Its finally Christmas, a time to be with your family and to also remember those family members and friends who no longer are with us, except within our hearts and minds. It is a time for children; a time for good tidings; and certainly a time to count your blessings. It is also a time to accept reality. Allow me to explain.

Every year I make it a point to watch the movie Its A Wonderful Life, which stars Jimmy Stewart as the small town guy who wishes he had never been born, attempts suicide, is miraculously saved by his Guardian Angel, and then shown by the Angel (Clarence) just how a whole towns people would have been affected had he indeed not been born. The ending of the 1946-produced movie in an imaginary town called Bedford Falls never fails to bring happy tears to my eyes.

Stewart stars as the character of George Bailey in a movie originally considered as a box-office disappointment, but now is considered one of the greatest films of all time. For me, the movie depicts the fact that one must always have family and friends who care about your well-being. Accordingly, Christmas is a time to care about others, especially children.

The awful reality is that statistics show that 60% of Logan Countys children are now being raised by grandparents. Mingo County is even worse, with statistics showing 70% of children there raised by their grandparents. Do I really need to tell you why?

Even more heartbreaking is the news the West Virginia Department of Education revealed a few months back that over 10,000 West Virginia children and youth from kindergarten through high school were identified as homeless for the 2018-2019 school year.

Currently, in Logan County and much of southern West Virginia, I feel like despite arrest after arrest by law enforcement we are losing the war on drugs. Illegal and legal drugs are the real reason for parents voluntarily giving up or losing their children. Overdose deaths, of course, havent helped matters either.

As a West Virginian, I despise the stereotypes that are directed at us. Even more so, I hate the fact that zillion dollar drug companies, too numerous to fully identify, as well as some pill mill doctors and some uncaring pharmacies, have literally destroyed communities in West Virginia and eastern Kentucky.

As an example, between 2006 and 2012, drug wholesale giant McKesson shipped 163 million opioid painkillers to West Virginia. During the same time period, Cardinal Health, another drug industry monster, sold 174 million doses of the pain killers hydrocodone and oxycodone.

As jail bills escalated and people began committing every crime imaginable to obtain a means of purchasing the addictive stuff both off the street and from pharmacies it still took thousands of people dying before officials started asking questions. Even then, it took a court order to get the drug companies to release their records. It was as if Hillbilly lives just didnt matter.

Fact is, West Virginia and Kentucky had the highest number of pills administered per resident and the highest number of overdose deaths during the six-year period Ive previously mentioned. Overall, it has earlier been reported that 76 billion hydrocodone and oxycodone pain pills were dispensed to pharmacies nationwide.

Currently, the drug distributors, doctors and pharmacies have pretty much ceased in the pill mill racket, but they are still to blame for our current drug epidemic that now entails the use of methamphetamine and heroin. It is easily surmised that the addiction problems started mainly with the pills, but now, with the addictive need being satisfied by mostly out-of-state individuals from Columbus, Ohio, Detroit, Michigan and other places, I believe our local society is worse off than before when pills were the curse.

Unfortunately, the Hillbilly Nation that exists at least in Logan County is again the easy target for those out-of-state crooks seeking financial gain. By this, I mean that across the county people, most of whom are barely making it in the economic sense, are allowing out-of-state drug dealers to live with them and dispense deadly drugs to the zombielike people who daily seek to unwisely destroy themselves. In return, utility bills, etc., are paid by the uncaring house guests. Local police have made several arrests in regards to this scenario.

I am concerned for the next generation in Logan County. Those millennials willing to work are vacating the area for occupations elsewhere, which means those survivors of the current drug epidemic, who cannot pass valid drug tests to hold even a minimum wage job, are going to eventually wade knee-deep into the economic cesspool that I fear Logan will become because of drug usage.

Logan Countians always come together at Christmastime with toy drives, food baskets, etc., to help those in need, with local fire departments and churches taking the lead. However, it is my fear that 20 years from now there may not be anybody left around here capable enough to carry through with such noble endeavors.

For centuries, our forefathers braved these untamed mountains, fought off Indians, bears and mountain lions to settle in land that others did not want. We have seen devastation from coal mining fatalities and weve cleaned up after every flood, including the deadly Buffalo Creek disaster. Now, its as if the rest of our nation has forgotten what key roles our people played in the making of this great country from coal miners to military contributions.

We are basically left alone to take back our county from the Devil himself.

Let us pray that at the conclusion of this great battle, we all can once again declare Its A Wonderful Life.

May we all enjoy a blessed and Merry Christmas as we prepare to usher in a New Year. Hopefully, 2020 will prove to be a visionary year.

Dwight Williamson serves as magistrate in Logan County. He writes a weekly column for HD Media.

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Dwight Williamson: Drug use proves devastating to region - The Logan Banner

If there's anyone who knows about the drug game, it's Ricky "Freeway" Ross. The former Los Angeles kingpin was sentenced to life in prison on charges related to cocaine drug trafficking but in 2009, he was released after his sentence was reduced. The 59-year-old business owner isnow making money legally, but Freeway Rick Ross is still aware of how drugs affect the culture. In a recent interview, Freeway talked about how the "War On Drugs" movement isn't as prevalent now and shared why marijuana isn't as much of a focus for authorities as cocaine.

"Cocaine is more money," Freeway said. "You're talking about bigger money, bigger deals, so where there's money, there's gon' be violence. People want the money. They don't necessarily want the cocaine, although some want the cocaine, some want the money. Anywhere there's a lot of money, there's gonna be violence, and there is some violence related to marijuana but not at the same intensity as the cocaine 'cause the money is not as great and the police don't put as much focus on marijuana as they do as cocaine."

When the subject of Juice WRLD's death came up in conversation, Freeway was asked if a rapper having 70 pounds of marijuana in his possession surprised him. "It do and it don't," Freeway replied. "Because I question these guys having money. A lot of these rappers we see and we look up to and these labels make 'em look rich because they want you to feel like they have money so that you'll think that they're something special. And then you find out that they're selling drugs on the side. The only reason I can see somebody selling drugs on the side of a career if they're notreally making money or if they just a damn fool. For somebody to have millions of dollars and start to sell drugs when they never sold drugs before to me would be totally insane." Check out his clip below.

Read more from the original source:

Freeway Rick Ross Isn't Surprised Juice WRLD Had 70 Pounds Of Weed - HNHH

On a recent rainy morning, Chesa Boudin woke up sick. It had been a busy few weeks for the man who upended San Franciscos political establishment by winning the race for district attorney in November. The 39-year-old attorney was on the kind of schedule that would threaten anyones immune system.

After nosing out Suzy Loftus in a close-fought race, Boudin was hounded by media requests, due in part to his remarkable life story.

Moreover, he had to mend fences with the mayor, the head of the police union and other high-ranking city officials who supported (sometimes vociferously) his opponent, Loftus, who in October had been appointed interim D.A. by Mayor London Breed, making her the incumbent in the race.

Boudin also had to start make staffing decisions for the D.A.s office, which employs more than 200 people, and plot out the first 100 days of his four-year term after he is sworn in on Jan. 8.

Oh, he also got married soon after being elected, to Valerie Block, a brain researcher at the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences.

If the New Yorker called for a profile, said Kelsey Russom, the manager of his transition team, wed have to say no.

Still, Boudin, who is proudly Jewish, took time to speak with J. by phone in mid-December, apologizing for his weak voice. An ardent criminal justice reformer, he spoke about the challenges facing his city, including homelessness and drug use, about Jewish values and about a commitment to human dignity that he says has guided his professional life.

Boudin is no stranger to the national spotlight. In 2002, the New York Times profiled the young Yale undergraduate underneath the headline From a Radical Background, a Rhodes Scholar Emerges.

The radical tag, however, isnt exactly his. It was Boudins parents, David Gilbert and Kathy Boudin, who were members of the militant, communist, anti-war group the Weather Underground in the 1970s and who paid a heavy price for their involvement.

In 1981, when Boudin was just 14 months old, his parents participated in an attempted robbery of a Brinks armored vehicle that led to a shootout near Nyack, New York. Three people died in the botched heist, including two police officers, and both his parents were sentenced to long prison terms.

The young Boudin, in turn, was adopted by Weather Underground leaders Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, who raised him in Chicago.

Kathy Boudin published academic papers while incarcerated and later became a professor at Columbia University, after her release in 2003. She is the co-director and co-founder of the schools Center for Justice.

Gilbert remains incarcerated at Wende Correctional Facility in upstate New York, having been sentenced to 75 years for three counts of felony murder.

Both Gilbert and Kathy Boudin are Jewish. He had a bar mitzvah as a youth in the Boston area, and though she had a more secular upbringing in New York City, her Jewish identity became stronger in prison.

Many of the people she lived with in prison were religious, Chesa Boudin said. They drew on their faith to persevere in the face of lengthy sentences.

Boudin recalled how a nun at the prison helped develop a center that facilitated visits between incarcerated mothers and their children. If it werent for Sister Elaine and the Childrens Center, I would not have a meaningful relationship with my mother, Boudin said.

Chesa Boudin went to the University of Chicago Lab School in Hyde Park, a day school populated by the children of university professors. His adoptive parents were, in fact, intellectuals university professors themselves. He often has said his experience provides a stark contrast to the estimated one in seven U.S. adults who have had an immediate family member behind bars for at least a year.

The experience of visiting a loved one behind bars is not unique, he said. Whats unique about my situation is because of the support, and second chances obviously, the choices I made, and hard work, too Im in a very different situation than most people experiencing family incarceration.

When you [take a kids] parents away at 14 months old [and] put them behind bars, you dramatically decrease the chances of that child ever becoming a Rhodes Scholar, or winning public office.

Boudin said his upbringing was secular, but his family often celebrated Passover and Hanukkah with the family of his adoptive mother, Bernardine; her father, Bernard Dohrn, was Jewish. And almost all of his close friends at the Lab School were Jewish, he said, leading to him attending a bar or bat mitzvah almost every weekend.

Judaism has been a constant theme in my life, he said, mentioning ancestors who fled from the fringes of the Russian Empire because of anti-Semitism and poverty. The fight for survival in the face of adversity has always been part of the tradition to remember the real challenges that the Jewish people had to survive.

People today find themselves in similar crises refugees and people less fortunate than us, who are lost in the desert, so to speak.

Boudin said Jewish values, broadly defined, are about a commitment to human dignity rooted in the history of the Jewish people, and in the interpretation of the Torah. He mentioned the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, when Abraham pleads with God to save a city of sinners, because, he paraphrased, What if there are righteous people there?

It has absolutely informed the way I see the world, he said.

Boudin is a public defender, not a prosecutor, who ran on a progressive platform backed by the likes of Sen. Bernie Sanders and the Black Lives Matter movement, and he was the only one among the four D.A. candidates who has never prosecuted a case.

We have to make it easier to get help than to get high.

His election reflected a growing frustration among voters with the U.S. criminal justice system, which locks up more people per capita than any other nation, and incarcerates African Americans at a rate 5.9 times greater than whites.

Hes part of a national trend of young, progressive candidates seeking, and sometimes winning, prosecutor offices, such as Larry Krasner (Philadelphia D.A.), Kim Foxx (states attorney for Cook County, Illinois) and Tiffany Cabn (who lost the Democratic primary for D.A. in Queens County, New York, but not before gaining national notoriety and the support of Sanders, Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

During his campaign, Boudins pledges included: tackling racial inequalities in the citys criminal justice system, in which more than 40 percent of people arrested are black; ending a cash-bail system that he says unfairly penalizes the poor; and halting the prosecution of quality of life crimes which he says jam up the system and only criminalize poverty and homelessness.

While Boudin has become a champion for progressives, some people wonder whether his vision for San Francisco will help or hurt.

To many, San Francisco is beset by drug addiction, homelessness and high rates of property crime, as its economic inequality is among the worst of any city in the world.

In response to an ACLU questionnaire, Boudin said he would not prosecute crimes such as public camping, offering or soliciting sex, public urination or blocking a sidewalk responses that raised eyebrows and garnered widespread media attention.

Its hard to believe that San Franciscos leaders could make the city any worse, Fox News Tucker Carlson said. But this guys certainly going to try.

Even the San Francisco Police Officers Association called him the No. 1 choice of criminals and gang members in some of the $400,000 they spent on campaign ads against him. The SFPOA said he would do away with gang enhancements, which increase penalties for crimes committed by alleged gang members; Boudin has said gang enhancements often are racially unjust and racist.

In the cases where we see serious conduct, we can already impose serious punishments, he said.

After the election, Boudin said he sat down for a cordial lunch with the chief of police and the sheriff. He also met with Mayor Breed, who was among the many influential supporters of Loftus (a list that also included Gov. Gavin Newsom, Senators Kamala Harris and Dianne Feinstein and the S.F. Democratic Party).

The common theme of those meetings?

Everybody recognizes this city needs a district attorneys office thats functioning, Boudin said. From that perspective, they want to see me succeed. At the end of the day, we want the same things a safer, fairer San Francisco.

Speaking about highly visible drug use, homelessness and other problems in downtown San Francisco, Boudin said he shares the frustration, shares the despair.

People who visit the city who live in the city see abject poverty, desperation, addiction and mental illness being untreated, he said. I share the need to address that problem.

In San Francisco, it is not uncommon to see people using heroin or meth in the Tenderloin, but in California, possession of drugs for personal use is a misdemeanor that often goes unprosecuted. Boudin said he does not think putting drug addicts in jail is an effective use of resources, nor is it an effective response to drug addiction.

I think there is ample, empirical evidence that the war on drugs has not succeeded by any reasonable metric, he said. It has not decreased addiction [or] access to drugs, and its been costly financially and socially. A study released in September by the D.A.s office showed nearly half of people convicted of crimes in San Francisco were arrested again within three years.

During his campaign, Boudin pledged to expand diversion programs for the mentally ill and drug-addicted to keep them out of the criminal justice system, which appears to many an inadequate response to problems of human despair. Of the four D.A. candidates, he was the only one who did not want more funding for the D.A.s office.

If he can win support from the S.F. Board of Supervisors and other officials, he hopes to build a centralized mental-health facility run by health professionals, rather than law enforcement, and shut down county jail No. 4, which is said to be seismically unsafe, redirecting funds to mental health and drug treatment.

