How bankruptcy was broken – The Week

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Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) wants to fix American bankruptcy law. Indeed, as she's told people many times, studying bankruptcy is what convinced Warren to quit her career as a Harvard professor and enter politics it's largely why she jumped ship from the Republicans to the Democrats, and why she became a populist progressive firebrand. As part of her campaign for the Democrats' presidential nomination, Warren just released a meaty plan to reform U.S. bankruptcy law.

The proposals are designed to once again make bankruptcy what it's intended to be: a balanced process that allows creditors to recoup some losses and gives debtors a genuine fresh start, while making sure both parties share responsibility for the failure. But how did American bankruptcy break in the first place? The key turning point was a 2005 law, backed by the banking and credit card industries, that made personal bankruptcy a lot harder to obtain.

Personal bankruptcy comes in two forms. Chapter 7 bankruptcy more or less wipes out people's debt, in exchange for their handing over assets and cash not protected by law from bankruptcy proceedings. The basic idea there is to allow the debtor to start over with a clean slate and make sure the creditor is reimbursed to some degree, but also that the debtor retains enough resources that they can actually start over. Chapter 13 bankruptcy allows the debtor to keep much more of their property, but also puts them on a long-term payment plan.

The Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act (or BAPCPA) of 2005 made a number of changes: It significantly increased the paperwork and fees required to file Chapter 7 for people making over 150 percent of the poverty line. It also made it a lot harder for people to take Chapter 7 over Chapter 13 if they made more than their state's median income. The law forbade Americans from getting rid of student loan debt through bankruptcy, and it instituted a number of other changes that generally made the process less forgiving.

In the years before the 2005 law, personal bankruptcies were on the rise, and champions of BAPCPA claimed people were abusing an overly lax system hence all the additional hurdles that BAPCPA brought. The law's proponents also argued that making bankruptcy harder to obtain would lower the cost of credit for all the other Americans who didn't file for bankruptcy. (Interestingly, BAPCPA's fans included one Senator Joseph Biden a Democrat from Delaware, where a huge proportion of America's credit card companies are based, and one of Warren's current challengers for the partys presidential nomination.)

Taking the opposite side of the fight were people like Warren, who argued that rising bankruptcies were caused not by personal shiftlessness, but by a decades-long trend of Americans getting squeezed by stagnating wages and ever-rising costs of living. That left working people in ever more precarious financial straits, in which one run of bad luck could pitch a family over the precipice. "The data showed that nearly 90 percent of these families were declaring bankruptcy for one of three reasons: a job loss, a medical problem, or a family breakup," Warren wrote.

Since BAPCPA's passage, it does look like credit became cheaper for Americans: "Typical credit card interest rates for people with fair credit might be in the mid- rather than low 20s had the reforms not been adopted," according to a summation of the research by Vox's Matt Yglesias. But the price of that reduction was that a lot of low-income families who aren't quite poor enough to fall below 150 percent of the poverty line got slammed by the increased paperwork and fees and the shift to more Chapter 13 filings. Filings for bankruptcy due to medical debt fell, and of course a lot of Americans were condemned to labor under student debt they couldn't get rid of. The period of time where people and families struggle with the decision whether to file bankruptcy nicknamed "the sweatbox" also grew considerably. That's more time in which people are bleeding down their finances, while banks and creditors continue to profit from their debt payments.

Warren's new plan proposes a number of reforms to BAPCPA. The centerpiece is she would combine Chapter 7 and Chapter 13 into one singular bankruptcy process, while doing away with the income tests and the higher fees and paperwork. Debtors would be able to choose the wipe-the-slate-clean approach or the payment-plan approach, depending on their needs. Warren would include student debt in the mix of debts that bankruptcy can do away with. Warren would also raise the amount of home equity that filers can hold onto during the bankruptcy process, and she would empower bankruptcy judges to adjust the payment terms of mortgages something the Obama administration promised to do in response to the 2008 housing crisis, and then reneged on.

Other noteworthy changes include allowing parents to protect more money for spending on their children during bankruptcy; allowing union members to keep paying their union dues; and allowing people to keep paying rent, so that the bankruptcy process doesn't result in their eviction. In fact, a lot of these alterations started life as amendments that lawmakers tried to attach to BAPCPA itself, but that were ultimately shot down.

In sum, Warren would make bankruptcy more affordable, accessible, and flexible for debtors, while simultaneously expanding the types of debt they can get rid of and the critical resources they can hold onto like homes, cars, and union benefits so that they actually can start again.

As for alternative ways to lower the costs of credit across the economy, Warren doesn't get into that. But lawmakers should consider hard legal caps on interest rates an idea floated by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) rather than trying to appease the banking industry by essentially sacrificing more American families to them.

Zooming out to the big picture, capitalism only functions when people are free to take risks without fearing that failure will be the end of them. Every loan is a risk; an effort to do something in the economy better than was done before. And a crucial thing to realize is that the decision to create the loan is a risk taken by the creditor as much as by the debtor both are equally responsible if the risk happens to not pan out. It's worth noting that corporations and wealthy individuals file for bankruptcy all the time often with far more advantages and options for protections than everyday consumers have and yet failure to pay debts in full only gets treated as a distinctly moral failing when everyday Americans are the debtors.

In that sense, the moral and social scales of bankruptcy have shifted much too far in favor of creditors which is to say, in favor of the rich and the powerful. Let's take a cue from Warren and push them back.

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How bankruptcy was broken - The Week

The Americans Joe Biden Left Behind on the Bankruptcy Bill – The American Prospect

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Elizabeth Warrens new consumer bankruptcy plan (Full disclosure: I consulted with the Warren campaign on the policy) aims squarely at unwinding one of former Vice President Joe Bidens chief legislative accomplishments, the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 (BAPCPA). The bankruptcy bill was perhaps the most antimiddle class piece of legislation in the past century. It was also Warrens introduction into the bare-knuckle world of legislative politics. She fought the bill tirelessly and succeeded in blocking it for nearly a decade. Her new plan makes clear that she hasnt given up the fight.

