many other states, people may spend an hour in outdoor cages that resemble oversized dog crates.

While held in solitary, Liberty ran her head into her cell door and dove off the cell sink attempting to injure herself. In response, guards pepper-sprayed her cell. When a medical staffer arrived, he was overcome with pepper spray and was forced to use a stronger mask to lessen its effects. The staffer noted in his records that Liberty was foaming at the mouth, had cyanosis (bluish discoloration) of the neck and face, and was twitching as if experiencing a seizure.

Liberty reportedly injured herself again seven days later and was sent to a hospital for intensive care. Once she was sent back to prison, a multidisciplinary team chose the treatment plan of restricting her movement with belly and leg chains, a restraint chair and monitoring by a guard with pepper spray. After threatening to hurt herself, guards pepper sprayed Liberty again, this time while her hands and feet were shackled. They punished her by putting her back into solitary confinement.

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Liberty is a plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit filed on October 25, 2019, by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Rhode Island, the ACLU National Prison Project and Disability Rights Rhode Island. The lawsuit alleges that the Rhode Island Department of Corrections is violating the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments, as well as the Americans with Disabilities Act based on the prolonged solitary confinement of people with mental health diagnoses for weeks, months and even years at a time. Even a few days in solitary confinement can cause irreversible brain damage.

Liberty wrote in a press conference statement, As a person with mental illness, I hate to see anyone treated the way I was treated aggressively thrown into segregation, stripped down, made to feel less than a person and placed in a cell with no one to talk to, waiting for them to tell you what you did and how many days or weeks you are going to be isolated, left alone with your thoughts and emotions making things all that much worse. She continued, There is nothing positive only feeling less than human, depressed, unworthy, seeing things on the wall, talking to yourself and wanting to kill yourself.

The Rhode Island-based lawsuit names six plaintiffs who were diagnosed with Serious and Persistent Mental Illness (SPMI) and subjected to harsh solitary confinement conditions. If the plaintiffs win the suit, people diagnosed with SPMI in Rhode Island will no longer be subjected to solitary confinement.

Solitary confinement, although normalized in the United States today, was controversial over a century ago. In 1849, a doctor wrote an essay warning of its harmful effects: any man excluded from all intercourse with his fellow-men, no attempt being made to call the powers of the mind into operation, the brain will fall into a state of atrophy, and great weakness of mind will result, as the natural physiological consequence. He continued, This position is undeniable. A New York State warden was highly critical of its use in the 1900s. Yet, solitary confinement, sometimes called segregated housing by prison authorities, became widespread in the 1980s and 90s when the war on drugs ravaged Black and Brown communities in the United States.

In 2011, a United Nations Special Rapporteur expert on torture parroted what activists and incarcerated people have been saying for decades: Segregation, isolation, separation, cellular, lockdown, Supermax, the hole, Secure Housing Unit whatever the name, solitary confinement should be banned by States as a punishment or extortion technique. The United States, however, keeps up to 100,000 people in solitary confinement, a figure that is greater than the entire prison populations of countries such as the U.K., France and Germany.

The tides may be turning. As public outrage grows, a number of presidential candidates have spoken out against the practice. Bernie Sanders tweeted: Solitary confinement is a form of torture. It is unconstitutional, plain and simple. We must end solitary confinement in America, and promises to abolish the practice in his Prisoners Bill of Rights platform. Elizabeth Warrens criminal justice proposal calls for the elimination of solitary confinement. Pete Buttigiegs website calls for a reduction on the over-reliance on the practice, and to limit its use to 15 days. Joe Biden calls for an end to solitary confinement. Yet his key role in the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, which contributed to an explosion in incarceration and solitary confinement, and a refusal to hold himself accountable, calls into question the sincerity of his proposal.

Disability justice for incarcerated people, however, has yet to receive adequate attention, even though people with disabilities represent the largest minority population in jails and prisons. They are disproportionality lower income, Black, Latinx, Indigenous, LGBTQ, or have some other identity marked by oppression.

On any given day, 15 to 20 percent of Rhode Islands prison population have been diagnosed with a SPMI. RIDOC reported to Disability Rights Rhode Island that over 100 people with what RIDOC calls Serious and Persistent Mental Illness (SPMI) were held in solitary confinement in Rhode Island from February 2018 until December 14, 2018. Self-reported Department of Corrections data, gathered by researchers with Yale Law School, estimates that on any given day, over 4,350 people with an SPMI are held in solitary confinement in the United States.