Jails do nothing to treat the root cause of crime, he wrote in a campaign platform description. Rather, jails often victimize and destabilize an already vulnerable population, who are then released to the streets with no treatment plan or housing, often leading to more crime.

In San Francisco, he said, We have to make it easier to get help than to get high.

Boudin told J. that on Passover he often visited his mother at her maximum-security prison. There werent many Jews inside, but there were enough to merit a seder led by a local rabbi. It was one of the only times, Boudin recalled, he was allowed to visit his mother outside of visiting hours.

He vividly remembers searching for the afikomen in the visiting room, an experience he called profound.

The relevance of the Exodus story to his lifes work is not lost on him, and after being elected, he gained even more understanding of that story.

I see it as [being] about a search for redemption, he said. As a public defender, my focus was on saving people from prison. But as district attorney-elect, I take a broader view. Its about public safety, redemption and healing.

Original post:

Chesa Boudin, San Francisco's DA-elect talks homelessness, Jewishness and taking on the establishment - The Jewish News of Northern California

McKayla Wilkes, a 29-year-old college student and activist running a grassroots campaign to unseat 20-term incumbent Rep. Steny Hoyer, the No. 2 Democrat in the House of Representatives, is fighting a battle against very long odds. Consider her first major endorsement in the 2020 race, fromformer Democratic Sen. Mike Gravel of Alaska.

Gravel, the anti-war two-term senator who ran a decidedly unconventional social-media campaign for the 2020 presidential election cycle but has since withdrawn and endorsed Bernie Sanders told Salon exclusively why he has endorsed the political newcomer.

"I am delighted to endorse McKayla Wilkes for Maryland's 5th congressional district. Her views and voice will make a much needed contribution in Congress," Gravel said. "My hope is that her success will follow the model of AOC," referring to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.

Wilkes, a single mother of two, told Salon that she is hoping to replicate the unlikely 2018 primary victory of Ocasio-Cortez, who became the youngest woman ever elected to Congress after defeating 10-term incumbent Rep. Joe Crowley, a member of the Democratic House leadership. Ocasio-Cortez has become the nation's second-most talked about politician (after President Trump) and a public face of the deepening ideological divide within the Democratic Party.

"Running for office seems so intimidating," Wilkes told Salon. "People stress that you have to be politically connected, you have to have some sort of network, higher education and work in politics. So for years, I thought, 'Well, if I want to run for office, I need to go to college. I need to get my bachelors degree. I need to get my masters. I need to work in politics, andthenI'll run for office.'"

"But in 2018, when I saw AOC win her race, I thought, 'Wow, regular people who have never been in politics can run for office and they can win.' That is just what inspired me to think, you know what? I don't have to wait. I don't need all of these things. My experience is my first-hand experience with the way that legislation affects us," she continued.

Wilkes, who declared her candidacy in February and kicked off her official campaign in June,has a lot in common with the New York Democrat. She is also a young woman of color trying to unseat an older white man who is an entrenched power in Congress. (Hoyer is 80 years old, and was first elected to Congress in 1981.) Her platform emphasizes Medicare for All and the Green New Deal two progressive policy proposals that Ocasio-Cortez has rallied behind, and that Hoyer has notably declined to support.

Hoyer has represented Maryland's 5th district, a safe Democratic seat that comprises the suburban and rural region southeast of Washington, D.C., for more than three decades. Wilkes told Salon that she believes Hoyer has become "completely disconnected" from the people he represents. She claimed the congressman has struggled to keep up with the demographic and cultural changes in his district, and has done nothing to address the crisis of affordable housing and homelessness sparked by a growing population and intense gentrification.

Wilkes is not the first Democrat to challenge Hoyer from the left. He has faced primary challenges before and vanquished them all easily. Wilkes is aware he won't be easy to defeat, but says her personal experiencewith core issues like health care and criminal justice, will help her stand out to voters.

Wilkes is a unique candidate in one important respect: She speaks openly and passionately abouther criminal record, a factor she addresseddirectly in a campaign ad.

"When I was 15 I was placed in juvenile detention facilities for running away from home,"Wilkes says in a campaign video shared to Twitter. "There was even one instance where a guard threatened to hold me down and cut my braids out if I didn't cut them out myself. I was even jailed for driving on a suspended license. I was seven months pregnant, living paycheck to paycheck. I couldn't afford to pay all of my tickets and court fees, and I had no choice but to drive or I would lose my job."

Wilkes argues in the ad that "we need a system that offers rehabilitation, instead of exploitation." She says she supports ending cash bail and ending the "failed war on drugs," and making sure that pregnant women are treated fairly in prison.

"Our representation is so out of touch with the people's needs. Even worse, they're funded by those who profit off our most vulnerable," she says in the video.

Wilkes isn't Hoyer's onlychallenger in the race. Civil rights lawyer and former teacher Brianna Urbina launched her own campaign earlier this year and is running on a similar platform, citing affordable housing, Medicare for All, the Green New Deal and criminal justice reform as top priorities. Like Wilkes, Urbina is a young, progressive woman of color she identifies herself as an "Afro-Latina, lesbian woman" who is calling for a generational change in the district's leadership.

It seems plausible that only one of these challengers will prove viable, Wilkes has locked down several important endorsements, including those of the progressive group Brand New Congress, which previously fueled Ocasio-Cortez's campaign; the Metro D.C. chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America; and youngPAC, which recruits and support young, diverse progressives to run for office. College Democrats from Salisbury State and Frostburg State, two public universities in the state but not in the 5th district, along with Women for Justice and the climate action group 350 Action, have also backed Wilkes.

Despite her growing slate of endorsements, Wilkes' effort to replicate Ocasio-Cortez's victory will likely be challenging. New York's 14th district has a large majority of people of color and many immigrants; only about one-fifth of its residents are white. Maryland's 5th district, on the other hand, remains majority white and relatively affluent, although it is now close to one-third black. If Wilkes has any realistic shot, it's because 2020 is a presidential election year, which ought to mean a large turnout of younger, more diverse voters invested in the Democratic primary.

Maryland voters, Wilkes said, will be offered a choice between the transactional politics of the past and a more passionate vision aimed at the future. They have the chance to elect someone "who is going to represent their interests," she said, and who believes that "politics are absolutely personal politics should not be run as a business."

Read more here:

Meet the young progressive trying to take out House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer - Salon

CHICAGO As Chicago gears up for the sale of recreational marijuana Jan. 1, rapper Vic Mensa wants to see legal weed be more than just an opportunity for lawmakers to balance the budget.

Mensa sees it as a chance for elected officials to right the wrongs the war on drugs has had on black and brown lives across Chicago and Illinois. But for that to happen, black and brown people need to be at the table, not just as employees but as entrepreneurs learning the skills to eventually open their own dispensaries.

Thats why hes partnering with his friend, poet and activist Malcolm London, to open a dispensary and cultivation facility near Bronzeville or Hyde Park.

As part of the plan, Mensa, a Hyde Park native, and London want to bring a dispensary with a greenhouse facility to the area as a way to teach neighbors how to start their own weed business.

RELATED: Weed Will Be Sold In Chicago Jan. 1 As Black Caucus Attempt To Stall Pot Sales Fails

Our goal is to break into the industry and use that to bring people along with us by passing along the skill set to people in the community to build their own businesses, Mensa said.

Beyond the cultivation of cannabis, Mensa wants the site to serve as an indoor urban garden where kids can learn to grow produce that will be sold at farmers markets. Mensa, whose nonprofit Save Money Save Life works to address gun violence and other issues in underserved communities, hopes teaching children to plant, cultivate and harvest food will improve access to fresh foods on the South and West sides.

We all know the impact that the war on drugs and the criminalization of marijuana has had on our black and brown communities on the South Side and West Side, Mensa said. Ive had countless friends and family members ensnared in a cycle of litigation, probation, incarceration and parole that oftentimes started with a weed charge and developed into a monkey on their back that has followed them around for the rest of their life.

With this, we aim to integrate the community in a way where we are teaching cultivation skills, urban farming to kids and up cycling into teaching adults how to run their own growth.

London said they want to provide entrepreneurial guidance to people who have been incarcerated because of marijuana convictions.

We want to work with and work for those who are directly impacted, London said. We want to provide tangible skills, a pathway of economic development, financial literacy and teach folks how to be viable in this business.

As public opinion and laws shift around cannabis, Mensa said its imperative that young black people be part of the process.

You look at the industry nationwide, it is largely devoid of the people who have suffered the most from the criminalization of this plant, he said.

Now that theres a change, Mensa said the state has an opportunity to fulfill its promise on the social-equity component of the new law.

Mensa said that while immediate license holders for recreational marijuana are white, he is hopeful the state will make good on the promises and have a truly inclusive process that includes the black community in the next round of licenses.

Mensa and London arent the only ones concerned about a lack of diversity in weed ownership.

Earlier this month, the Aldermanic Black Caucus pushed to delay recreational sales until July 1 because of a lack of minority representation in the lottery system that saw all white owners selected. Despite their efforts, that move ultimately failed in a heated City Council meeting last week.

And Ald. Walter Burnett Jr. (27th) has said he wont approve any dispensaries in his ward unless license holders have a minority partner.

London said he was proud of the Black Caucus for taking a stand.

The Black Caucus concern is the same concerns that I have, London said. Historically, when there is an incredible opportunity, there is never equal access. And so for an industry that has this much potential you get skeptical of who has the power to do and be successful.

Im proud of any politician trying to make sure [this] does what it is intended to do, which is to serve the black and brown folks from disadvantaged communities.

Despite the current situation, London is hopeful black and brown people will have a genuine, equal opportunity in securing a licensestatewide.

Mensas first goal is to bring the greenhouse, urban farming and entrepreneurial education component to the South Side and is preparing to apply for a license now. Longterm, he aims to expand this model to other locations in the state and nation to empower black and brown people disenfranchised by the criminalization of marijuana.

In May 2020, the state will issue 75 dispensary licenses to new applicants, including social-equity applicants.

Above all, I want to see black people be given a real shot and have a real opportunity to build something from the trauma that weve experienced surrounding marijuana, Mensa said.

We are just young artists trying to make a change in the world, specifically at this moment, make a change in this industry, he said. The goal is to teach people how to fish.

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Rapper Vic Mensa Wants To Open Cannabis Dispensary, Cultivation Facility Focused On Equity In Bronzeville Or Hyde Park - Block Club Chicago

Your boomer relatives may be more chill than you think.

Recreational marijuana is legal in 11 states, and medically legal in 33. This month, Michigan opened its first legal dispensaries, and Illinois is set to do the same in January.

As weed becomes less taboo, older Americans who grew up in an era of cannabis prohibition are showing more interest in using it; a 2018 study in the Drug and Alcohol Dependence Journal found that since 2006, the number of baby boomers who have used marijuana doubled. In 2015, the Pew Research Center reported that 38 percent percent of Republican boomers and 66 percent of Democrat boomers support weed legalization. Another Pew Research Center poll taken this year saw that number jump 49 percent of Republican boomers and 81 percent of Democrat boomers now favor legalization.

But even if generational approval is on the rise, there's still stigma associated with cannabis use. Boomers support for legalized weed peaked in the 1970s, the Pew Research Center noted in its 2015 report, but took a nosedive when the federally-led "War On Drugs" ramped up in the '80s. Decades of anti-weed public service announcements only contributed to the stigma.

Which is why your relatives or any older person in your life might be interested in trying cannabis products, but need a well-informed Youth to encourage them to do so. Here's how to introduce them to the good kush. They'll probably dank thank you for it.

In addition to having a good time, weed is clinically proven to have medical benefits. If your relatives complain about an ailment they're dealing with, bring up the clinically proven ways marijuana has been used to treat a variety of issues.

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine searched through more than 10,000 studies published since 1999 for a more conclusive list of what cannabis can and can't treat. The 2017 review found "substantial evidence" that weed is effective in alleviating chronic pain, and "conclusive evidence" that it can help treat chemotherapy-related nausea and vomiting. It also found "moderate evidence" that weed was helpful for improving "short-term sleep outcomes" in people dealing with sleep apnea, fibromyalgia, chronic pain, and multiple sclerosis.

That being said, many claims about the benefits of marijuana for people who don't have the issues listed above are largely anecdotal. All the more reason to get your parents to try it for themselves!

Weed has been lambasted as a "gateway drug" for generations. The National Institute on Drug Abuse suggests that getting cozy with Mary Jane is "likely to precede use of other licit and illicit substances" and lead to the "development of addiction to other substances."

The review from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine found "limited" to "moderate" evidence of a correlation between marijuana use and use of other drugs. But like Vox notes, correlation doesn't mean causation. Weed also tends to be cheaper and more accessible than harder drugs, which is why people prone to drug use might start with it.

Despite Joe Biden's claims that toking leads to use of harder drugs, the National Drug Institute on Drug Abuse does acknowledge that most people who smoke weed "do not go on to use other 'harder' substances."

Hitting a gravity bong probably won't end well for a first-time weed user. To gradually introduce someone to the joys of toking, start with more gentle products.

Starting with a balanced ratio of THC to CBD may increase the chances of a better high. For some, the effects of THC, the component in weed responsible for the signature "high" feeling, can be overwhelming on its own. CBD, a non-psychoactive component found in cannabis, may help minimize paranoia and anxiety that come with highs. In a 2012 study in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, participants who were given a dose of CBD before they were administered a dose of pure THC experienced less cognitive impairment and paranoia than participants who were given just THC. To ward off weed freak outs, try looking for products that incorporate both THC and CBD.

Ratio-wise, it's always smarter to start small and work your way up. Rather than convincing your uncle to hotbox your childhood bedroom with an absurdly high-THC vape pen, ease him into it with a 1:1 or 2:1 product.

Trying weed may also be more appealing with the right delivery method. A sleek all-in-one vape is less intimidating than a complicated dab rig.

You may also have luck getting your relatives to try weed if you cater to a specific need. Some brands incorporate specific terpenes and THC to CBD ratios to achieve different targets, like pain relief or sleep.