Bidens support for BAPCPA is well known, but his numerous roll call votes on amendments to the bill have never been previously examined. Warrens plan draws sharp attention to these votes by adopting many of the very positions Biden opposed. An examination of Bidens roll call votes paints a very different picture of Bidens involvement with the bill than the vice president likes to present. The record makes clear that as a senator, Biden used his clout to push for the laws passage and to defeat amendments to shield servicemembers, women, and children from its harsh treatment. When votes were taken, Middle-Class Joe was no friend to the middle class.

Bankruptcy is the last resort for millions of families that find themselves overburdened with debt, often through no fault of their own, as a result of uninsured medical expenses, life savings stolen by a drug-addicted child, or a global financial crisis. By enabling honest but unfortunate debtors to wipe out debts, bankruptcy serves as a financial safety net for families desperately trying to stay in the middle class.

Bankruptcy law offers debtors a choice between a Chapter 7 and a Chapter 13 process. In Chapter 7, debtors surrender their current assets above a minimum level to creditors, but retain all of their future income. In Chapter 13, debtors retain their assets, but are required to devote all of their disposable income for several years to a demanding payment plan. Chapter 7 gives debtors an immediate fresh start, by wiping out most debts. Chapter 13 debtors have to repay more, and many ultimately fail to complete payment plans.

As the Prospect detailed Tuesday, BAPCPA made it harder for consumers to file for Chapter 7 by imposing a means test for Chapter 7 eligibility, and by substantially increasing the cost of filing for bankruptcy. This caused debtors average total out-of-pocket costs for filing for Chapter 7 to rise from $600 to $2,500. The subsequent result was a permanent 50 percent drop in Chapter 7 bankruptcy filings. BAPCPA made bankruptcy too expensive for the most broke households, making financial stress, mortgage defaults, and foreclosures more likely, particularly after the 2008 financial crisis.

Not only did the law discourage bankruptcy filings, but it made it harder to wipe out credit card debt and student loans in bankruptcy. The result was greater profits for consumer lending businesses, many of which are based in Bidens state of Delaware. Not surprisingly, then, by lowering the risk of bad lending decisions, the Biden bankruptcy bill unleashed a glut of aggressive private student lending, which has contributed to the massive rise in student loan debt.

The bankruptcy bill was perhaps the most antimiddle class piece of legislation in the past century.

BAPCPAs passage was one of Bidens long-sought goals as a senator. Not only did Biden vote for the legislation four times between 1998 and 2005, but he was so singularly committed to its success that he inserted it into a foreign-relations bill in 2000, and later was the sole Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee to vote for the bill.

Biden also consistently voted against efforts to soften BAPCPAs blow on vulnerable populations. He voted against three amendments to ease bankruptcy requirements for consumers whose financial troubles stem from medical expenses. He voted against an amendment that would have helped seniors keep their homes. He voted against exempting servicemembers and widows of servicemembers killed in action from the laws eligibility restrictions. He voted against an amendment to exempt women whose financial troubles stemmed from deadbeat husbands failure to pay child support or alimony. And Biden even voted against an amendment that would have ensured that children of debtors could still be given birthday and Christmas presents. Biden also voted against allowing debtors to pay their union dues during bankruptcy, potentially imperiling their employment and ability to achieve financial rehabilitation.

Several of these amendments are resurrected in the Warren bankruptcy plan, including the union dues and children of debtors amendments.

Its not as if Joe Biden was opposed to all amendments to the legislation: He voted to enshrine a millionaires loophole that allows wealthy, well-counseled debtors to shield their assets from creditors by placing them in asset-protection trusts. Nor did he act to cut off the loophole that shields assets placed by wealthy families in dynasty trusts, such as are offered by Delaware.

Biden claims that he worked to ensure that the legislation protected the interests of women and children by making the repayment of alimony and child support obligations the top priority in bankruptcy. This is false. Prior to BAPCPA, domestic support obligations were formally eighth in line for repayment. Functionally, however, they were second in line, right after the administrative costs of the bankruptcy, because the obligations ranked second through seventh priority, such as emergency bailout loans from the Federal Reserve or money owed to grain elevators, do not exist in consumer bankruptcy cases. The Biden bankruptcy bill rewrote the statute to provide that domestic-support obligations are to be paid firstunless there are administrative expenses. In other words, BAPCPAs protections for women and children wereall window dressing. Women and children still stand behind administrative expenses in bankruptcy. The claim that BAPCPA helped women and children is simply dishonest.

If anything, BAPCPA actually hurt women and children, as womens groups argued at the time. Because BAPCPA made it impossible to wipe out certain credit card and student loan debt in bankruptcy, it meant that banks would be able to compete with child support and alimony claims for deadbeat ex-husbands remaining assets after the bankruptcy.

Its hard to reconcile the Biden bankruptcy bill with Bidens claims of being Middle-Class Joe. When it counted, Joe Biden looked out for millionaires and the banks, not the middle class.

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The Americans Joe Biden Left Behind on the Bankruptcy Bill - The American Prospect

Wasted: How To Prevent Emotional Bankruptcy When Youre Overdrawn In Your Career – Forbes

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Wasted at work? There are steps you can take before overextending yourself leads to emotional ... [+] bankruptcy and burnout.

The Hustle Joyride: This Centurys Cocaine

Overextending yourself is this centurys cocaine, its problem without a name. Workweeks of sixty, eighty, even a hundred hours are commonplace in major law firms and corporations; tribes of modern-day male and female Willy Lomans, manacled to cellphones, trundle through the nations airports at all hours with their rolling luggage; cafes are filled with serious young people bent over laptops; young workers at dot-coms are available for work 24/7. Could this be you?