People with disabilities make up a disproportionate amount of the carceral system, and the system itself is legitimized by ableism. According to Talila Lewis, a disability justice attorney and volunteer director for Helping Educate to Advance the Rights of Deaf Communities (HEARD), ableism is a system that places value on peoples bodies and minds based on socially constructed ideas on normalcy, intelligence and excellence.

These constructed ideas are deeply rooted in eugenics, anti-Blackness, colonialism and capitalism, Lewis told Truthout. This form of systemic oppression leads to people in society determining who is valuable and worthy based on their appearance and their ability to satisfactorily produce, excel or behave. People who do not fit into these socially constructed ideals, then, are disproportionately disappeared.

Community health resources are rendered unnecessary in societies that operate under an ableist framework. Advocates describe the revolving door of people who cycle in and out of ACI, many who often experience homelessness. ACI is essentially the states largest mental hospital, says Steve Brown, executive director of the ACLU of Rhode Island.

Prisons were not meant to be dumping grounds for people with mental illness, but that is what they have become, Brown told Truthout. Prison officials dont have the resources, professional staff or appropriate system model to be serving that function. More resources need to be put into mental health resources at the community level.

Instead, law enforcement manages disabled people. Police have what Lewis calls a disability consciousness gap, which means they operate through indiscriminate power and control that fail to address unique needs people may have during interactions. Black, deaf individuals, for example, tend to use relatively larger signing language, a cultural difference police tend to find threatening, Lewis says. Police have beaten Black, deaf individuals for failing to comply with orders that they could not hear. A deaf individual could have no way of communicating throughout the legal process once a police officer arrests them. They may not know why they are detained and may not be able to access any medications that they need.

Disabled people are then disproportionately punished with solitary confinement. Plaintiff in the ACLU lawsuit, Ms. C, a 41-year-old woman diagnosed with anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder, arrived to ACI and was taken off her medication and was not scheduled to see a psychiatrist. Ms. C was disciplined with solitary confinement for filing daily medical slips and washing her hands too frequently.

Prisons and jails exacerbate disabilities and create new ones because of health care deprivation, poor nutrition and social isolation. Lewis has witnessed the physically toxic environment take a toll on incarcerated people too. A lot of the folks I work with are deaf people who went into jails and prisons without any other form of illnesses or disabilities and came out with diabetes, hepatitis C, HIV/AIDS, cancer, TBI, PTSD, addiction and more. Lewis said. These are people who were, relatively speaking, healthy and in just a few years sometimes months they became terribly ill or multiply disabled.

While lawsuits can improve peoples conditions in some cases, advocates should recognize the limitations of legal victories. These systems have figured out ways around federal disability rights laws and legal judgments, Lewis said. For example, due to a Supreme Court ruling in 1998, the Federal Bureau of Prisons is supposedly barred from placing people with disabilities into solitary confinement. But, Lewis explained, prison systems find ways to disappear disabilities, coerce people not to identify as disabled or make it dangerous for people to identify as disabled. For example, people with mental health diagnoses are sometimes taken off their medications for several months before being transferred to ADX Florence, a supermax prison composed of solitary cells. Once they are off their medications, they are no longer disabled in the system, according to Lewis.

Disability rights litigation, when not informed by disability justice, racial justice, and other social justice praxis, does not go far enough and can sometimes help buff[er] violent carceral ideologies and practices, Lewis said. For example, We would not want to sue simply to obtain accommodations while a person is in solitary confinement, Lewis added. We want to acknowledge that solitary confinement for everyone is torture, and that its horrific effects are even more acutely felt for particular people.

The legal system, then, shouldnt be the sole battleground in the fight against solitary confinement. People should also focus on disability justice, decarceration and prison abolition as solutions to this perennial struggle against the violence of carceral systems, Lewis says.

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Disabled People Are Tortured in Solitary Confinement, But Tides May Be Turning - Truthout

What Is the "War on Drugs?"

The "War on Drugs" is a general term used to refer to the federal government's attempts to end the import, manufacture, sale, and use of illegal drugs. It's a colloquial term that does not refer in any meaningful way to a specific policy or objective, but rather to a series of anti-drug initiatives that are vaguely directed towards the common goal of ending drug abuse.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower began what The New York Times then called "a new war on narcotic addiction at the local, national, and international level" with the establishment of an Interdepartmental Committee on Narcotics on November 27, 1954, which was responsible for coordinating executive branch anti-drug efforts. The phrase "War on Drugs" first came into common use after President Richard Nixon used it at a press conference on June 17, 1971, during which he described illegal drugs as "public enemy number one in the United States."