Granted, vaping also poses a risk. An investigation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention concluded that the respiratory issues and deaths from the ongoing vape crisis stemmed from Vitamin E oil, a cutting agent used in black market vape cartridges to cheapen the product without thinning it. If you do start your family members on vaping, make sure to avoid anything bought off the street and only buy from licensed dispensaries. A number of cannabis companies have assured customers that their products do not contain Vitamin E oil.

Luckily, if you don't want to risk it, you can try a few other delivery methods.

If inhaling makes your relatives nervous, you can also start them on tinctures.

Dropped and absorbed under the tongue, tinctures tend to be easier to achieve specific doses than vapes. Because it's directly absorbed into the bloodstream, the cannabis potency does't change by being processed through the digestive system and liver. And unlike edibles, which do go through the gut and liver, the THC in tinctures won't be metabolized into a more potent molecule that can make feeling high more unpleasant.

Most tinctures come with droppers so users can take a precise dose. Your boomer relatives might be more comfortable trying cannabis if they feel like they're in control of how much they're consuming.

Many weed-infused chocolates and gummies come pre-measured with 5 to 10 mg of THC which is considered by many states to be a single dose. If your boomer family members do choose to try edibles, remind them to wait for the first dose to kick in before snacking on a second. This can take hours and isn't the same for everyone.

Taking an edible may feel more natural than vaping or taking tinctures. Your homemade space cakes will probably be too intense for a first-timer, but the dosed edibles sold in dispensaries all over the country are carefully regulated.

Getting baked should feel like a good time.

Everyone remembers their first bad high, and experiencing one can turn someone off from the joys of weed forever. Marijuana won't send users into Reefer Madness-like mania, but it can make them feel paranoid and anxious. Reduce the risk by making sure everyone's comfortable, stocking up on snacks, and queueing up a fun stoner movie.

Just like with consuming alcohol, make sure nobody's planning to drive home until they're 100 percent sober. Avoid mixing weed with any other substances.

And of course, don't pressure anyone into trying it or get someone high without their consent.

It's only a matter of time before it's socially acceptable to light up a joint at family gatherings the way we down beers and pop champagne. If your older family members are really resistant to trying it, you can always take a classic walk with the cousins and try again next year.

The information contained in this article is not a substitute for, or alternative to informationfrom a healthcare practitioner. Please consult a healthcare professional before using any productand check your local laws before making any purchasing decisions.

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Here's how to introduce the boomer in your life to weed - Mashable

(Picture caption: John Flora at a recent ADOS meeting.)

Those not home for holidays:

Flora supports victims of the justice system and their families

Whatever the holiday you celebrate this time of year, what we all look forward to is spending time with our loved ones. Our bonds are strengthened by our customs and traditions that make up our family. We enjoy the togetherness. We enjoy one another.

With such a happy time upon us, there is an epidemic wrecking havoc on families this holiday season.The racial disparity among black and white prisoners in this state is the highest in the nation. This means a lot of empty chairs at tables. The American Descendants of Slavery (ADOS), in theirBlack Agenda, describe mass incarceration as the new Jim Crow facing black men, specifically ADOS men in the United States.

Luckily in our state, we have a leader willing to tackle subjects such as these, said NJ Democratic Primary Congressional Candidate John Flora, (NJ-10) referring toGovernor Phil Murphys latest push to restore voting rights to those on probation and parole. Why not treat these men and women with decency and respect?

Dignity and respect are things that John Flora has found rarely gathering focus in our nation today, especially to those incarcerated in prison.A recent article cited millionaire Mike Bloomberg is currently using prison labor to support his run for US President in 2020.

We owe this group who have been harshly punished for crimes that would garner a lesser penalty had the accused been white, explained Flora, We shouldnt be looking at prisoners as a cheap labor force but as an opportunity to create self-improvement through education and apprentice work programs. We should also be looking at why they are there.

John Flora stands with Bernie Sanders when it comes to thelegalization of marijuana. Along with full legalization within the first 100 days of office, Flora wants to see the vacation and expungement of all past marijuana-related convictions for all. He also feels that the revenue obtained from legal marijuana is reinvested in communities that were damaged by the War on Drugs.

We need to rebuild families in this state and in this country, said Flora a teacher and married father of two, Especially during the holidays, we see the importance of family and having everyone together. Everyone should be able to have peace on earth and good will.

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John Flora supports victims of the justice system and their families - InsiderNJ

Spending time with the union members of Chapare, who run society in a collective fashion, offers special insights into the resistance to the coup. They succeeded in expelling the police, but now fear a bloodbath in retaliation.By Ollie Vargas

Cochabamba, Bolivia Known as Bolivias Chapare region, the Tropico of Cochabamba is a sanctuary for elected President Evo Morales most dedicated base of support. Since the November 10 coup, it has effectively become a self-governing territory where the military junta is absent.

The police and military were sent in full retreat from this area the coup began and were told they would only be welcomed back if the they get on their knees and apologize to the community.

In this 12,000 square kilometer swath of land, hundreds of unions have flourished over the years. I spent several days with the union rank and file, witnessing how they run society in a collective fashion, and how they have organized ferocious resistance to a right-wing coup government that threatens to destroy them.

Despite the resilience on display here, there is also a sense of dread. Union leaders told me that if the state decides to militarize the region, as it has threatened, a bloodbath is practically inevitable. If the violent crackdown arrives, it could unravel a social structure they have been steadily constructing for decades.

Chapare has always had a high degree of self-governance, owing to the needs of the community. When the neoliberal Bolivian governments of the 1980s closed down a large number of state mines in Potosi and Oruro, many rural workers relocalized to this tropical region to grow coca and other crops.

The presence of former mine workers, who were part of the revolutionary struggles of Bolivias miners union, infused the indigenous campesino communities with a radical proletarian tradition.

Relocalization was far from a smooth process, however. The US was stepping up its so-called war on drugs at the time, using it as a pretext to intervene militarily in Latin America. The DEA teamed up with the Bolivian military to declare war on the campesinos, and attempt to eradicate coca.

The commanders in that effort were DEA agents; Bolivian troops served as foot soldiers at their disposal. The DEA was given so much power it could determine who could enter and exit the area.

It was during the struggles against the presence of the US that Evo Morales rose to the top of the union structures in Chapare. And in facing down the DEA and the Bolivian military, an extraordinary level of organization was developed.

Today, there are six union federations in the region, and within each federation there are numerous centrals, ranging from a few up to 30. Within each central there are then several unions, up to 10, depending on the size of the community. And each union has anywhere from roughly 100 to 200 members.

The unions are based geographically, so each small neighborhood is a union. Entire families are incorporated into unions based on their parcel of land that is affiliated. The total number of unions in Chapare is in the hundreds, although it is hard to give a specific figure because the number and size vary greatly based on the location.

Due to the weak presence of the state, the unions organize most aspects of daily life in the area. They establish plans for infrastructure projects, manage land and social disputes in the community, set up local media outlets, and, of course, organize the campesinos political activities.

In 2006, then-President Evo Morales initiated a sweeping land reform effort, bringing large territories into the hands of workers, and freeing union members from exploitative relationships with their former landlords.

The unions wont give up these victories easily.

Since the coup, that union-based resistance of Chapare has taken on the role of policing.

On November 10, as it became clear that the coup had overwhelmed Evos elected government, the police preemptively fled the area, escaping to the nearby city of Cochabamba.

Coup officials knew that social organization was so solid in Chapare that they would never be able to contain the resistance. And they were right. After the coup took hold, almost every police station in the region came under attack from the local population.

Israel, a local journalist at a union-run station called Radio Kawsachun Coca, explained, The people were so enraged, no one could stop them.

Israel was echoed shortly after by Senobio Carlos, the mayor of Puerto Villaroel. We never told the police and military to leave; they fled, Carlos said. In fact, there was one military base where soldiers hadnt managed to leave before protesters had blocked off all exits. I personally went there and told them that I would guarantee their safety if they join the community and dont turn their guns on us.

Carlos said he was branded a traitor by his own community for attempting to negotiate with the soldiers, who were whimpering for mercy. Since then, the communitys position has hardened. Union leaders now say that the police are entirely unnecessary, and can only return if they get on their knees and ask for forgiveness.

With the coups security forces expelled from the area, the workers established what they call the union police, under the command of the community. I met them while they were standing guard at a union meeting, and found them without any weapons, other than a few sticks. They were drawn from and fully accountable to the community.

Everyone I spoke to in the Chapare appeared content without the states police in the area. One council member, Limbert, from the local town of Ivirgarzama, said, Were even safer now without the police. They used to charge truck drivers illegal tolls; theyd ambush people who were walking home at night and steal their phones. Now we dont have that; anyone can walk around safely in the Tropic.

Still, a few military bases have remained intact in the region. Inside, local teenagers are performing their military service.

As the coup unfolded, a local journalist named Sabina recounted, the parents of those young men surrounded the military base and pleaded with their children not to side with the coup.

Since then, troops have been active, but agreed to only stay within their base. All other military units have fled.

Though the police havent been able to re-enter the region, the coup government has tried to punish the residents of Chapare for expelling it. The junta has cut off all services to the public bank, Banco Union, which across most of this region is the only national bank with ATMs.

Whats more, the coup regimes interior minister, Arturo Murillo, has threatened to deny all of Chapare the right to vote in any upcoming elections unless its residents allow the police to reenter.

The police loyal to Murillo, whose nickname is El Bolas (meaning the one with balls, in reference to his macho posturing and violent attitude), have announced that they are preparing to enter, jointly with the armed forces, into the Tropic of Cochabamba, in order to establish the rule of law in this area. They have not yet explained exactly how they would do so, but the only possible way would be by military invasion and occupation.

The police cant come back, people wont accept it, said Segundina Orellana. When I asked her what could be done to combat a potential invasion, she said that the region would rise up, and hoped that it would push the rest of the country to do so as well.

It is not hard to see why the community wont countenance the return of the police. On November 15, union members from this region were marching towards the city of Cochabamba, and were shot at by officers, some from helicopters. Nine were killed that day, in what is now known as the Sacaba massacre.

Chapare is one of the most demonized regions of the country. Mainstream Bolivian media outlets routinely portray its population as a collection of narco-terrorists, pumping out evidence-free claims, like the myth that Colombian militants fromFARC are controlling protests.

The reality is entirely the opposite, as the production of coca has actually beenreduced under Evos rule, while it has skyrocketed in US-allied countries like Peru and Colombia.

Bolivias unions themselves play a role in ensuring that production is controlled and destined for traditional use. In fact, most so-called cocaleros (coca farmers) also produce fruits, rice, cheese, and other agricultural products.

Their community benefited from the flood of public infrastructure projects and investments in public services under Evo Morales. But that is all gone now. Yet they are still here, as determined as ever in their commitment to the elected presidents party Movement Toward Socialism (MAS).

While opposition media outlets and Western-backed pro-regime change NGOs claim residents here are acting under obligation from union leaders, the reality is quite the opposite. In fact, the members are usually more radical than their bosses.

I went to numerous union meetings with a federation leader named Julian Cruz, and watched as he was forced by his rank-and-file to explain why he was not a traitor for negotiating a peace deal with the coup regime.

The participatory nature of this movement is remarkable. Julian explained to me how he has to attend every single meeting of every union central within his federation, and that if he doesnt, union members members will take him out to the jungle and tie me to a tree for 24 hours as a punishment for lack of transparency.

Not many unions in the United States or North America as a whole can count on that level of grassroots engagement.

Watching the medias campaign against the campesinos from Chapare, it feels like the demonization is a prelude to bloodshed.

Media reporting of the Sacaba massacre was instructive, as the national press falsely framed the killing as a case of crossfire. Coup supporters point to this one-sided coverage as proof that it was not a slaughter, but rather an armed clash with narco-terrorist cocaleros.

The lack of evidence that the protesters were unarmed, and that not a single police officer died, is of little consequence to a media dead-set on waging an information war.

The media say were armed terrorists, but in reality we havent got anything to defend ourselves with if the military does attack, explained a young campesino named Eleuterio Zurita, who has offered protection for journalists. The point of an attack would be to break the union organization weve got here, so I hope the world can support us and show the truth.

The self-governing nature of Chapare has arisen out of the practical need for sustenance and self-defense, not a devotion to anarchistic ideology. All the unions here are currently holding emergency meetings, not to discuss the administration of local affairs, but to lay out a strategy about how to confront the coup nationally, and thereby take back state power.

At every meeting I have attended, union members have passed a resolution committing to contributing grassroots donations to the MAS campaign, not to be used here, but instead by MAS chapters in other parts of the country where the party is not as strong.

This is how MAS has thrived since its earliest days. So it would be difficult to imagine the party putting forward a ticket without a representative of this organizing tradition.

The coming days and weeks will determine whether this radical space of resistance will be drowned in blood by the Bolivian junta. If it survives, it will be the base from which the left resurrects its national project.

Editors note: This article was updated after publication to better explain the complex union structure in Chapare.

Ollie Vargas is a Bolivian journalist and writer. He has contributed to teleSUR, Morning Star, and other media outlets.

Read more:

Bolivias free territory of Chapare has ousted the coup regime and is bracing for a bloody re-invasion - The Grayzone

KEY POINTS

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte emphatically expressed his willingness to accept persecuted Rohingya Muslims into the Philippines to begin their lives anew. He also pressed upon Malaysia and Indonesia whose populace is largely Muslim to do the same.

Duterte was in Cotabato City to make a speech and pass out Certificates of Land Ownership Awards (CLOAs) to various groups. The citys population is about 75 percent Muslim compared to about 25 percent of the population of the southern region of Mindanao,where most of the countrys Muslims live. Of the total Philippines'predominately Catholicpopulation, Muslims make up about 6 percent.

In the speech Duterte said, I am prepared. I have communicated my desire that if the Rohingya in Burma want to migrate, I will accept them.

The Rohingya Muslims are an ethnic Muslim minority who have suffered greatly at the hands of the Buddhist majority in Myanmar (formerly Burma) including incidents of gang rape of women and massacres by the military that have resulted in about 10,000 deaths.

They have been refused citizenship in Myanmar rendering them a stateless group. Most of the approximately one million Rohingyas have escaped to other countries with most of the refugees ending up in Bangladesh living in squalid conditions.