The research team at ZenBusiness recently surveyed over 1,000 managers and employees to explore what motivates people to work overtime, how frequently it occurs and what employees think of their colleagues working overtime. The study found the top six reasons employees work overtime are:

If youre clocking overtime as you start the new year, youll be excited to learn from ZenBusiness that over 70% of managers perceive employees who work overtime as hardworking and committed. While this is good news, and all of us want to be perceived as hardworking and committed, theres a huge downside if you allow your bosss accolades to outweigh your own self-care. Be careful to interpret this study as a message that you should work harder to be successful, even if it means hitting the point of emotional bankruptcy. Researchers report that employees who regularly put in overtime work of 11-hour days or more are at higher risk for cardiovascular disease, major depression, decreased productivity and poor job performance. Other long-standing research shows that overextending yourself leads to escalating anger, depression, perfectionism, generalized anxiety, health complaints, greater unwillingness to delegate job responsibilities and higher incidences of burnout. And the story doesnt end there. The Harvard Business Review, reports that the mental and physical problems of burnt-out employees costs corporate America around $125 billion to $190 billion a year in healthcare spending. So lets back up for a second.

At first the accolades, slaps on the back, fat paychecks and gold plaques make you feel its all worth the effort. But after a while, it starts to feel like an unwelcome burden. You have a lot on your plate. Youve got to do it perfectly. Can you measure up? Or will you let others down? Youve got to prove you can do it. If you fall short, you dig your heels in deeper. You cant let up because everyones depending on you. Some folks wear their always on label like a prize, but if youre like most workers, the picture is far more subtle. You dont party or stay out late. You dont waste your time or throw money down the drain. Youre level-headed and rational. Youve been called dedicated, responsible and conscientious. You work long and hard, and youre always at your desk or available electronically.

Burrowing itself deeper into your soul, the habit of overextending yourself is like a prisoners chain that moves with you wherever you go. When youre not at your desk, your exhausting compulsive thoughts are still there. They beat you to the office before you begin the day. They stalk you in your sleep, at a party or while youre hiking with a friend. They loom over your shoulder when youre trying to have an intimate conversation with your main squeeze. You cant stop thinking about, talking about or engaging in tasks and projects. You have rigid thinkingsometimes called stinkin thinkingpatterns that feed your anxiety, reminding you how much you have undone. When youre preoccupied with completing tasks, you dont notice signals, such as physical aches and pains or a reduced ability to function, that warn of serious health problems.

Your projects take priority over every aspect of your life. You get soused by overloading yourself with more tasks than you can possibly complete. You toil around the clockhurrying, rushing and multitasking to meet unrealistic deadlines. You might even throw all-nighters, sometimes sleeping off a work binge in your clothes. The compulsive thoughts engulf you in a work fog called a brownout, numbing you to anxiety, worry and stress as well as to other people. Work highs, reminiscent of an alcoholic euphoria, run a cycle of adrenaline-charged binge working, followed by a downward swing. Euphoria eventually gives way to work hangovers characterized by withdrawal, depression, irritability, anxiety and in extreme cases even thoughts of suicide.

The Adrenaline Rush

Studies link overextending yourself to a rush of adrenalinea hormone released in times of stressthat has an effect similar to amphetamines or speed. The release of adrenaline, like other drugs, creates physiological changes that lead to work highsthat become addictive and may even be fataloften described as a rush or surge of energy pumping through the veins and an accompanying euphoria as an adrenaline high. At some point, the euphoria requires larger doses to maintain the high, created by adding more to the to-do list and increasing stress levels to the maxto get the body to pump its fix.

After a long week, a university professor left his office, butterflies in his stomach, at the thought of facing an unplanned weekend. On his way out, he was handed a memo announcing grant-proposal deadlines. Suddenly, calm descended on him, and the adrenaline began to flow as he folded the three-inch-thick computer printout under his arm. Like an alcoholic with a bottle under one arm, who was assured of plenty to drink, the professor was calmed by the guarantee of having more to do, filling the hours and giving him purpose. It was an anesthetic, a tranquilizer. After the proposal was written, the feelings of emptiness, unrest and depression returned. That professor was me, unknowingly on my way to burnout.

If youre always on, the need for adrenaline, in effect, creates a dependence on crises that lead the body to produce the hormone and give you the drug. Pushing subordinates or yourself to finish designated assignments within unrealistic deadlines is one way crises are achieved. Another is biting off too much at one time or attempting to accomplish many tasks at once. But while you get high, coworkers and subordinates experience stress and burnout. The adrenaline flow also has a boomerang effect, blocking the bodys ability to clear dangerous cholesterol from the bloodstream. Elevated cholesterol levels clog arteries, damage their inner lining and can cause heart attacks.

Are You Overdrawn? Preventing Emotional Bankruptcy

If youre burning the candle at both ends, you could be headed for emotional bankruptcy or burnoutthe physical exhaustion and depletion of emotional energy brought on by the stress of producing at the expense of taking care of yourself. Fortunately, self-care can recharge your batteries if youre facing burnout.

Think of yourself as a bank account. When overloading yourself withdraws more than self-care, its time to make some deposits toward your well-being. Practice setting limits on the demands placed on you or that you place on yourself, leaving yourself elbow room to stretch and breathe and time to look out the window or take a walk around the block. Set aside fifteen minutes to an hour each day to relax, exercise, play, meditate, pray, practice deep breathing or just watch the grass grow. Eat nutritious foods instead of fast food on the run and get ample sleep. Then look inside yourself and examine your motivations for overextending yourself. If you end up helping someone, make sure youre in the habit of showing them how to fish instead of feeding them fish. Sometimes the best way to accomplish you career goals is to have the goal of caring for yourself first.

Think of these practices as building investments in you. Make sure your daily deposits equal the withdrawals that overextending debits from your personal account. Ask yourself if you made a to-be list alongside your to-do list, what you would put on it such as soaking in a hot bath, enjoying a hobby, getting a massage or nature bathing with a hike. One item on my to-be list is sitting outdoors listening to the sounds of nature. Jot down a few of your items and check a few off in the next twenty-four hours. Continue to excel at your job and savor your managers praise, but take steps to prevent overextending yourself to the point of burnout. Youll be happier and healthier, thrive and enjoy more productivity and job performance. And instead of overextending yourself, youll overextend your career trajectory.