1914: The Harrison Narcotics Tax Act regulates the distribution of narcotics (heroin and other opiates). Federal law enforcement will later incorrectly classify cocaine, a central nervous system stimulant, as a "narcotic" and regulate it under the same legislation.1937: The Marijuana Tax Act extends federal restrictions to cover marijuana.1954: The Eisenhower administration takes a significant, albeit largely symbolic, step in establishing a U.S. Interdepartmental Committee on Narcotics.1970: The Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970 establishes federal anti-drug policy as we know it.

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 55% of federal prisoners and 21% of state-level prisoners are incarcerated on the basis of drug-related offenses. This means that over a half million people are presently incarcerated as a result of anti-drug lawsmore than the population of Wyoming. The illegal drug trade also sustains gang activity, and is indirectly responsible for an unknown number of homicides. (The FBI's Uniform Crime Reports describe 4% of homicides as being directly attributable to the illegal drug trade, but it plays an indirect role in a much larger percentage of homicides.)

According to the White House's National Drug Control Strategy Budgets, as cited in Action America's Drug War Cost Clock, the federal government alone is projected to spend over $22 billion on the War on Drugs in 2009. State spending totals are harder to isolate, but Action America cites a 1998 Columbia University study which found that states spent over $30 billion on drug law enforcement during that year.

The federal government's authority to prosecute drug-related offenses theoretically stems from Article I's Commerce Clause, which grants Congress the authority to "regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes"but federal law enforcement targets drug offenders even when the illegal substance is manufactured and distributed only within state lines.

According to an October 2008 Zogby poll of likely voters, 76% describe the War on Drugs as a failure. In 2009, the Obama administration announced that it would no longer use the phrase "War on Drugs" to refer to federal anti-drug efforts, the first administration in 40 years not to do so.

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Key Facts About the War on Drugs

In 1969, Richard M. Nixon declared that drugs were Americas number one enemy as his administration officially launched what would be known as the U.S. war on drugs.

As heroin use was on the rise, primarily among returning Vietnam War veterans, the Nixon administration focused most of its resources on that particular narcotic, especially to reduce crime linked to drug use. On the treatment side, Nixon created the first federal methadone program (see Treating Heroin Addiction), and dedicated 75% of the total drug budget to treatment and rehabilitation.

In 1970, the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970 was created and became the main legal foundation for drug regulation in the U.S. It consolidated all previous laws regulating the production and distribution of narcotics, stimulants, depressants, hallucinogens, and any other chemical substance considered to have a potential for abuse. To enforce the Act, a new agency was created in 1973, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), into which the former BNDD was merged.

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Nixon and the Start of The Drug War (1969-1974 ...

In 1974, Gerald Ford became president after some of the most difficult years in our countrys history.

In addition to Watergate and President Nixons resignation, the Vietnam War had divided the country for more than a decade. While millions of Americans served in Southeast Asia, many others protested the war at home some of them by evading the draft. Ford wanted to find a way to bring the country back together. Just a few weeks after he took office, he announced a plan to bind up the nations wounds.

For the young men convicted of draft evasion a felony during the Vietnam War, Ford promised, Im throwing the weight of my presidency into the scales of justice on the side of leniency.

Ford gave those young men an opportunity to apply to a Clemency Board, a small group appointed by the president who would decide whether to erase that felony from the mens records. Now, many of the Democratic candidates for president want to follow Fords model for a new group of people in federal prison: those convicted of nonviolent drug crimes.

In this episode, The Impact looks back on President Fords clemency plan through the lives of two men: one who fought in Vietnam and served on the Clemency Board, and one who evaded the draft. We explore how the Board transformed their lives and what it might mean for a new generation of young people behind bars.

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Subscribe to The Impact on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app to automatically get new episodes of the latest season each week.

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A plan to reverse the war on drugs, from the Vietnam War era - Vox.com

Should service members be issued a "War on Drugs" medal recognizing the role the U.S. military has played in combating global drug trafficking over past five decades? One petitioner believes they should.

The petition calls for the president of the United States, in this case, Donald Trump, to issue an executive order that establishes the "War on Drugs Service Medal" as a "total force" military award that recognizes all service members from 1971 to the present. The White House petition was created by Thomas Marriott, who dedicated the effort to his father, Lt. Col. John Thomas Marriott II, according to the campaign's website.