In his speech, Duterte pointed out that the Rohingya people are not accepted in Burma because of their religion saying, Theyre from Sri Lanka, then they migrated (to Burma) ... but they are unwanted because the people there are Buddhists ... They (Rohingya people) are Muslims so theyre being executed. So, they became boat people and went to Australia. When they got there, Australia pushed them back (to Myanmar).

The president expressed his solidarity with the Rohingya Muslims and willingness to accept them in the Philippines when he added, We have big lands. The people there are pitiful, the Muslims. Lets take them in. Mindanao is big, there are fields where they can farm . . . Lets teach them how to survive. We will accept the Rohingya refugees.

This is not the first time that Duterte has commented about helping the refugees. In a February speech before a convention of municipal mayors in Manila, he made them an offer of Filipino citizenship.He said, Those who really have nowhere else to go, I will accept them. I will make them Filipinos.

In yet another speech from April of 2018 Duterte said he was willing to provide sanctuary for Rohingya fleeing what he called genocide in the "Rakhine State". While the term may accurately describe the events in southwest Myanmar, he apologized to State Counsellor of Myanmar Aung San Suu Kyi over his use of the term.

Once a victim of persecution from a former Myanmar regime and a 1991 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Aung San Suu Kyi is acting like a ruthless dictator herself by refusing to condemn the powerful military or acknowledge accounts of their atrocities. This has led to some criticism by human rights activists. Duterte is also accused of some human rights abuses over his war on drugs that he may eventually have to face after his six-year term ends in 2002.

Read the original:

Duterte Says Philippines Willing To Accept Rohingya Muslim Refugees - International Business Times

It was an emotional, near overwhelming moment.

Recently, it was my honor to stand alongside others who helped move Illinois new cannabis law through the Illinois General Assembly as Cook County States Attorney Kim Foxx read a list of more than 1,000 people whose convictions for marijuana offenses were being expunged.

It was the first step in what ultimately will be tens of thousands of records being erased.

For me, this was the culmination of months of work, miles of travel, hours of meetings and countless sleepless nights alongside heroes and colleagues to push this important piece of reform from hopeful concept to the law of the land.

Because this process the act of removing the burden of an unnecessary criminal offense from a thousand people in our County is what matters.

In this setting, I felt moved when Gov. J.B. Pritzker said that the purpose of this gathering was to honor the victims of the war on drugs. Mr. Governor, you are right. And in the days since we gathered, it is clear to me that we cannot be satisfied when the war on drugs has claimed so many more victims.

It is time finally to unwind the war on drugs in Illinois.

The drug war was not limited to marijuana, and it does not end with legalization. Our work to repair the damage done by the over-criminalization of drug use must be expanded. Our new cannabis law is just a first step, not a final destination.

The governor can be the champion on this issue. Others, including his immediate predecessor, claimed to back criminal justice reform. Now is the time to truly move the issue forward.

Criminal justice reform advocates have urged us for some time to end felony penalties for simple possession of a small amount of all drugs. Such an approach would allow us to take resources we currently squander investigating, arresting, charging and prosecuting people who use drugs, and shift these resources to public health approaches proven to reduce fatal overdose, and expanding access to drug rehabilitation and mental health care programs.

And, it must be noted that many of the thousands of people who will have their cannabis convictions expunged will not enjoy the full benefit, because they may have been in possession of some other drug. We must work to free as many people as we can from the harmful collateral consequences of the war on drugs.

More important, this one simple step would reduce the number of people entering our state prisons each year, reducing mass incarceration in Illinois, and assuring that our loved ones and neighbors should never be imprisoned or burdened with a felony record because of a health issue.

Like all elements of the war on drugs, we know that prosecutions and convictions for simple possession of drugs other than marijuana fall disproportionately on people and communities of color. Entire neighborhoods in our city and communities all across the State have been devastated by having so many of their community members swallowed up by the justice system.

Even when these individuals finish their sentences, they are limited in the ability to find jobs, get loans and even seek an education.

In short, the war on drugs has been a war on those who are black and brown.

We can do better, Mr. Governor, with your leadership. You embraced cannabis reform, and in your first months in office we made it a reality. Your leadership made it possible not just for Illinois residents to access and use marijuana legally on Jan. 1, but also to make better the lives of those harmed by years of reckless enforcement of pot laws.

Lets take the next step together. Lets start the work, with your leadership, of fixing all of our drug laws by ending felony penalties against people who possess a small amount of any drug. This approach will need the vision of someone who understands that there have been victims of these laws. You showed that vision this month. Lets work together and do more to make our communities whole again.

Im ready for all the work, for all the meetings and for all the negotiations. Because as we both know, that work can yield real results for the lives of thousands. It is worth it. Lets join the fight.

State Rep. Kelly Cassidy, D-Chicago, was appointed to the Legislature in 2011.

Send letters to: letters@suntimes.com.

More here:

It is time finally to unwind the war on drugs in Illinois - Chicago Sun-Times

I became discouraged, as I was on track to earn a Ph.D and go far in my career, Drane recalled about not completing her masters.

But she had not hit bottom. Not until she applied to be an Uber driver but was denied due to being a felon that same year.

Yet, despite the setback, Drane decided to create a new career path for herself. In 2014, the Englewood native, decided to create her own opportunity and founded the Englewood Walk & Run 5K: Ditch the Weight & Guns. At the time of the first 5K race, 4,000 people participated, including former Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel. Drane says, Working out and working within the community was my therapy. I was still using my criminal justice background to empower Englewood to ditch the weight and guns.

Seven years later, another opportunity for a new career path came serendipitously.

After attending National Expungement Week Chicago this past September, hosted by Element 7 and the National Diversity and Inclusion Cannabis Alliance (NDICA), Drane welcomed investors to her community for a tour, which included a potential cultivation center. After the tour, the investors made an offer for Drane to become a social equity partner.

Drane explains, Now, we are partners, and I own 51 percent of the company. I wouldnt have been able to do this without investor partners because the cost to open a dispensary is too expensive.

Barriers to entry into the cannabis industry are multi-faceted, according to Drane. For starters, the cannabis dispensary application is difficult for some people to understand who need support.

The State of Illinois should have done a better job of community outreach, letting the public know where to apply, get help, and financing, Drane comments.

The cannabis dispensary application fee alone is $5,000.

During the December Town Hall Meeting on Adult Use Cannabis Law, in Chicagos Austin neighborhood, State Sen. Heather Steans (D-7th) was asked, How are cannabis dispensary applicants from low-income Black neighborhoods supposed to afford the $5,000 application fee? Steans suggested options including application sliding scale rate, applying as social equity applicant, and Cannabis Business Development Fund.

Dranes story seems like a one in a million, and for many Black Americans who will never experience a full circle moment, that reality appears to be intentional based on the policies created during the War on Drugs.

Its a slap in the face when white communities are profiting from cannabis and people of color have felonies, Drane declared. Black dispensaries, Black cultivation centers, and Black Cannabis Transportation create generational wealth. And we are more likely to give back to our community than White counterparts. My plan is to create jobs for the community.

Although the War on Drugs first impacted Black America many decades ago, its echoes can still be felt today.

In 1971, former President Richard Nixon announced a War on Drugs political campaign. Recently, though, Nixons Domestic Chief Policy, John Ehrilchman, confessed that it was never about the drugs.

During a 2016 interview, Ehrilchman confessed, "The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and Black people. You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or Black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies [and Blacks] 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? Of course we did."

See the article here:

New cannabis legislation is a start to restoring Black America after the War on Drugs - The Real Chi

Note: This is the fourth article in a series on In Public Safety that discusses the necessity of crafting laws that have both solid moral underpinnings and reasonable methods of enactment in order to gain public compliance. Start the series here.

By Dr. Gary Deel, Faculty Director,School of Business,American Military University

What has been the result of the war on drugs? The same as Prohibitionthe public generally rejects these restrictions and people still use drugs more or less as they please. However the resulting criminal activity and penalties for individuals have put a tremendous strain on society.

As a result of drug criminalization,nearly a half million people are incarcerated in the United States for nonviolent drug offenses. That amounts to approximately one in every five inmates nationwide. Its estimated that the U.S. has spent at least one trillion dollars on the war on drugs since Nixon began the offensive.The federal government currently spends nearly $9 million per day on incarcerated drug offenders.

Criminalization and incarceration have also had a disproportionate effect on minorities. Despite evidence indicating no difference in propensity for drug use among races, minorities are incarcerated for drug use at a much higher rate than whites.Blacks and Latinos account for about 80 percent of inmates convicted of drug charges in federal prisons, and 60 percent of inmates convicted of drug charges in state prisons.

Most people simply dont take anti-drug laws seriously. As with alcohol during Prohibition, if people wish to use drugs, they will do so regardless of whether it causes self-harm or is against the law.A 2017 poll indicated that most Americans have tried marijuana in the past, and nearly half of those who have tried it continue to use it recreationally.Yet, in that same year, nearly 30,000 people overdosed and died from using synthetic opioids like fentanyl. So these laws have failed to deter both relatively innocuous drug use as well as the use of extremely dangerous drugs.

[Free eMagazine:A Public Health Perspective on the Opioid Crisis]

Its also worth considering the lost societal benefits from the legalization of drugs. Making certain drugs legal would not only allow for greater safety through regulation, but also contribute to public funding through taxation. For example,Coloradowhich legalized recreational marijuana use in 2014has already generated more than one billion dollars from marijuana sales tax. It uses this additional public funding for a variety of positive initiatives, including mental health services and youth drug-prevention programs.

In light of these factors, blanket prohibition laws simply dont make sense to most of the general public.

This isnt to say that there is no place for anti-drug laws in our society. Again, every drug is different in terms of its potential risk. Perhaps particularly dangerous drugs like fentanyl ought to be tightly regulated. Perhaps recreational use of such extremely dangerous substances should remain banned outright. Each and every substanceincluding heroin, cocaine, ecstasy, LSD, magic mushrooms, and othersdeserves a thoughtful analysis and discussion to adopt a classification strategy that, one, makes good sense and, two, earns the acceptance of society.

But given that less harmful drugs like marijuana cant hold a candle to the societal harm caused by, say, the opioid crisis, its clear that the current status quo does neither.

Fortunately, in recent years some states have begun to acknowledge the irrationality of the war on drugs and federal drug policies. Some state legislatures have legalized marijuana for medical and/or recreational use in their states.

Given the societal support for legalized marijuana, the federal government under President Obama adopted a policy of non-enforcement, allowing Colorado and other states to experiment with marijuana legalization. In fact, in the last 10 years the legalization movement has gained significant traction. As of 2019,11 states have legalized marijuana for recreational use, and another 21 states have legalized it for medical use with a prescription.

However, because marijuana is still illegal at the federal level, these liberal state laws could hypothetically be overturned bythe Supremacy Clauseof the Constitution. President Trump originally aimed to enforce the prohibition on marijuana across all 50 states. However, his administration recentlyreversed course and announced that it will continue to permit state legalization.

This was probably a sensibly political move. If Trump had tried to turn the clock back on marijuana legalization, he would have undoubtedly faced significant resistance and backlash from the millions of people who currently use marijuana for medical or recreational purposes.

It should also be noted thatin 2018 the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) removed hemp from the list of controlled substances, allowing for the unrestricted sale of cannabidiol (CBD) oil and other popular products made from hemp.

Hemp and marijuana are different in that hemp is a category of cannabis varietals with 0.3 percent or less tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), whereas marijuana varietals have more than 0.3 percent THC (THC is the psychoactive compound that creates the high in marijuana). However, because of the close association between the two types of plants, the new freedoms surrounding hemp have further fueled efforts to legalize marijuana.

Many believe the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) will eventually reclassify marijuana to a controlled, but recreationally legal substance. For students of history, its astonishing thatin light of lessons learned nearly a century agoit has taken the federal government this long to turn the corner on this issue. It took just over 10 years to repeal Prohibition, yet the government has been actively fighting the war on drugs for more than half a century. However, in this case, late is certainly better than never.

In the next installment of this series, I will tackle another hotly debated area of criminalization: prostitution.

About the Author: Dr. Gary Deel is a Faculty Director with the School of Business atAmerican Military University. He holds a JD in Law and a Ph.D. in Hospitality/Business Management. He teaches human resources and employment law classes for American Military University, the University of Central Florida, Colorado State University and others. To contact the author, emailIPSauthor@apus.edu.For more articles featuring insight from industry experts, subscribe toIn Public Safetys bi-monthly newsletter.

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Why Are We Still Fighting Nixon's Losing 'War on Drugs'? - In Homeland Security

CALI, ColombiaMexicos former security minister, who also masterminded that countrys war against the cartels, was arrested last Monday by U.S. officials in Dallas, Texas.

Genaro Garca Luna stands accused by the U.S. attorney general of accepting millions of dollars from Joaqun El Chapo Guzmn while serving as the countrys crime czar.

Thats like Al Capone bribing J. Edgar Hoover to keep the FBI off his back.

When then-President Felipe Caldern chose to militarize Mexicos fight against organized crime, he tasked Luna with drafting the strategy. An engineer by training, and having never served in the armed forces or law enforcement, Luna drafted a controversial plan that involved deploying the Mexican Army across the country to fight the cartels.

While Luna allegedly got rich taking bribes from El Chapo, tens of thousands died in the ongoing violence, with 2019 set to be the worst year on record. Luna is also wanted in Mexico for his crimes.

Court documents unsealed this week in Brooklyn revealed the allegations, which include conspiracy to traffic cocaine. Hes also charged with lying about his criminal background when he applied for naturalization in the U.S.

Prosecutors say that on two occasions Luna accepted suitcases full of cash containing about $5 million each. In exchange, he provided Chapo's syndicate with security and access for shipping drugs into the U.S., as well as intel on official investigations and the doings of rival cartels.

The whiff of narco gangrene isnt limited to Mexico.

Luna has maintained his innocence, referring to the allegations when they first surfaced as: "Lies, defamation and perjury."

According to U.S. prosecutors, Lunas assistance allowed El Chapos Sinaloa Cartel to conduct business with impunity in Mexico for more than a decade.