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Wasted: How To Prevent Emotional Bankruptcy When Youre Overdrawn In Your Career - Forbes

Pier 1 Is Closing Half Of Its Stores; Is Bankruptcy Next? – Forbes

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About 450 of its stores are being cast off to sea..(Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Pier 1 Imports is trimming its salesabout 450 of them.

In announcing another quarter of losses and declining sales, the company dropped a bombshell in saying it would close 450 of its stores, representing nearly half of its overall fleet.

The news comes amid swirling rumors, unconfirmed, that the retailer will file for bankruptcy soon. Such a move would not be unexpected given the task of getting out of store leases without the benefit of bankruptcy proceedings.

They would also be consistent with the prior history of the companys CEO, Robert Riesbeck, who was named to the post only this past November and has a history in turnaround efforts and bankruptcies. Earlier in his career, he was CEO of consumer electronics chain HH Gregg when it filed for bankruptcy in 2017. It was eventually liquidated.

Along with the store closings, a timetable for which was not announced, the company said it would cut its headquarters staff as well as some distribution centers. Bloomberg has reported the staff cuts amount to 40% of its corporate staff, or about 300 people. Pier 1 has not commented on these reports.

While the company had previously said it would close 70 doors later upped to as many as 150 this new round clearly represents a major step-up in its efforts to stay afloat. It has had declining comp store sales for nine quarters, including 11.4% this quarter, and losses for the most recent period exceeded those of a year ago.

Trading in the companys stock was halted mid-afternoon on Monday after falling nearly 17% and that continued to decline in after-hours trading.

Pier 1 has struggled for years, churning through a series of executives and marketing strategies, all the while dealing with a store count increasingly out of proportion to its overall business and the rise of e-commerce. Under prior management, online sales were discontinued for a period of time and while they were resumed the company has had to play catch-up online ever since.

With a radically reduced physical presence, Pier 1 could be in a position to be better suited to the retail landscape, but its lackluster stores, often poorly located and underinvested in over the past few years, will still have to carry the load as it tries to get fully up to speed online.

Riesbeck, in announcing the bad news, said he remained hopeful these steps would buy the company some time to fix its problems: Looking ahead, we believe that we will deliver improved financial results over time as we realize the benefits of our business transformation and cost-reduction initiatives.

Its what CEOs are paid to say when all signs would seem to indicate the ship is going down.

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Pier 1 Is Closing Half Of Its Stores; Is Bankruptcy Next? - Forbes

Hospital bankruptcies leave sick and injured nowhere to go – Houma Courier

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A quiet crisis is unfolding for U.S. hospitals, with bankruptcies and closures threatening to leave some of the country's most vulnerable citizens without care.

As a gauge of distress in the health-care sector has soared, at least 30 hospitals entered bankruptcy in 2019, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. They range from Hahnemann University Hospital in downtown Philadelphia to De Queen Medical Center in rural Sevier County, Arkansas and Americore Health, a company built on preserving rural hospitals.

There's more distress to come. Already this week, the bankrupt owner of St. Vincent Medical Center in Los Angeles said it plans to shut the facility after a failed sale attempt.

The pressures on the sector are as tangled as the health-care system itself.

Americans are fleeing rural areas in favor of urban centers, reducing the demand for hospital services in already struggling communities. In both cities and towns, many hospitals that care for impoverished citizens often rely heavily on government payments that reimburse less than private insurers and may fail to cover rising costs.

The American Hospital Association, an industry group, calculated that payments from Medicare and Medicaid, the federal programs for the elderly and poor, lagged costs by $76.6 billion in 2018. Hospitals are also losing key income as more profitable procedures move to lower-cost outpatient centers.

If that weren't enough, with both Republicans and Democrats making a political football out of health care ahead of the 2020 presidential election, significant policy change could be near.

"How are you supposed to craft a business plan if you don't know if you're going to have an America with Medicare for all, or a complete repeal of the Affordable Care Act, or a million options in the middle?" said Sam Maizel, a partner with the Dentons US law firm who focuses on health-care restructuring. "If you knew Elizabeth Warren was going to get elected, you'd be writing a very different business plan."

Even before the election, the current system is being challenged, according to Georgetown University health-care policy professor Edwin Park. The Trump administration is trying to tighten eligibility rules for Medicaid, while a rule proposed late last year could also cut billions of dollars in supplemental payments to hospitals, he said. In a closely watched case, a district judge in Fort Worth, Texas is weighing whether Obamacare can survive after an appeals court ruled that its broad mandate requiring people to have health insurance was unconstitutional.

The usual playbook for managing distress doesn't readily apply. Shutting down a hospital isn't the same as boarding up a storefront. Hospitals are not only major employers, their closures often leave the most vulnerable patients bereft. Bankruptcy judges tend to push back on approving hospital closings in ways they wouldn't for a retailer, said Andrew Sherman, head of restructuring at law firm Sills Cummis & Gross.

In May, a 25-bed hospital in Sevier County, Arkansas shut down after sliding into such financial disrepair that a receiver was appointed, local newspaper The De Queen Bee reported. For many of the county's 17,000 residents, the hospital's emergency room provided the only such services within an hour's drive, court papers show. In suburban Chicago, Westlake Hospital was losing more than $1 million a month before it commenced a liquidation bankruptcy in August, sapping that community of about 550 jobs and 230 hospital beds.

"In a typical restructuring you're dealing with widgets," Sherman said. "In a health-care restructuring you're dealing with people's lives."

In many rural areas, the population just isn't large enough to justify keeping the lights on, according to Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Mike Holland. Morgan Stanley analysts led by Vikram Malhotra in 2018 found that 8% of U.S. hospitals were at risk of closing and another 10% were considered weak. AHA statistics released Tuesday show the number of U.S. hospitals fell by 64 to 6,146 in 2018, the most recent year available.