When asked how such an award would, or could be created, the Pentagon directed Task & Purpose to Volumes 1-4 of Department of Defense Manual 1348.33, writing that those hundred-plus pages have "the language."

However, the public affairs office did note that "most are established by Law and/or Executive Order," and that this specific petition "has not been discussed at the Pentagon."

So, that's something.

Marriott's petition, and the accompanying website, appear earnest, and the military has certainly played a significant role in taking on drug traffickers across the globe, from providing training and support to allied militaries, to drug interdiction operations like that time a Coastie showed off his brass balls by leaping atop a speeding narco-submarine in the middle of the ocean.

However, as much as we here at Task & Purpose love the idea of getting a new piece of chest candy, we're also growing a little tired of endless wars.

In light of that, we came up with a list of 11 other awards we'd like the Pentagon to consider making official, beginning with...

Operation Enduring Clusterfuck Campaign Medal: For all those who served in Iraq and Afghanistan in the early days who are now realizing that this shit is never going to actually end.

Belligerence In Uniform Award: Awarded to E-4s and below who spent four years or more getting chewed out for having 3+ inches of hair on their heads.

Valorous Hands-In-Pockets Medal: Given to those who in the face of overwhelming odds refused to remove their hands from their pockets while getting knife-handed by a squad-sized element of staff non-commissioned officers.

Twentynine Palms/Fort Irwin Service Ribbon: In recognition of the selfless sacrifice made by those poor souls who endured a non-deployable duty assignment to Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center Twentynine Palms, or Fort Irwin National Training Center, in California.

Intergalactic Defense Ribbon: Awarded to the first enlistees of the Space Force.

Knife Hand Action Badge: Awarded to non-commissioned officers who perfected the knife-hand when counseling junior soldiers.

Meritorious Barracks Legal Ribbon: Awarded to junior soldiers who display prominent legal knowledge without having any type of law degree.

Terminal Lance Corporal Achievement Award: Awarded to enlisted Marines upon second promotion to Lance Corporal following a loss of rank due to non-judicial punishment. Gold Oak Leaf clusters denote additional awards.

The Content Wars Award: Awarded to any and all former U.S. service members who record at least 10 video rants in the driver's seat of their truck within the first month of separation. Recipients are eligible for 'V' devices if the truck is moving.

National Military Base Housing Ribbon: Awarded to service members (and their families) who endured and survived asbestos, mold and faulty wiring while living on any military installation.

E-4 Mafia Unit Citation: Awarded to members of an Army battalion where 90% of specialists are absent from mandatory morning PT, working parties, and are a constant presence in the smoke pit.

See the rest here:

There's a petition calling for a 'War on Drugs' medal. Here are 11 other awards also worth considering - Task & Purpose

The former chief police enforcer of Philippine president Rodrigo Dutertes deadly war on drugs will be charged with corruption for allegedly protecting officers linked to the narcotics trade, the justice department has announced.

Oscar Albayalde resigned in October after serving as the Philippines police chief for more than a year, having presided over an anti-narcotics crackdown that left thousands of drug suspects dead.

The episode that led to his sudden fall from grace cast an unwelcome light on a drug war that is popular with Filipinos but has faced international criticism over allegations that police were summarily executing suspects.

The justice department said prosecutors found probable cause to charge Albayalde for not punishing officers accused of failing to account for 163kg of drugs and about US$517,000 seized from a drug raid.

A justice department statement said 13 other police officers would be charged with drug offences, corruption and taking bribes for their role in the operation in Pampanga province, north of Manila.

Albayalde has repeatedly denied having protected the officers or profiting from the seized drugs. In a statement he welcomed the case as an opportunity to clear his name: Finally, I will have my day in court.

The charge levelled against him carries a penalty of up to 10 years in prison.

The raid took place in November 2013 when Albayalde was Pampangas police chief.

Allegations of police graft and abuse are not rare in the Philippines. Duterte twice ordered police to stop the anti-narcotics campaign because of allegations of corruption and murder by officers.

In January police said they had killed 5,552 suspects in anti-drug operations since Duterte came to office in June 2016.

Human rights groups allege the real number is four times higher and say the killings are a crime against humanity. Prosecutors at the international criminal court have launched a preliminary probe of the campaign and the United Nations top rights body voted in favour of an in-depth review.

Although the drug war is overwhelmingly backed by Filipinos, critics say it targets the poor and leaves the rich and powerful untouched while reinforcing a culture of impunity.

Excerpt from:

Former Philippines police chief and drug war enforcer to be charged with corruption - The Guardian