The arrest of Garca Luna highlights just how significant of a challenge Mexican president Manuel Lpez Obrador faces in rooting out corruption among government officials, wrote Maureen Meyer, the Mexico director at the Washington Office on Latin America.

The sole fact that cases like Luna's are being heard in the U.S. and not Mexico points to significant weaknesses in Mexicos criminal justice institutions, and how political influence has tainted investigations for far too long.

Think about it: The presidents right-hand man was working with the countrys largest mafia.

Investigative Journalist Emmanuel Gallardo

Mexican journalist Emmanuel Gallardo, who specializes in covering the cartels, said this was indicative of a larger pattern in Mexico, in which the drug war is a farce waged against peasants while wealthy businessmen and politicians profit on the side.

Think about it: The presidents right-hand man was working with the countrys largest mafia. This is another example which shows the narcos can exist only because the state allows them to, Gallardo said.

This proves the corruption goes all the way to the top of the Mexican government.

A Strong Incentive for Collusion

If this were but an isolated incident, it would still be an outrageous scandal. But, sadly, corruption like Lunas has become a common feature of the drug war in Mexico and much of Latin America.

Official statistics are hard to come by. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime issued a report in 2017 that indicates further study into the link between drug trafficking and corruption is needed. But one stat in the report stands out: In low-income countries the percentage of public officials, judges, and police officers taking bribes can exceed 50 percent.

And the anecdotal evidence suggests that, as with Secretary Luna, the drug war rot goes straight to the top in many countries.

Long considered one of the most corrupt countries in the Americas by groups like Transparency International, Mexico has been rocked by a number of high-profile corruption cases of late. Public figures like athletes, musicians, and a string of wealthy state governors have all been implicated. And recent accusations similar to those that brought down Luna have also surfaced against former president Enrique Pea Nieto (more on that later). But the whiff of narco gangrene isnt limited to Mexico.

Organized crime is much harder to fight than an insurgency or terrorist group. ... Youre fighting an enemy whose main mode of operation is to corrupt and penetrate [your allies].

Adam Isacson, Washington Office on Latin America

Last June, a Brazilian military officer traveling as part of President Jair Bolsonaros official G20 delegation was arrested in Spain for attempting to ferry 39 kilos (about 86 pounds) of cocaine in his suitcase. Earlier this year, Colombias National Director of Anti-Corruption was busted in a DEA sting in Miami after he attempted to solicit a bribe in exchange for sabotaging an investigation into another corrupt official. Also in Colombia, an unrelated DEA agent was rolled up for attempting to commit deceit, craft, and trickery on behalf of a drug lord who had plied him with cash and prostitutes.

The cartels are powerful and dangerous, and the probability of punishment for cooperating with them is still too low. That creates a strong incentive for officials to tolerate or collude with criminals, said Adam Isacson, a colleague of Meyers, and the director of WOLAs Defense Oversight program.

Welcome to the Narco-State

The Central American nation of Honduras is perhaps the most striking example of the tendency toward criminal collusion among Americas ostensible drug war allies. After the democratically elected president was ousted in a military coup in 2009, the country became home to one of the highest homicide rates on earth. Its also a major way station for drugs passing from South America to Mexico and the U.S.

In August of this year, a 44-page document filed by prosecutors in New Yorks Southern District Court identified Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernndez and former President Pepe Loboalong with other prominent politicians and family membersas co-conspirators in a plot to leverage drug trafficking to maintain and enhance their political power."

Prosecutors in that case also alleged that some $1.5 million of drug money was used to help Hernndez win the presidency in 2013. His re-election in 2017 was also tainted with charges of tampering, though the Trump administration chose to look the other way. Also in 2017, ex-President Lobos son was sentenced to more than two decades in U.S. federal prison for cocaine trafficking.

Honduras descent into a full-fledged narco-state is all the more worrisome given its long history as one of the White Houses staunchest allies in the war on drugs, and the recipient of millions of dollars in controversial military and security assistance.

Grahame Russell, director of the US-based NGO Rights Action, which maintains a full-time presence in Honduras, criticized Washington for ignoring all those mis-spent tax dollars:

President Hernndez, many government officials, military and police officers have been implicated in or charged with drug trafficking and money laundering, Russell told The Daily Beast. Yet there has been no change whatsoever in the political, economic and military support that the Honduras regime receives from the U.S.

The same could be said of Mexico, which has received almost $3 billion to fight the drug war over the last 12 years, regardless of human rights violations and corruption charges accrued during that span.

Russell said the lack of oversight by the White House actually empowers greed-driven elites in Latn America, and accused the Trump administration of being willing to maintain relations with governmentsno matter how corrupt, anti-democratic or repressivethat promote the interests of international corporations, investors and banks.

WOLAs Isacson agreed that graft has led to America keeping some strange, drug-war bedfellows.

U.S. administrations need to be much more careful about who their friends are in the struggle against organized crime, he said.

Organized crime is much harder to fight than an insurgency or terrorist group because youre fighting an enemy whose main mode of operation is to corrupt and penetrate [your allies]. Any U.S. strategy that loses sight of high-level corruption is doomed to failure.

A Politician Whos Poor is a Poor Politician

U.S. prosecutors first got wind of what Luna had been up to during Chapo Guzmns trial in New York, when a key witness recounted how the cash-filled luggage had been delivered to the defense secretary. The AG pounced on that evidence, leading to Lunas arrest this week, but even more shocking allegations also surfaced during the trial.

Another witness called in Chapos defense, in January of this year, was Alex Cifuentes, who worked with Guzmn in Mexico from 2007 to 2013. During that time, as revealed in Cifuentes sworn testimony, penultimate Mexican President Pea Nieto asked that Chapo suborn him to the tune of $250 million. In return for the enormous kickback, according to Cifuentes, Nieto promised that Chapo wouldnt have to hide anymore.

As per the trial transcripts, the sitting president at the time eventually settled for $100 million and the payment was delivered. Nieto then went on to have Chapo captured twice, finally resulting in extradition to the U.S.

Nieto, for his part, tweeted at the time that the charges laid out by Chapos witness were false, defamatory, and absurd.

But since the testimony from Chapos trial netted them a successful indictment against Luna, might U.S. prosecutors also probe Nieto?

Only time will tell, said WOLAs Meyers.

U.S. prosecutors will be responsible for deciding to investigate all allegations against Mexican officials raised in [Chapos] trial, which could also be complemented by information that Garca Luna might choose to provide, she said.

Theres a saying in Mexico: A politician who is poor is a poor politician, said Gallardo. In Mexico politics is a business.

A very dirty business indeed.

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Why the Drug War Can't Be WonCartel Corruption Goes All the Way to the Top - The Daily Beast

An unprecedented conference took place Friday in the Shoafat refugee camp in East Jerusalem. After prayers, hundreds of men headed into a large hall. Representatives of all the families living in the camp sat up front; on stage stood teens in gold vests bearing a logo of a fist smashing a hypodermic needle.

As dramatic music played in the background, one of the teens read a declaration signed by all the family representatives: I resolve to put family security above the drug dealers. I resolve to boycott them, to not give them respect, to not invite them to weddings and not to attend their funerals.

It was the first community gathering of its kind in Shoafat's war on drugs. The speakers included notable camp residents, former addicts, a physician who explained the dangers of the newest generation of drugs and a preacher from Al-Aqsa Mosque. The conference was the climax of a rolling campaign by social activists and local East Jerusalem leaders against drug purveyors. Ahead of the conference, young people organized confrontations with drug dealers, helped commit addicts to rehab centers, and hung anti-drug posters throughout the camp's streets.

Residents of East Jerusalem say that there was always a serious drug problem, but now it has become an absolute plague. In almost every neighborhood, residents know where to find the local dealer, where the addicted lay helpless and recount stories of the drug-related violence that erupts periodically.

Many blame the Israel Police and Shin Bet security service. Residents say that the Israeli authorities prefer that the youth of East Jerusalem be busy with drugs rather than firebombs that drugs are part of the security services' toolbox to maintain quiet in the eastern part of the city.

This isn't a new claim, but it seems that over the past few months the situation has further deteriorated. The East Jerusalem drug market has been flooded with cheap drugs like Nice Guy and Mabsuton, and dealers have started to market the stuff to teens and children. According to a number of East Jerusalem sources, a child can get a dose of Nice Guy for 10 shekels ($2.88) or less. Some dealers give out the first dose for free to hook clients.

Sources in the camp say traffickers will simply drop small baggies of drugs into schoolyards, and tell of a package containing 72 such packets that was found in one of the camp's schools. "Once the traffickers had some shame, they had principles; today, nothing. They sell at school entrances and no one says anything to them," says Nasser Hashan of Shoafat, a leading anti-trafficking activist.

Its around 200 meters from my house to school, he continues. In that distance my daughter sees an addict strewn on the ground, a drunk, a dealer selling to someone, maybe ten incidents like that.

We felt that people were deliberately throwing [drugs] into the schools, they don't care about anything, just sell their quantity and bring more," Mohammed Malham. The question is who has their back? Who can deal like that in the middle of the street without the police coming?

Almost all those interviewed say the police ignore, if not encourage, the problem. For example, in the refugee camp, it is widely claimed that drug dealers enjoy unofficial shelter at the checkpoint separating Shoafat from the city. They sell at the checkpoint and if they see anyone [of the anti-drug activists] approaching, they run to stand next to the border policemen because then they know no one will touch them, says one of the activists at the camp.

In the Silwan neighborhood, residents claim that dealers photograph kids who buy drugs and give the pictures to police. Police later use the photos to coerce the drug users, who are often minors, into becoming informers for security related matters.

Around a month ago the A-Tur neighborhood held a similar conference of youths and family heads against drugs and drug dealers, but it was forcibly dispersed by the police, who even fired tear gas at attendees. The police reported that theyd broken up the event because of disorderly conduct.

It seemed to the public that the police had shown up to help the dealers, like here, where the dealers feel safest near the checkpoint," says Issam Johan, a former addict who has worked many years in rehab and in anti-drug programs in the Palestinian Authority and in East Jerusalem.

If we catch a drug dealer who is from the West Bank we send him back and the Palestinian police deal with him, but if he is Israeli [meaning an Israeli citizen or a resident of Jerusalem] we can't touch him. He would immediately complain [to security services]," says Omar Elkam, who lives in the refugee camp.

Elkam says that the day before the Shoafat conference there were policemen and municipal inspectors issuing tickets to illegally parked cars. I went over to them and told them there were drug dealers here, they should deal with them. Ticketing cars is important, but this is more important but they told me to stay out of it, he says.

On Sunday three of the organizers of the conference in the refugee camp were summoned for questioning to Room 4, the room of the minorities division and the Shin Bet in Jerusalem Police headquarters. Every resident of East Jerusalem knows that the detectives in Room 4 arent interested in drugs, but in terror-related crimes.

The detective said he wants to help me. I told him that youre the Shin Bet, your whole head is in security and you are bringing me to Room 4. What does Room 4 have to do with drugs? says Hashan. I said if you want to help me, bring me to the unit that deals with drugs.

On Saturday afternoon, the day after the conference in the refugee camp, activists and young people from Silwan and Abu Tor gathered for a protest event that included a joint lunch in front of the home of the man they claim is the biggest drug dealer in the area. The home is surrounded by no less than 10 security cameras. Drugs have been sold from this house for 25 years, the neighbors say.

Show me where in West Jerusalem or in Tel Aviv a man would put cameras on his drug den? asks Khaled Zeir, a Silwan resident. He knows they wont do anything to him. If anyone touches him he would come with his weapon and shoot. The police know, everyone knows and no one does anything. Nobody dares touch him.

According to Silwan residents, minors reported in two cases that during their questioning by police or the Shin Bet, they were shown pictures of themselves buying drugs. The security forces threatened to expose them unless they cooperated.

Bilal Elkam, a refugee camp resident, was addicted to hard drugs for 28 years. Hes been clean for the past four years and works as a counselor at the camp's rehab center. Heroin withdrawal takes three or four days; with Nice Guy you can have withdrawal symptoms for 25 days. Its a drug you use once, after that it uses you, he says.

The recovering addicts in the center, among them Arabs from Israel's north, are blocked from the outside world by two sets of locked doors. But when the doors are opened after long weeks in rehab, re-entering the world is not easy. The rehab center sits on the camp's main street, a 30-second walk from the junction identified as the center of the drug trade. "A man walks out the door and there's immediately there's someone there to give him drugs," says Elkam.

The police said in response: As part of the ongoing fight against drugs, the police are constantly using overt and covert enforcement, particular against drug manufacturing and trafficking, by exposing, arresting and prosecuting the perpetrators. The police operate regularly throughout Jerusalem and especially in the eastern part of the city. As a result, in the past year alone, a number of agents were planted and dozens of drug dealers were arrested, some of whom were detained until the end of the proceedings."

With regard to the dispersal of the assembly in Abu Tur," the police said, apparently referring to the anti-drug event broken up by police in A-Tur, "there was a protest there during which a number of rioters started to disrupt public order. In response police had to disperse the rioters in order to allow the protest to take place in a legal, orderly fashion. The Israel Police will continue to allow legal free expression and protest, but will not allow violations of order, disregard for police instructions and disproportionate harm to residents daily routine.

More here:

In East Jerusalem's war on drugs, residents say police are on the wrong side - Haaretz

By Live4ever -Posted on 18 Dec 2019 at 7:11am

Former War On Drugs colleagues Adam Granduciel and Kurt Vile have both contributed to the new Sore Eros album which will be coming early next year.

Due on January 10th 2020, the bands self-titled record is the follow-up to 2015s Say People, and was produced and engineered by Granduciel while Vile also features, reprising an association which goes back to the Split EP they released in 2012.

Its one of the first credits for Adam Granduciel since the release of his most recent War On Drugs record A Deeper Understanding a Live4ever album of 2017: Maybe its a call for the human race to seek enlightenment elsewhere. If such a journey is required, The War On Drugs fourth album could be its soundtrack. This is an American band making America great again in the truest sense of the phrase.