There's little reason to believe the situation has improved. The Polsinelli TrBK Health Care Services Distress Index, which tracks bankruptcy filings in the health-care sector, had nearly quadrupled as of the third quarter. The index uses 2010 as its benchmark year.

"Most of the cases we see, you're struggling to survive on a cash basis to try to get to a sale process," Sherman said. "People need to understand that these hospitals will continue to falter. Communities are going to have to inject more money if they want to maintain health care."

Some of the more recent closings are the result of large health systems weeding out weaker facilities. That's the case with hospitals run by Community Health Systems Inc. and its spin-off, Quorum Health Corp.

Quorum's revenue has been falling since it separated from Community Health in 2016. After bleak third-quarter results, the company said it would ask lenders to modify its debt agreements and reiterated a warning that it may not be able to stay afloat. Its shares and bonds plunged in the aftermath.

Late last year, KKR & Co. offered to take the company private at $1 a share in a deal that may help it refinance and stave off deeper distress.

Community Health, meanwhile, has piled up about $5 billion in losses in recent years as it labors under more than $13.5 billion in debt. A concentration of rural hospitals dependent on Medicare and Medicaid hurts Community Health, BI's Holland said. Expanded insurance coverage under the 2010 Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, also means more people are getting care earlier and not ending up in the company's hospitals, he said, or are being directed to lower-cost outpatient facilities.

"It's a problem now for hospitals to have sufficient inpatient revenues," said Eileen Appelbaum, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

A representative for Community Health said in a statement that factors including its recent refinancing, asset sales and a program to increase margins have positioned the company to continue to improve its operating performance.

A representative from Quorum didn't respond to a request seeking comment, while KKR declined to comment.

While rural hospitals are most at risk of failing, the controversial shutdown of Philadelphia's Hahnemann University Hospital could invite more disruption in urban centers, Appelbaum said.

Private-equity investor Joel Freedman bought Hahnemann in early 2018, but failed to revitalize the money-losing hospital and shut it after a trip through bankruptcy. Excluded from the filing, however, was its prime real estate in the heart of the city, which was separated into another entity.

Freedman didn't respond to requests for comment.

Despite the successful 2006 acquisition of HCA Healthcare Inc. by a consortium that included Bain Capital LP and KKR, private equity has found it isn't easy to make money running hospitals, Appelbaum said. The Hahnemann case may provide a new template, she said, calling the transaction "proof of concept" that if a hospital isn't profitable, you can shutter it and sell the real estate.

"Hahnemann is a safety-net hospital in a gentrifying area," Appelbaum said. "Probably every major city in America has safety-net hospitals in gentrifying areas, where the real estate is so much more valuable than the hospital to the private-equity company."

-- Bloomberg's Steven Church, Olivia Rockeman and Rick Green contributed to this report.

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Hospital bankruptcies leave sick and injured nowhere to go - Houma Courier

Hawaii hits 5-year high mark with increase in bankruptcies – Thegardenisland.com

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HONOLULU The number of bankruptcies in Hawaii rose for the second straight year in 2019, records showed.

There were 1,666 bankruptcy cases for the year, up 11.8% from 1,490 in 2018, The Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported Monday.

The data released Thursday by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Hawaii showed the 2019 mark was the highest since the states 1,702 bankruptcy filings in 2014.

The number of 2019 bankruptcies was less than half of the post- recession peak of 3,954 in 2010.

The states high cost of living is taking a toll on residents, with only a limited number of people benefiting from the rising stock market, said Ed Magauran, a Honolulu bankruptcy attorney.

I dont think there has been any change in the number of people who have not paid their debt, Magauran said.

As usual, the bottom 95% continue to suffer. The stock markets up unbelievable, but the people making money are the top 5% who are owners of public corporations, Magauran said. The other 95% are not making anything, and the last time I checked, in Hawaii a family with two children needs at least three jobs.

There were 1,135 Chapter 7 liquidation filings in 2019, up 12.8% from 1,006 in 2018.

Chapter 13 filings, which allow individuals with regular sources of income to set up plans to make installment payments to creditors over three to five years, rose 7.5% from 481 to 517.

Chapter 11 reorganization filings, which are primarily for business reorganizations, rose from three to 13.

By county, Honolulu filings rose from 1,093 to 1,238, Maui filings increased from 203 to 221 and Kauai filings rose from 60 to 74. Hawaii island filings decreased by one, from 134 to 133.

Bankruptcies rose in December in all four major counties.

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Hawaii hits 5-year high mark with increase in bankruptcies - Thegardenisland.com

Why the war on drugs must end – The Hill

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Theres a dangerous myth in sections of the public that the war on drugs is coming to an end. Its an idea that as cannabis legalization sweeps across the U.S. and many other nations around the world, legal prohibitions against drug use and abuse will soon be reduced or removed entirely.

In reality, the drug war has never been more ferocious, targeting minorities and the most vulnerable in the U.S. and abroad. In the U.S. in 2018, there were more arrests for marijuana than in 2017, despite 11 states now allowing legal cannabis for citizens over 21 years of age. The FBI released figures that detailed 663,367 marijuana arrests in the country in 2018. The majority of Americans, according to a number of polls in the last years, now support marijuana legalization.

Americans should be outraged that police departments across the country continue to waste tax dollars and limited law enforcement resources on arresting otherwise law-abiding citizens for simple marijuana possession, National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws Executive Director Erik Altieri said.

Cannabis is just the tip of the drug war iceberg. Although President Donald Trump has spoken regularly about escalating the war on drugs, blaming Mexico and drug cartels on the huge amounts of illicit substances entering the U.S., including heroin, cocaine, opioids and fentanyl, he ignores the elephant in the room: Millions of Americans want and need illegal drugs and illegality wont stop them. According to a recent report from the RAND corporation, in 2016 alone U.S. citizens spent $150 billion on cannabis, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamines.

The opioid epidemic is the worst drug crisis in the countrys history, killing hundreds of thousands of people and costing trillions of dollars. It was partly caused by pharmaceutical companies that saw an opportunity to make a fortune. Some of the biggest players, such as the Sackler family, are set to walk away from multibillion dollar settlements with billions of dollars still in their bank accounts.