Backseat BopOut of PhaseTree VoleDharmaChestnut FolliesOcean TowCardinalDiamond HighwayMirror

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Former War On Drugs colleagues Adam Granduciel and Kurt Vile contribute to new Sore Eros album - Live4ever

As this year winds down, the Drug Enforcement Administration is facing a deadline: The agencys emergency order classifying fentanyl-like substances, or analogues, as Schedule 1 drugs is set to expire on Feb. 6. Placing analogues in Schedule 1 makes it easier for federal agents to seize fentanyl-like substances and investigate traffickers of these substances, and for prosecutors to prosecute such traffickers, according to the Department of Justice.

Now Congress is under pressure to make the DEA order permanent, by passing a bill before years end called the Stopping Overdoses of Fentanyl Analogues (SOFA) Act. The DEA, DOJ, and the National Association of Attorneys General are in favor of passing the SOFA Act, and believe it would make a dent in the illicit fentanyl supply by going after traffickers who sell analogues that chemists manufacture to skirt U.S. drug laws. At the state level, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo proposed legislation to schedule new analogues.

But the SOFA Act will not sow less harm by going after those who sell fentanyl. The law will only expand the power of the DEA and further criminalize low-income communities and communities of color without actually reducing deaths. According to a Drug Policy Alliance (DPA) report released today, police, prosecutors, service providers, and the media must question the impulse to get tough on so-called dealers, and call for a new approach that turns away from harsh punishment.

As we consider new approaches for people who use, we also need to explore options for addressing drug sales outside the criminal justice system, said Lindsay LaSalle, managing director of public health law and policy at the Drug Policy Alliance. We need a radical shift away from supply side interventions and must truly examine both the demand for drugs and the economic and structural reasons why people may be selling drugs.

For one, the report rightly notes, Americas drug laws fail to distinguish sellers from users. Cracking down on the former invariably leads to crackdowns on the latter. People who use drugs often sell them in small quantities to their friends, leaving little daylight between the role of user and seller.

And when it comes to alleged traffickers of illicit fentanyl, data from the U.S. Sentencing Commission shows that in 2016, just 16 percent of people sentenced for trafficking fentanyl were aware that thats what they were selling. This finding contradicts the narrative pushed by the law enforcement community that passing bills like the SOFA Act will result in locking up major traffickers.

The new report on drug dealers also debunks several other myths and narratives about drug trafficking. For instance, rather than keeping communities safe, locking up sellers may create volatility and unpredictability in drug markets that causes harm to people with addictions. Law enforcement crackdowns on drug trafficking may be incentivizing the introduction of more potent, riskier drugs such as fentanyl into the drug supply, authors of the DPA report write.

Perhaps most notably, the reality is that the vast majority of drug arrests do not capture high-level distributors. A 2018 UC Davis Law Review paper established that the war on drugs is being waged primarily against those possessing or selling minuscule amounts of drugs, and these people tend to be Black and Latinx as opposed to white. This racial disparity does not reflect the actual rates of drug selling by race. One section of the DPA report, for instance, notes that white people are slightly more likely than people of color to report having sold drugs. And yet, people of color are far more likely to be arrested for both possession and selling.

The demonization of people who sell drugs in the context of the overdose crisis is a reiteration of a much older story: a deeply racialized narrative in which illegal drug use is driven by drug sellers (often portrayed as people of color) who push drugs on vulnerable people (often white people) to get them hooked, the DPA report reads.

Indeed, the call to enhance penalties for fentanyl analogues is eerily reminiscent of harsh drug laws dating back to the 1980s when Democrats and Republicans agreed to the disastrous 100-to-1 sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine that effectively over-incarcerated communities of color.

So what does going beyond status quo criminalization look like? The report urges police to deprioritize arresting people for only selling and distribution, and treat drug law violations as possession for personal use in all cases that lack evidence of extensive financial gain. Instead, they [police] should focus on enforcing laws against threats, coercion, exploitation, corruption and conduct that causes physical harm to another person, the reports authors write.

Although progressive prosecutors around the country have vowed to drop low-level drug offenses, and help people who have substance use disorders outside the criminal legal system entirely, they must go further. Prosecutors should decline to prosecute certain selling- and distribution-related offenses altogether, such as: sharing or giving away drugs for free; subsistence selling; selling by people who are struggling to control their own drug use; drug-induced homicide charges; and conspiracy charges against low-level actors in drug supplying hierarchies, the report recommends.

Finally, the authors call upon states to repeal drug-induced homicide laws that frequently target loved ones and family members, as opposed to sellers. Drug-induced homicide statutes also conflict with the spirit of 911 Good Samaritan Laws that grant limited immunity to people who call for help during an overdose, which the report supports expanding to encourage more bystanders to save lives by calling 911 without fear of arrest.

Two years ago, the DEA temporarily placed all fentanyl analogues in the Schedule 1 category. Since then, illicit fentanyl has become more prevalent and has resulted in a rise of overdose deaths among people of color in cities like Chicago, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C. who think they are buying heroin. Instead of repeating the same mistakes of the crack era that accelerated mass incarceration, we must take a new approach that helps instead of hurts.

Zachary Siegel is a freelance journalist in Chicago and a member of the Changing The Narrative collective. His work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, Slate, and Wired, among others.

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How to Rethink Drug Dealing and Punishment - The Appeal

The Washington Post has just published a deep dive into the war in Afghanistan, including the war on opium. These newly released documents expose in stark terms the dramatic failures of our century-long war on drugs. Of all the aspects of the Afghan quagmire, the war on opium has been among the most indefensibly foolish. Metaphorical wars against inanimate objects (drugs, alcohol, etc.) or vague ideas (crime, poverty, etc.) have an extensive history of failure. Continuing to pursue them is nonsensical at best, and deadly at worst.

U.S. opium poppy eradication efforts have cost nearly $9 billion since 2001. In 2001 US airstrikes targeted a network of clandestine opium production labs that U.S. officials said was helping to generate $200 million a year in drug money for the Taliban, but aerial efforts were abandoned after many of the suspected labs turned out to be empty, mud-walled compounds[and] the U.S. military concluded it was a waste of resources to keep blowing up primitive targets with advanced aircraft and laser-guided munitions.

American officials struggled with the question of how to address Afghanistans status as the worlds leading opium supplier. According to the Washington Post article, military leaders under the Bush administration saw [fighting opium production] as a distraction or hindrance to their primary mission of fighting terrorists. Under the Obama administration officials began recognizing the role of opium profits in funding insurgents but were also concerned that acting could alienate poppy farmersor U.S.-friendly warlords who profited from opium trafficking, which would alienate US allies on the ground.

The tipping point in the war on poppies came when US military and intelligence officials began to perceive drug trafficking as a financial boon for terrorists. The drugs themselves were not a cause of terrorism, but prohibition made them a highly profitable and lucrative source of income for the US enemies. Therefore, in the eyes of US officials, fighting opium and fighting terrorism were intrinsically linked.

One striking illustration of the folly of strategies developed by the US and its allies was paying farmers large sums to destroy opium crops. The Post reports:

In the spring of 2002, British officialsagreed to pay Afghan poppy farmers $700 an acre a fortune in the impoverished, war-ravaged country to destroy their crops.

Word of the $30 million program ignited a poppy-growing frenzy. Farmers planted as many poppies as they could, offering part of their yield to the British while selling the rest on the open market. Others harvested the opium sap right before destroying their plants and got paid anyway.

In a Lessons Learned interview, Anthony Fitzherbert, a British agricultural expert, called the cash-for-poppies program an appalling piece of complete raw naivete, saying that the people in charge had no knowledge of nuances and [I] dont know they really cared.

U.S. officials said the British wanted to be seen as doing something, even though they had little confidence the program would work. Michael Metrinko, a former U.S. diplomat who served in the embassy in Kabul at the time, said the results were predictable.

Years of failed policy have proven that victory in the war on drugs, as with the war on terror, will not come easily. But one approach will unlink drugs and terror: legalize the production, sale, and use of drugs. Competition in legal markets will drive prices down, thus eliminating drug trafficking as a means to fuel terrorism. The U.S. has no reason to continue a costly, ineffective prohibition when history has shown, time and again, that it does not work.

This article by Jeffrey Miron and Erin Partin

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Afghanistan: Another Failure of the Drug War - The National Interest Online

By Crime and Justice News | December 16, 2019

In late 2017, U.S. military commanders in Afghanistan launched Operation Iron Tempest, a storm of airstrikes. The main target: a network of clandestine opium production labs that U.S. officials said was helping to generate $200 million a year in drug money for the Taliban. This is a new war, and the gloves are off, said Air Force Brig. Gen. Lance Bunch. That is our new strategy going forward, and its definitely been a game-changer and the Taliban is definitely feeling it. ... The war has changed. Within a year, Operation Iron Tempest fizzled out, the Washington Post reports. Many of the suspected labs turned out to be empty, mud-walled compounds. After 200 airstrikes, the U.S. military concluded it was a waste of resources to keep blowing up primitive targets with advanced aircraft and laser-guided munitions.

Of all the failures in Afghanistan, the war on drugs has been perhaps the most feckless, according to a cache of confidential government interviews and other documents. Since 2001, the U.S. has spent $9 billion on an array of programs to deter Afghanistan from supplying the world with heroin. Key players in the campaign acknowledged that none of the measures has worked and that, in many cases, they have made things worse. Mohammed Ehsan Zia, a former Afghan cabinet minister in charge of rural development programs, said the U.S. and other NATO countries never settled on an effective strategy and just threw money at the opium problem. He said they constantly changed policies and relied on consultants who were ignorant about Afghanistan. Afghanistan dominates global opium markets. Last year, it produced 82 percent of the worlds supply, according to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime. Defying U.S. efforts to curtail it, Afghan opium production has skyrocketed over the course of the 18-year war.

More here:

US War on Afghanistan Heroin Failed, Made Things Worse - Crime Report

On our last episode of the year were doing something a little different. Joining us today is Appeal contributor Zachary Siegel, a journalism fellow at Northeastern University Law Schools Health in Justice Action Lab, to discuss false narratives around drug addiction and how prisons are increasingly choosing puritanical pseudoscience in the so-called War on Opioid Addiction. We will also be joined by Lev Facher of STAT News.

Adam Johnson: Hi welcome to The Appeal. Im your host Adam Johnson. This is a podcast on criminal justice reform, abolition and everything in between. Thisll be the final episode of the season. We will be back in the new year on January 16th with all new episodes. I just want to take time out now to say thank you for all the support and everyone for listening. We really appreciate it.

Were doing something a little different for this segment. Joining me today is Appeal contributor, Zach Siegel, who is also a journalist fellow at Northeastern University Law Schools Health and Justice Action Lab. There Zach helps run a project called Changing the Narrative, which aims to de-stigmatize the media and politics surrounding addiction. Zach thank you so much for joining us.

Zachary Siegel: Yeah glad to be here.

Adam: So given your background covering addiction, we wanted this episode to cover the topic in the context of the criminal illegal carceral system. This is a subject more than anything where misinformation, disinformation and ignorance surrounding the way addiction works, works in a feedback loop with lawmakers and the media to create a carceral system that has improved slightly, but its still stuck somewhere between the years 1890 and 1922 vis-a-vis the rest of the world, which has a far different, more empirical approach to this, but were specifically talking about the so-called opioid crisis where some call an overdose crisis or an opioid related overdose crisis. We wanted to talk about the ways in which drug courts quote unquote treat addiction as a sort of medical and health issue and how one pharmaceutical company in particulars drug became the go to treatment inside jails and prisons effectively sidelining more effective treatments. And to establish the stakes here, cause I think its important, were talking about millions of people. Were talking about a lot of people. This is a crisis. How you frame the crisis is subjective, but it is objectively, a crisis and so the main go to drug to help prisons and jails, quote unquote treat addiction is of tremendous import. And were going to focus today on one pharmaceutical company called Alkermes, which has used an aggressive sales force and marketing effort to push a medication called Vivitrol to people who are incarcerated. So lets start out by talking about Vivitrol. What is it and how does it compare to the other popular quote unquote addiction treatment drugs?

Zachary Siegel: Right. So right now there are three FDA approved medications to treat whats called Opioid Use Disorder. This is the clinical term for opioid addiction. And unlike drugs like alcohol or cocaine or other drugs people get addicted to opioid addiction actually has three medications available that do a pretty good job of treating it. And of course the issue is these drugs are not widely available, especially to people who are incarcerated. And setting the stakes here people exiting correctional settings, if they have an Opioid Use Disorder, their risk of fatally overdosing is 40 to 130 times greater than the general public. So when people leave correctional settings, they lose their tolerance to opioids, they get out, they havent been treated, and they go use again and this is when people are most vulnerable to overdosing and dying. And so the stakes here are literally life and death. And what we do know is when you make these medications available to people, their likelihood of overdosing and dying is greatly reduced. But really its two of these medications, one called methadone, the other called buprenorphine, largely known as Suboxone. These two drugs have been around for a while and all around the world they show that they slash the likelihood of a fatal overdose by 50 percent or more. When France made this drug widely available, their overdose rate plunged by 79 percent. And so in comes Vivitrol where it functions much differently than methadone and buprenorphine. So those are both opioids. Vivitrol is an opioid receptor antagonist, so it attaches to the receptor and effectively blocks other opioids from activating that receptor. So the chemistry here, the way it functions inside your brain is very different than methadone and buprenorphine. And this is where a lot of the misinformation and stigma and and politics about how we treat addiction, you know, come into play.

Adam: So, before we, methadone has an interesting history, but I do think its important to know that history, like you said, this episode is going to be in the weeds here. So lets talk about methadones relationship with the criminal legal system and how that informs the current debate within the United States. And I want to be clear, we are talking specifically about the United States. In most of the quote unquote developed world this isnt really even a debate. They wouldnt have to do this episode. So lets talk about methadone and its history with relation to the carceral system in this country.

Zachary Siegel: Yeah, it is really interesting. So a guy by the name of Robert DuPont, hes got some hawkish views about drugs. Like he once said that marijuana is the quote most dangerous drug which is false. Need to say that.

Adam: Yeah. In the interest of clarity, not the most dangerous drug, black tar heroin is worse than that, but go ahead.

Zachary Siegel: Yet theyre in the same category. So. So anyhow, DuPont was the first director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse in the seventies and he was the second ever White House Drug Czar under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. And so Nixon ran on law and order and this was a time when heroin from Southeast Asia thank you Vietnam war was flooding American cities and DuPont convinced Nixon that prescribing methadone to people with heroin addictions would reduce crime. And since Nixon campaigned on reducing crime, he listened to DuPont. And in this era, the number of methadone clinics expanded greatly. And its important to talk about this because there isnt really any other medication out there whose success is measured by a reduction in crime rates. Theyre not asking are these people healthy? Are their lives better? Theyre wondering, are they still robbing cars and mugging strangers and loitering and being unsightly.

Adam: This perverse kind of criteria has stayed with us. We of course always frame drugs as a crime issue, not a public health issue. Its now become somewhat cliched, people say we need to treat it like a public health issue and a crime issue. Although the actual policy has not really changed much, the rhetoric shifted because he needed to sound woke. But the actual policies havent really changed much. So this is obviously the wrong approach. Methadone has been shown to get people off heroin, help stabilize their lives, build networks, sort of rebuild family connections. Now its not, of course sort of panacea. And obviously the drug war is steeped in racism here. And we could do ten episodes on why people like Trump suddenly care about drugs, white nationalists like Trump suddenly care about drugs but didnt before. But we wont. But can we talk about the kind of moral dimensions to not wanting to go use methadone versus this other which doesnt have opioid properties and how that, why thats popular because of this puritan streak in our country, one of its primary sales pitches for legislators. Is that, is that a fair statement?

Zachary Siegel: Yeah. So all of these false assumptions and outdated ideas about drug use and treating addiction are still with us today. And they really infect the health policy and the politics here. So as our guest will explain later the idea that prescribing an opioid to people who are addicted to opioids, and Im talking here, opioids like methadone and buprenorphine, to do that sort of doesnt compute with our standard narrative that if someones addicted to drugs, you need to get them off of drugs. And that comes from a misunderstanding of the physiology and the chemistry here. So when someone is on methadone or buprenorphine, yes they are taking an opioid but they no longer meet the criteria for addiction. They are now dependent on an opioid. The hallmarks of addiction, the literal definition of addiction is continued drug use despite negative consequences. So if youre using an opioid like methadone and youre going to work and you have friends and youre just living your life, you dont meet any criteria of addiction anymore, but youre dependent on this drug. And to be dependent in this country on anything is an indictment of your character. Its a weakness.

Adam: Unless it is a prescribed drug by a pharma company or five fingers of whiskey a night while you watch the game. Those are all normal.

Zachary Siegel: Right. Right. Those dependencies, you know, people feel okay with I guess, but right. So the Vivitrol comes into play here because its not an opioid. It blocks other opioids from activating the receptors. And so its a much more palatable course of treatment. And what well unpack here throughout this episode is how this more palatable option has really been pitched heavily to drug courts, to drug court judges, to parole boards, to jails and prisons. Alkermes saw a huge market in prisons and jails and went after it and quite successfully dominate this area of treatment.

Adam: Right. Theyve kind of appealed to the puritan streak in this country as part of their marketing strategy. So lets talk about the other treatment options that are not methadone, but do have opioid properties. How are those different than methadone and what is the sort of good quick primer about those so we have a sense of what the hell it is were talking about?

Zachary Siegel: Yeah. So methadone is heavily bureaucratized and tightly controlled and you can only get it through these special clinics and there arent enough of those and so its really hard to access. You also need to go to that clinic every single day to get your dose until you can get special privileges like take home doses. So its really just bureaucratized like out of utility for so many people.

Adam: Cause the idea is you dont want people just to like take like fifty hits of, cause thats what the, you know, opioid crisis is largely also been driven by, which is-

Zachary Siegel: Over prescribing and drugs being everywhere. Right?

Adam: Yeah. Willy nilly. Passing out at parties, you know what the fuck? I had a rough day at the office, so why dont I pop one? Right?

Zachary Siegel: Right.

Adam: Presumably theres some logic to it other than-

Zachary Siegel: Yeah, like it mostly it goes back to the days of Nixon where the people taking these drugs are criminals. You cant trust them. So you need to heavily watch the administration of the drug. And so thats methadone. In comes a drug called buprenorphine. So the formulation of buprenorphine naloxone is called by its brand name, Suboxone. And in 2002 it gets approved by the FDA to treat opioid addiction. And unlike methadone, a doctor with a special DEA waiver called an X Waiver can prescribe a month supply to a patient that they can then take home. And then once a month they, you know, have a, a checkup and get their refill and go on their day. So its not like methadone where you need to go every morning to a clinic and get it. You can just see your doctor once a month and get your prescription. And Suboxone operates similarly to methadone. Its also an opioid, its whats called a partial agonist. So it does like activate the same receptor sites as drugs like heroin, but to a far lesser degree, it also has a ceiling effect. So say you take, a standard dose is like eight milligrams, say you take 32 milligrams, it sorta just stops working. Like it has a ceiling effect whereby you cant take more and more and get more of the euphoria. So its good in that its more difficult to misuse and overdose on. So the preferred drug for a lot of people is buprenorphine because it has a ceiling effect and because you can take home a scrip and you dont have to go through the clinic. So thats the landscape. Those are the drugs that were talking about here.

Adam: Okay. And so theres these kind of three primary categories of drugs, two of which have opioid properties, one of which doesnt. Vivitrol is the one thats becoming increasingly popular. I was shocked to learn, although I probably shouldnt be after doing this for over two years, I was shocked to learn that the one that has no opioid properties is extremely popular with lawmakers, the sort of proverbial crusty white men who mostly drive these policy decisions. Very few prisons, if Im not mistaken, very few states, offer an all the above approach. Can we talk about what the standard is in most states and what medical professionals and addiction activists such that they are, have said about this?

Zachary Siegel: Yeah. So first, federally, the Federal Bureau of Prisons has a blanket ban on prescribing methadone and buprenorphine and other treatments like there is literally like zero addiction treatment happening in federal prisons, which is wild. But then lets move out to local criminal justice systems, which impact far more people. Most prisons for that matter also do not have all three of these medications available. And so Rikers Island, you know, it has a bad rap and its getting closed and everything, but it has one of the longest running methadone programs of any correctional facility in this country. And so Rikers Island, theyre a model opioid treatment program. They provide all of these medications.

Adam: Despite their horrific torturous conditions.

Zachary Siegel: Yeah, despite the brutal conditions at Rikers, theres actually this like group of doctors there who have been treating opioid addiction with immense success for decades since the eighties and this model has not been expanded. The only other state that has recently got on board after a pilot program was evaluated was Rhode Island. Rhode Island started offering all three medications to every single person going inside the system who screened for opioid addiction. And when they did that, the overdose rate among people leaving the prison system dropped by 65 percent and the rate throughout the whole state dropped by 12 percent so thats, thats a huge success. And still, its not like with this evidence that its been rapidly expanded yet. The ACLU and other players are actually now suing prison systems, jail systems all over the country to just get people the medication that theyre prescribed to because the jails and prisons just dont want to do it.

Adam: And all this is happening within a political context, which is a good place I think to pivot to our guest Lev Facher, who covers politics specifically as it regards to the pharmaceutical industry for Stat, which is a vertical run by the Boston Globe. So we will talk to him in just a minute.

[Music]

Adam: Lev Facher thank you so much for joining us.

Lev Facher: Thanks for having me.

Zachary Siegel: Hey. So one reason we wanted to talk to you Lev in particular is because you cover the governments response to the overdose crisis and sort of the nexus of politics that determines that response, like which solutions and treatments get prioritized. And so there have been numerous investigations and long stories detailing how Alkermes, the manufacturer of Vivitrol, has pitched itself to the criminal legal system like drug courts, jails and prisons. So ProPublica covered this, NPR has been on this and so have you. To start us off, can you walk us through some of the marketing strategies? Like what would a Alkermes salesperson be saying to a sheriff or a politician or an official in the system?

Lev Facher: Sure, so obviously the pitch is going to change from person to person, but the overarching theme and one that some addiction physicians have taken issue with is the idea that there are three FDA approved medications to treat Opioid Use Disorder and only one, which is Vivitrol, the drug Alkermes manufacturers, is not an opioid, which is to say its not a partial agonist or a full agonist. Its an antagonist and that means that its not a controlled substance. Its not something that in their words could be diverted. Its not really something that would be sold for illegal use. So this is something for people often who view opioid use and risky drug use as much at least a criminal justice issue as a health issue. Its a very appealing pitch. Our drug they would say is non-addictive, its not an opioid. You could use it in your correctional facility. Theres no risk of it really being sold on the black market. You cant overdose on Vivitrol. So thats the kind of language and thats the kind of appeal that Alkermes has broadly made and theyve done it not just to physicians, as is standard in the pharmaceutical industry, but in a lot of criminal justice settings. So thereve been pitches to parole boards for instance, that when people are released from a correctional setting, they are prescribed Vivitrol because it makes one essentially immune as theyd say to the effects of a drug like heroin or in a drug court setting there would be requirements Sure were not going to put you in jail as a result of your drug possession conviction, but if were going to give you community service or some non incarceration alternative, one thing that would go along with that is being prescribed Vivitrol. So theres been this very aggressive and very broad push at the federal level, at the state, at the local level to make sure that Vivitrol is seen as this non-addictive, non-opioid drug regardless of the efficacy measurements compared to the other two drugs that have also become part of the standard of care for opioid addiction, methadone and buprenorphine.

Adam: So lets talk about this efficacy issue. Cause that obviously seemed central here, this all seems rather puritan to me as a layman, that theres obviously these things are very measurable. You can sort of quantify and qualify the extent to which, which ones better than the other. It seems like the marketing appeal is a fundamentally conservative appeal. It sort of seems more wholesome, which does not necessarily make good health policy. So can we talk about the efficacy concerns, what some of the downsides are to this kind of cold turkey method and what are health experts finding frustrating with the ways in which the Trump administration and the media is sort of playing into this kind of puritanical dichotomy?

Lev Facher: Sure. So youre right that efficacy is going to be the central question here. We can go back to November 2017, thats when the National Institute on Drug Abuse put out a study comparing two drugs head to head, they were Vivitrol and Suboxone, which is a very common formulation of buprenorphine combined with naloxone and found essentially that the two drugs had roughly equivalent efficacy when it came to reducing overdose and reducing mortality related to drug use. Theres a huge caveat though, which is that people notoriously have difficulty continuing courses of treatment on Vivitrol. So essentially what this NIDA study said was that for people who continue to take Vivitrol, treatment is as effective as with people who continue to take buprenorphine. So essentially two people both in recovery and they both continue to take these different options, these different pharmacological treatment options, each of them, their mortality likelihood is reduced. Their risk of drug use is going to be reduced by about an equivalent level. So it is an apples to apples comparison that shapes up very well for Vivitrol with the caveat that people just have much more trouble continuing Vivitrol treatment, which is to say overall there is an emerging body of data that suggests people on buprenorphine are just more likely to not experience an overdose and to not experience an overdose death . But as I said, theres not a ton of data here. And of course, as I said, the marketing is really central just in terms of Alkermes and not just Alkermes, but a lot of people who have, you know, kind of more old fashioned attitudes about addiction and behavioral health disorders and treating addiction. Theres really a very fundamental appeal in prescribing and taking a drug thats not an opioid, thats not a controlled substance. And thats really central to the whole debate.

Adam: Right.

Zachary Siegel: And theres another big caveat with that study. So theres this like induction problem. So with Vivitrol people need to be off of all opioids for about a week before they can start it. So that means they need to go through a quite grueling withdrawal process before they can be administered their first Vivitrol shot. Whereas with methadone or buprenorphine, you can start methadone the same day. So people really dont need to experience that nasty withdrawal phase. And with buprenorphine you have to wait, you know, depending on which opioid you were addicted to, like 24 to 36 hours, which is really before the withdrawal becomes very intense. And so in the literature its just like called the induction problem whereby its harder to get people started on Vivitrol in the first place and then like youre saying, its also more difficult to keep them on it month to month.

Lev Facher: Right. And Ive actually written, with the huge caveat that I am not a physician, but theres a growing movement around the country to induce people on buprenorphine treatment almost immediately after a nonfatal overdose. So in an emergency room setting, its becoming more common for an emergency room physician to offer someone buprenorphine. I wrote a few months ago that the state of New Jersey actually, the health commissioner there authorized paramedics to induce people whove just been revived or treated for a non fatal overdose in the state of New Jersey, I wrote recently the health commissioner there has authorized paramedics to offer people whove undergone a non fatal overdose buprenorphine essentially on the spot. So paramedics in ambulances can carry buprenorphine and can begin the treatment process very soon after someone is stabilized post nonfatal overdose. As you say, yeah, its very difficult to immediately begin Vivitrol treatment. It does require what people would call a detox period. One thing that has helped with that is that in 2018 the FDA approved a drug called Lofexidine, which is specifically targeted to treat opioid withdrawal symptoms. So people see that if you want to use Vivitrol, if thats the desired treatment drug, people do see that drug Lofexidine as a bit of a bridge through that week or ten day period to treatment. But absolutely the thing about methadone and buprenorphine that a lot of physicians view as a huge advantage is the rapid nature in which you can begin treatment because when people seek treatment, addiction physicians like to be able to provide it.

Adam: I want to establish the kind of stakes here in terms of suffering. I imagine that if I am someone with an addiction problem and you offer me the thing thats similar to the thing that I had an addiction to and this other thing that just told me cold turkey, Im probably going to prefer the former and I imagined that week or ten day period is pretty goddamn miserable. Is there any sense of how thats quantified into this equation? Is there any data about like the sort of suffering involved in that, cause I know that efficacy looks at like curing or sort of getting over addiction, but obviously theres a sort of mental health component and is there any sense of suicide rates or anything that would indicate that a cold turkey method is basically kind of a hellish experience and how does that sort of quantify? How do we put that into the calculus here?

Lev Facher: You know, I dont have data to cite for you, nor have I experienced this myself, but I can tell you that people view unsupervised detox, untreated detox as dangerous and agonizing. Theres no question, and I think there are instances in which people have died during this detox period. Im not saying that has anything to do with use of Vivitrol or intention to use that drug, but its absolutely a very, very vulnerable period for people, especially sometimes people who are incarcerated, dont have access to the drugs that they had previously been using and also dont have access to the treatment drugs like methadone and buprenorphine that would mitigate those withdrawal symptoms.