Ive spent the last five years investigating the drug war around the world, and what Ive seen shocked me. Think of Honduras, a nation wracked by extreme violence and gang warfare. Much of the cocaine flowing into the U.S. from South America transits through Honduras, and the effect is a narco-state fully backed by the Trump administration (and the Obama White House before them). I witnessed what hundreds of millions of dollars of U.S. military support has created in the Central American state, a population thats fleeing its borders in huge numbers. Honduras is a failed state, partly destroyed by the immense power of drug cartels and criminal gangs to control the huge cocaine trade.The President Donald Trump era is seeing many vulnerable Honduran refugees being sent back to Honduras where they face threats and death.

Guinea-Bissau in West Africa is a key cocaine transit hub between South America and Europe. Labelled a narco-state by the UN,last year saw the countrys biggest ever drug bust, nearly two tonnes of cocaine. Although the nation doesnt suffer the same debilitating violence experienced by Honduras, ongoing political instability ensures that drug cartels view Guinea-Bissau as ripe for abuse.

In the Philippines under President Rodrigo Duterte, at least 30,000 mostly poor civilians have been murdered in the last three and a half years. Duterte remains a popular leader, able to convince a fearful population that his deadly approach on methamphetamine users will bring societal renewal. The Philippines is what happens when a war on drugs becomes quasi-genocidal.

In the UK, conservative governments have continued to punish the most vulnerable people with drug dependence. While drug use and abuse is soaring in the UK, the so-called Uberisation of the drug trade in Britain has made it the cocaine capital of Europe, vast parts of the country are being lost to devastating austerity policies. These harsh economic cuts are directly tied to unhealthy use and abuse of cocaine, heroin and other illicit substances.The newly elected Boris Johnson government is deaf to the need for radical changes around drug prohibition.

A range of solutions

Despite the ugliness that exists around the drug war, there are encouraging signs of hope. Most of the Democratic candidates for President in 2020 have drug policies that were unimaginable just four years ago. Tulsi Gabbard wants to decriminalize drugs like cocaine and heroin. Bernie Sanders advocates federal cannabis legalisation by executive order, ending the war on drugs, eliminating private prisons and reparations for communities disproportionately affected by the drug war (largely minorities and people of color).

Joe Bidens position on cannabis appears to be that he doesnt support full legalization (making him an outlier in the Democratic field). Elizabeth Warren has been vocal in her opposition to the war on drugs, backs legalised cannabis and safe injecting centres (a practice that already exists successfully in Europe and Australia).

One of the more exciting aspects of future U.S. drug policy revolves around the medical use of psychedelic drugs such as LSD, ecstasy and psilocybin (magic mushrooms). Lastyear, Oakland became the second U.S. city (after Denver) to decriminalise magic mushrooms. The potential use of these drugs to treat mental health issues, PTSD, addictions and end-of-life trauma are profound, and scientific studies concur. Ecstasy could be legally available through a registered doctor by the beginning of next decade.

Of course, drug legalization is only one aspect of changing societal attitudes towards drugs. The stigmas and stereotypes around drug use and abuse, pushed by many in the media for decades, must change. How we think, write and talk about drugs has contributed to politicians believing that they could prosecute a racialized drug war for over 100 years. For example, racial bias is endemic within the management of the opioid crisis in the U.S.; white sufferers are benefitting from doctors prescribing drugs to treat their problems while black sufferers are either ignored or denied appropriate medication.

Ending the drug war is more imaginable now than at any time in the last half century. It wont happen overnight, nor with President Donald Trump in the White House, but the appeal of harsh prohibition is dwindling. While the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) continues to receive obscenely huge amounts of government largesse, so many Americans now use and abuse drugs that its the height of futility to try and stop it. Punishing individuals who make the personal choice to consume an illicit substance has no place in the 21st century.

Antony Loewenstein is a Jerusalem-based Australian journalist who has written for The New York Times, The Guardian, the BBC, The Washington Post, The Nation, Huffington Post, Haaretz, and many others. His latest book is Pills, Powder and Smoke: Inside the Bloody War on Drugs. He's the author of Disaster Capitalism: Making a Killing Out of Catastrophe; the writer/co-producer of the associated documentary, Disaster Capitalism; and the co-director of an Al-Jazeera English film on the opioid drug tramadol. His other books include My Israel Question, The Blogging Revolution, and Profits of Doom, and he is the co-editor of the books Left Turn and After Zionism, and is a contributor to For Gods Sake.

Correction: The amount the U.S. spent in 2016 oncannabis, cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamines has been corrected.

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Why the war on drugs must end - The Hill

A wallflower’s report on the war on drugs – The Manila Times

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YEN MAKABENTA

First wordI AM asked by readers why I have not contributed my thoughts on Vice President (VP) Maria Leonor Robredos earthshaking report on the administrations war on drugs.

I refrained from comment for two reasons.

First, I find it difficult to give credence to VP Robredos report because she was never formally appointed to either 1) help in the implementation of the drug control program; or 2) investigate the ongoing drug war like an appointed commission of inquiry or public investigator.

If the report is the result of her 18-day stint as co-chairman of the Inter-Agency Committee on Anti-illegal Drugs (ICAD), I will ask how so brief an assignment enabled her to gain so much information and insights into the program that she can pronounce judgment over it

ICADs mission is mainly to coordinate the work of various government agencies that are involved in one way or another in the campaign against illegal drugs, such as the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA), the Dangerous Drugs Board (DDB), the Philippine National Police (PNP), and the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP). Policy-making for the drug program is vested in the DDB, as established by law. Implementation of drug policy is principally the work of PDEA, again as set by law.

At ICAD, Robredos work was peripheral to what was going on or had gone on in the program. She had no authority to do an investigation, let alone an extensive inquiry. She could ask for records of this and that or throw a few questions. But rendering an evaluation of the whole program was not part of her job description. She took on this assignment on her own volition.