Zachary Siegel: Right. And I think, changing topics slightly, theres the sort of stigma and misinformation about drugs like methadone and buprenorphine that are part of the marketing pitch and the political landscape. And you wrote about Trumps Opioid Commission back in 2018, so he convened a group of experts to sort of come out with a plank to mobilize a federal response to the overdose crisis. And you wrote a piece about how that commission wrote in favoritism for Vivitrol specifically. Can you sort of talk about why, again, the notions of addiction and how to treat it are sort of all pointing in Vivitrols favor?

Lev Facher: Sure, so Ill put it in the political context first. As you said, when President Trump was inaugurated, he very quickly commissioned a panel to address the opioid crisis. It was chaired by Chris Christie who then was the governor of New Jersey. It had a lot of really credible voices in addiction policy. Patrick Kennedy was on that commission, a few other governors, and they put out this sweeping set of recommendations later in 2017 that the addiction policy experts I spoke with largely thought were very holistic and really a good direction in which to move federal addiction policy. And President Trump knew that the opioid crisis wasnt just a huge issue in terms of the health and wellbeing of Americans, but it was a huge political issue. It was something that candidates heard about all over the 2016 campaign trail and here we are in 2017 all of a sudden, Republicans control the Senate, they control the House, they control the White House. So there is a desire for action on the opioid crisis, but the action is really being orchestrated on the part of people who are largely conservative and largely and historically have taken the view that drug use is a criminal justice issue. So to their credit, there are a lot of Republicans who in a very short span of time really evolved on the concept of medication assisted treatment and use of drugs like buprenorphine and methadone to treat opioid addiction. But there were some early mishaps, so Tom Price, he was the Health Secretary until late 2017 when he resigned in scandal, but he at one point infamously said essentially that he viewed use of a drug like buprenorphine as essentially substituting one opioid for another. Obviously, when you compare outcomes with, for example, heroin use and buprenorphine use, its really not a good comparison. Its not medically sound and he was pretty widely condemned by addiction physicians. But I say all this only to illustrate there really was a desire to distinguish between continuing strong enforcement efforts and not doing what people in conservative advocacy circles would characterize as facilitating opioid use. And in that frame, the White House put out a white paper in 2018 that essentially guided treatment. It recommended a course of treatment for the roughly 185,000 people incarcerated in the federal prison system and it essentially said for those people with substance use disorders, specifically with Opioid Use Disorder, upon their release, we are going to administer injectable naltrexone. And as I wrote back at the beginning of 2018 there is only one manufacturer of injectable naltrexone and it is Alkermes and their drug Vivitrol. So essentially the White House was recommending for the thousands and thousands of federal inmates who had an opioid addiction, we are going to give them this one drug of three potential options, which by the way is far and away the most expensive. This is a monthly shot that can exceed $1,000 per dose. And that was essentially the, the crux of that story.

Adam: Lets talk turkey here, lets talk what are the kind of forces at work behind the lobbying effort. Now, you had mentioned earlier that they sort of throw a lot of weight around. You live in DC. Thats kind of your beat. To a large extent, which is the influence aspect of this. Aside from the sort of anodyne sales pitch about not replacing one drug with another, which again sounds really warm and fuzzy for a certain crowd of people, how much money are we talking in terms of lobbying, in terms of pushing their weight around and what are the, what are the other solutions doing? Im not sure exactly who the players are here. What are they doing this sort of counterbalance that and is it, is it just a thing where everyones throwing money around and the reason why Vivitrol is popular is because it fits into a kind of Jeff Sessions worldview more easily?

Lev Facher: So Alkermes is absolutely a major lobbying presence here in Washington as is Pharma, the trade group for pharmaceutical companies that includes Alkermes as one of its members. Alkermes has a lot of lobbying firms registered to advocate on its behalf here in Washington. In 2018 they, in terms of my napkin math, spent just shy of $4 million on lobbying here. Theyve also funded a group called the Addiction Policy Forum, which has done some really valuable work in terms of creating a tool for people all over the country to find local addiction treatment resources and it doesnt point people in a particular direction on what treatment drug they should use, but at the same time, that group was run initially by a woman who had been registered to lobby for Alkermes at the time she founded the nonprofit, which was in turn funded by Pharma and Alkermes. So accounts really vary in terms of how hard Alkermes has pushed and lately its not so much simply because Washington isnt really working on addiction treatment legislation lately. They did that in 2018 they signed a big bipartisan bill. There was a bill signing in the East Room of the White House, President Trump really basked in the applause there. But at the time of that bill in 2018 and in 2016 when Congress passed the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act, there was certainly a lot of pushing and shoving between various manufacturers of addiction medications, but Alkermes really was insistent that when federal money was being distributed to treatment providers, those providers would be required to offer drugs in the three different categories, the opioid antagonist, the partial agonist and the full agonist and its just that when you write that into law, the effect it has is that providers have to carry Vivitrol because its the only drug that fits into that opioid antagonist category. And to be clear, there are physicians who think Vivitrol is a fantastic drug. Its a huge medical advance. I dont really know anyone who thinks it shouldnt be an option for patients with Opioid Use Disorder. I think its just people want to make sure it is one of many options and not the only one because as weve talked about, there are obstacles with withdrawal. There are obstacles with costs, there are obstacles just in terms of patients having the flexibility to choose what drug works for them. But as with really anything to do with the pharmaceutical industry here in DC, Alkermes and Pharma have a major lobbying presence and those addiction bills were not immune to the advocacy pushes that really occur with every major piece of legislation that moves through the city.

Zachary Siegel: And we dont have to really even be hypothetical about what it would look like to offer all three options inside a correctional facility. We have the Rhode Island study which offered methadone, buprenorphine and naltrexone, all three to all incoming prisoners or inmates who got screened and if they screened positive for Opioid Use Disorder, they were offered all three. And Ive talked to the researchers of that study like Tracy Green and she said, you know, overwhelmingly people choose buprenorphine. Some people choose methadone, some choose Vivitrol, and it just, its like when you practice medicine, everyones body is different. Everybody responds to medications differently. And if theres three drugs on the table for one condition, thats just how medicine works. You offer all three. So all of the issues to, you know, barring that from happening, again, just go right in the direction of Vivitrol as the only drug, which is, like were saying, you know, bad medicine. Bad policy.

Adam: Yeah. Which I mean, so my question would be, right now were talking at or about a party, Im curious what the party, the effect of the party were talking to both incarcerated and people with drug issues, the groups that are fighting on their behalf or the organizations on their behalf what is their general feeling about this in terms of the actual stakeholders and people who are being harmed here? Do you have a sense of what the consensus is on that? Is it a kind of all the above approach?

Lev Facher: I have not talked to any treatment and recovery advocate here in Washington or elsewhere who wants anything other than all three of those drugs to be made available for people seeking treatment.

Adam: Right. So its not even really a debate at this point. Its sort of just a, I mean cause this, to be clear to our listeners, and we, we talked about this at the top of the show, like that is not at all what the standard is now. Thats the standard only in a handful of places.

Lev Facher: Absolutely. And at this point I should say even Alkermes would tell you that they want their drug to be offered in the context of a broader array of treatment options. Its just that specifically when were talking about criminal justice settings, when were talking about drug courts, when were talking about federal prisons, when were talking about the incarcerated population, there are concerns there. If you can imagine a prison warden who is not a physician, is not an expert in addiction treatment and doesnt want any degree of people effectively trying to smuggle buprenorphine into the prison or methadone. And those are different conversations and we can talk about it for a while, but essentially the thinking is I dont want people using unprescribed opioids under my supervision regardless of whether theyre using them in what they would say is a recreational sense or whether theyre using them as a defacto mechanism for addiction treatment even though they havent been prescribed the drug, which is something we often see with buprenorphine. Theres a lot of unprescribed use, but thats not really what people would characterize as drug misuse. Its just unprescribed addiction treatment and weve seen varying approaches and municipalities to policing what they would refer to as buprenorphine diversion, but I digress. Yeah, there are criminal justice settings in which Alkermes has pushed Vivitrol as, practically speaking, the only option just because a prison, a drug court isnt going to be in a position isnt going to want to facilitate buprenorphine or methadone use and Vivitrol is pitched as such a low risk drug, again, not a controlled substance, not an opioid that there are settings in which its been pitched as not one of several options but the only one and thats where experts in policy and in medicine really have a problem.

Adam: This has been really informative. You want to talk about the work you do at Stat and maybe push them wares here in terms of what youre working on and where people can check out your work and what they have to look forward to.

Lev Facher: I appreciate that. So people should check out statnews.com were a health and science website run by the Boston Globe Company. Weve really taken the lead in covering Purdue Pharmas role in the opioid crisis. We actually spent about three years battling Purdue in court in Kentucky. Recently the Kentucky Supreme Court ruled that Purdue has to release all records of some depositions conducted with members of leadership in that company and the Sackler family that owns it. And those documents are still being released and Stat is still reporting on them. So if thats something that interests you, by all means follow us on Twitter and check our website. A lot of really good comprehensive coverage of addiction, both from a policy and political standpoint and from a medicine standpoint and just what its done to communities across the country.

Adam: Alright, Lev Facher, Stat News. Thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate it.

Zachary Siegel: Thank you.

Lev Facher: Thanks so much for having me.

Adam: Thanks to our guest Lev Facher from StatNews and I also want to thank our special guest who joined us in the studio today, Zach Siegel, thank you so much for coming on.

Zachary Siegel: Hey, thanks for having me. Im just really glad that this topic is getting out there.

Adam: Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. I am too. This episode was a collaboration between The Appeal and Northeastern University Law Schools Health and Action Lab Changing the Narrative. The episode was co-produced and co-written by Zachary Siegel. The show is produced by Florence Barrau-Adams. The production assistant is Trendel Lightburn. Executive producer is Craig Hunter. Im your host Adam Johnson. Thank you so much. Well see you in January.

Here is the original post:

The Appeal Podcast: The Regressive Pseudoscience of Our 'War on Opioid Addiction' - The Appeal

A Canadian man was arrested in Australia and accused of being a representative of a high-level transnational organized crime syndicate that imported 645 kilograms of ecstasy cleverly hidden inside a shipment for barbecues.

The Canadian flew to Australia a week ago and the day after he arrived went to a warehouse to inspect the cargo, police allege. Unbeknownst to him, however, the shipment had been intercepted by Australian authorities, the drugs replaced with fakes and officers lay in wait.

Laert Kasaj, 33, of Thornhill, Ont, north of Toronto was arrested Monday.

He is one of two men arrested so far in the large probe.

Weve been able to ascertain that this is truly an international syndicate that the drugs came from Cyprus, we have inquiries in the U.K., we have a man whos come from Canada and weve arrested a person in Brisbane, said Kirsty Schofield, commander of the organized crime division of the Australian Border Force.

The investigation began in July when the Cyprus Drug Law Enforcement Unit tipped Australian authorities to a suspicious incoming shipment that had already departed the port of Limassol in Cyprus for Sydney.

The Australian Border Force intercepted the shipping container when it arrived on July 17, 2019. Inside were 200 aluminum barbecues. X-rays revealed that many of them had a false bottom aluminum plate. Packages of a brown crystalline substance were found under the false bottoms.

In an attempt to conceal it, the packages had been vacuum sealed (likely to reduce odour to avoid drug-sniffing dogs) and lined and layered with carbon paper (likely to interfere with X-ray penetration).

The substance was found to be MDMA, commonly known as ecstasy, and weighed 645 kilograms, authorities said.

The drugs were removed from the barbecues and replaced with an inert substance and police monitored the shipments delivery to its destination a warehouse in a suburb of Sydney.

It sat there, untouched and ignored, for more than three months.

Schofield wouldnt say why investigators think it was not picked up for so long, saying it was sensitive information. Its possible they were waiting for approval of the Canadian or perhaps the syndicate was trying to make sure police werent watching it.

In any event, starting in October, the barbecues were gradually moved to a second warehouse in an industrial suburb of Sydney. An Australian man from outside Brisbane about 900 kilometres up the coast of Australia arrived and started to remove the packages of purported ecstasy and prepare it for further distribution, police said.

It was then that the Canadian man arrived in Australia.

Kasaj flew to Sydney from Toronto, arriving on Dec. 10, authorities said. He traveled on a tourist visa.

The next day he went to the industrial warehouse. He was there to inspect the barbecues, said Schofield.

We will allege in court he was sent by the syndicate responsible for the MDMA to check on aspects of the importation, she said. He was also described as a liaison for the syndicate.

He was arrested Monday near Brisbane as he got off a ferry after a day trip to visit Bribie Island. Also arrested was a 30-year-old Australian man. Simultaneous raids and search warrants were executed in Australia, Britain and Cyprus.

Police seized Aus$100,000 (about $90,000) in cash at the apartment of the Australian man and $200,000 (about $180,000) and 3.5 kilograms of cocaine in another residence.

In Britain, persons of interest were identified.

The Canadian man was charged with one count of aid, abet counsel or procure an imported border controlled drug. The maximum penalty is life imprisonment.

Danielle Yannopoulos, New South Wales commander of the Australian Border Force, said there was enough ecstasy in the shipment to press into 2.2 million pills, which, if sold at street level, could generate Aus$61 million, which is about $55 million.

At the ABF weve seen it all

At the ABF weve seen it all. Weve seen it hidden in highlighters, hot chili sauce; weve even found it in an excavator and a bunch of cowhides. So not much surprises us these days, Yannopoulos said.

A shipment of souvenir snow globes from Canada was recently seized in Australia when the liquid inside the glass was found to be dissolved methamphetamine.

We understand the complexity and the sophistication of transnational and serious organized crime and thats exactly why law enforcement agencies are banding together across domestic and international partnerships to fight the war on drugs.

Authorities said the investigation is ongoing and more arrests are expected, including arrests abroad.

Email: ahumphreys@nationalpost.com | Twitter:

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Canadian arrested in Australia after 645 kilos of ecstasy found hidden in shipment of 200 barbecues - National Post