Second, Robredo assumed that as ICAD vice chairman, she could make policy on her own with respect to the drug campaign, and that she could render an evaluation of the drug program.

But nothing in the work of ICAD covers these, they were entirely in the VPs imagination.

Commission of inquiryIt was not as if VP Robredo was asked by the President or Congress to head a commission of inquiry into the war on drugs, in much the same way that President Marcos created the Agrava Commission to conduct an inquiry and formal investigation of the assassination of former senator Benigno Aquino Jr. on Aug. 23, 1983.

If such a commission of inquiry were created for the drug war, the nation would justifiably have looked forward to its report on the investigation.

Robredos stint at ICAD is not even comparable to an investigation by a congressional committee on the drug war. This too would have conducted hearings and called witnesses. The public would be justified to look forward to the committee report.

In truth, Robredos report is really more like a piece of investigative journalism conducted on the war on drugs. It is similar to the reports of local and foreign media organizations that sought to take the measure of the drug campaign at various stages over the past three years.

As such, the Robredo inquiry would have been subject to the limitations and prejudgments that such independent inquiries fall into.

Would-be anti-drug czarWhen President Duterte designated Vice President Robredo as vice chairman of ICAD, she hurtled like a cannonball out of the appointment system, it was impossible even for a media organization like The Manila Times to keep track of what she was doing and of her many plans and initiatives.

First, Robredo declared that there should be no more deaths in anti-drug operations. She suggested that it was time to scrap Oplan Tokhang from the drug campaign because it was anti-poor and should be replaced. She apparently thought that she had been handed the authority to make policy in the anti-drug campaign.

Second, she got headlines when she said she was planning her own drug war and demanded that she be given a free hand in handling the drug menace in the country, free from interference by quarterbackers.

And then, she started meeting with officials of the United States and the United Nations.

When PDEA Director General Aaron Aquino, who co-heads ICAD with Robredo, challenged her to join an operation in the drug war, she readily agreed.

We are not backing down from a challenge. For me, whats important is what will be the result of the operation? Not who is there, she said.

Hollow appointmentFor all the flurry of activities, however, the ICAD appointment was essentially hollow. There was no clear light on the position she was supposedly appointed to and the duties and responsibilities that she was taking on.

Up to the end of her 18-day stint, Robredo never got the document that identified the scope of her responsibilities as co-chairman of ICAD, a position that is non-existent in the original executive order that created the inter-agency body.

But the lady was unfazed.

She declared: I dont want to waste time, so on the day that I accepted the designation, I already buckled down to work.

Her excitement was understandable.

She was waiting eagerly for another opportunity to join the Duterte administration, especially the Cabinet. She remembered her misery when she lost her place in the Cabinet after President Duterte took offense over some of her antics and statements, and fired her.

So this time around, the Vice President was determined to make a success of her second chance to serve in the Duterte Cabinet.

She glossed over the fact that the executive order creating ICAD does not create a post for a vice chairman. It includes many government agencies, but makes no mention of the vice president.

In effect, what really happened was that the vice president was being designated to serve in a temporary capacity, much like being given a chore to do. This happens all the time in the executive branch of government; the president designates executive officials to perform various tasks temporarily.

A wallflower in the drug warIn the total scheme of things in the campaign against illegal drugs, VP Robredo was really no more than a wallflower who had been given a fancy assignment in the campaign, but no real functions to fill. She was superfluous in the campaign.

She continued to be officially the Vice President, of course, but she had nothing to do with the drug campaign. No one reported to her, She did not even have an office as vice chairman. All she had was her grim determination to make a resounding success of her stint at ICAD.

Making a full-blown report on the drug war is one of her personal measures of being a success.

This is why, at the very start of her ICAD stint, she threatened to send a report on the drug war ever week to President Duterte. This way, she would demonstrate how hard she was working.

At the same time, she would also issue a press release or statement every day on what she was doing or what was in her mind.

All this vanished overnight when President Duterte suddenly decided to cut short her stint as ICAD vice chairman, just 18 days after her designation.

A problem of credenceOf what value then is her much-publicized report on the drug war, which declared it to be a massive failure?

I frankly cannot take the Robredo report on the drug war seriously, because I do not see in the record any effort or activity on her part that could have enabled her to achieve a full picture or privileged insight into the three-year campaign. She heard no testimony or quizzed any witnesses to piece together her report. She based everything on what was reportedly passed on to her when she was ICAD vice chairman, and on what was already in her mind from the very start.

In my view, VP Robredo was no more than a wallflower in the war on drugs who performed no essential task or function.

Being superfluous to the whole operation and her designation lasting no more than 18 days, Robredo has nothing substantive to report to the nation.

Would you turn to a wallflower to report on what happened at the prom or the dance?

Of course not.

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A wallflower's report on the war on drugs - The Manila Times

[ANALYSIS] The stroke of genius in Robredo’s drug war report – Rappler

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Policies ought to be informed by data. But many government officials would rather have us groping in the dark.

Nowhere is this more evident than in President Rodrigo Dutertes drug war, which started in 2016 and has since killed at least 30,000 people, according to human rights groups.

Even so, there are attempts to put some method in the madness.

Following her 18-day stint as co-chair of the Inter-agency Committee on Anti-illegal Drugs (ICAD), Vice President Leni Robredo finally released her findings on the drug war.

In a nutshell, Robredos study brought to light just how little the drug war has quelled the countrys drug problem.

But no sooner had the results been published than Duterte and his minions took turns to attack Robredo and dismiss her report.

They will do well to remember who appointed Robredo to the ICAD in the first place: Duterte himself.

Robredos report was also based wholly on government numbers, and therein lies its stroke of genius. She held up a mirror that reflected back to the drug wars principals and agents their dazzling incompetence.

Whats in the Robredo report anyway, and are the reactions valid?

Damning report

The highlight of Robredos 41-page report is a graph comparing the total amount of shabu seized by drug enforcement agencies throughout the drug war and the estimated consumption of shabu in the country (Figure 1).

Since the former is always about 1% of the latter, Robredo claimed the Duterte government has utterly failed to dent drug consumption the ultimate goal of any sensible drug policy.

This comes as no surprise. Many other countries have given up on drug wars since theyre inherently unwinnable. (READ: War on drugs? Other countries focus on demand, not supply)

Figure 1.

But where did Robredos numbers come from? Are they correct?

The short grayish blue bars in Figure 1 are straightforward: they denote seized shabu supplies based on data collected by ICAD.

The tall orange bars, meanwhile, are estimates (not actual data) of shabu consumption in the country. They came from various drug enforcement agencies which told Robredo there are about 3 million shabu users nationwide, each consuming at least one gram of shabu per week for an entire year.

My friend, UP School of Statistics Professor Peter Cayton, spotted a small error in the graph: since the 2019 data on seized shabu supplies ranged from January to October only, the corresponding orange bar should also reflect estimated consumption in those months.

Hence, rather than 156,000 kilos in 2019, it should only be 129,000 kilos (assuming 43 weeks).

But this makes little difference. Robredos key point that the governments supply interdiction efforts are minuscule compared with the extent of the countrys drug problem holds.

Groping in the dark

Robredos study should still be taken with a grain of salt because of the questionable data supplied to her by various drug enforcement agencies.

For instance, the one-gram-per-week assumption came from the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA), which has yet to validate their own estimate.

Meanwhile, the 3 million figure comes from the Philippine National Polices Drug Enforcement Group (PNP-DEG).

Duterte himself used to tout 3 to 4 million drug users, and this has since inexplicably ballooned to 7 to 8 million. Even the police are baffled: they don't know where these numbers came from.

If we use Dutertes bloated figures in the Robredo report, the success rate of the drug war will appear even smaller (Figure 2).

Figure 2.

Crappy assumptions beget crappy statistical analysis, and if theres anyone to blame for Robredos study, its the various drug enforcement agencies that supplied her the data.

But the true value in Robredos report lies in exposing the fact that government, all the while, has been groping in the dark.

Were it not for Robredos prodding, relevant drug enforcement agencies would not have been compelled to churn out much-needed numbers, however imperfect. Either these agencies dont know how to crunch the numbers, or theyre hiding their incompetence and vested interests or both.

Government cannot truly say the campaign is working without these baseline numbers, Robredo said in her report.

For bringing back evidence-based policy-making into the drug war discourse, Robredo deserves all the praise.

Debunking the reactions

Rather than embrace Robredos findings open-mindedly, a number of government officials instead rejected them flatly and pettily often using fallacious arguments. Lets debunk some here.

The PDEA chief unsurprisingly railed against the study, saying Robredo dismissed and ignored all of our governments accomplishments and efforts for the past 3 years in a mere political attack. But Robredos report did mention the efforts of various drug enforcement agencies. It so happens theyre insignificant next to the problem in our hands.

The PNPs officer-in-charge, meanwhile, said that the drug wars success is proven by a recent survey which showed that 8 in 10 Filipinos are satisfied with the drug war. But just because a policy is popular doesnt mean its correct or appropriate.

The PNP spokesperson also boasted theres no more local manufacturing of shabu, and they consider that a 100% success rate. But illegal drugs are still being smuggled into the country mostly from China.

House Speaker Alan Cayetano agreed with Robredos wish for better data, but said its very unfair to blame government since its near impossible these days to get accurate drug consumption data.

But thats just it: Dutertes drug war is compromising data collection. Virtually nobody today will admit using drugs to a stranger holding a clipboard.

Some senators also chimed in. Senator Tito Sotto III tweeted, War vs Drugs fails only when you stop fighting. Senator Panfilo Lacson minced words by saying, The war against illegal drugs is a continuing fight and, therefore, I would rather say, it has not been successful enough, rather than call it a failure. But Dutertes drug war like any other war cannot go on indefinitely, especially if demonstrably futile.

Manila Mayor Isko Moreno said in an interview with ANC hes uncomfortable with Robredos statements, and he found them off-putting especially if you think of the police risking their lives in the frontlines. But this is an appeal to emotion. Just because the study contains uncomfortable data doesnt make it any less valid.

Finally, Baguio City Mayor Benjamin Magalong, a former police officer, said the drug wars success cant be measured by statistics. But whats the alternative? Hunches? Beliefs? Gut feel?

Piercing the veil

Note that Duterte himself said on multiple occasions that his drug war has failed.

Note, too, that most of the criticisms hurled against Robredo are coming from government agencies that risk having lower budgets if the drug war stops, or from allies who need to stay on Dutertes good side for their own political survival.

For too long Dutertes war on drugs has hidden behind a veil of fear, lies, and misconceptions. Its high time for facts and statistics to pierce that veil. Robredos report is a step in that direction. Rappler.com

The author is a PhD candidate at the UP School of Economics. His views are independent of the views of his affiliations. Follow JC on Twitter (@jcpunongbayan) and Usapang Econ (usapangecon.com).

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[ANALYSIS] The stroke of genius in Robredo's drug war report - Rappler

Pilot of L.A.’s cannabis program must overcome stumbles, fury and threats – Los Angeles Times

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When Cat Packer was chosen to head a Los Angeles city department that would help usher in the legalization of marijuana, then-Council President Herb Wesson billed her appointment as a bold example of what Los Angeles stood for.

Packer had been an activist with the Drug Policy Alliance who was firmly focused on how the war on drugs had battered communities of color. She was young, black and openly gay, with tailored suits, hair cut in a fade, and the cool, deliberate speech of a lawyer, and she had wowed Wesson at City Hall when she laid out statistics about racial inequity.

The Department of Cannabis Regulation, her new agency, was not just going to hand out permits for pot shops. It was supposed to do something much more ambitious and radical: Ensure that the communities hit hardest by the criminalization of marijuana would benefit from its legalization. Many saw the effort as a kind of reparations for the drug war.

Two years later, Packer would face a furious and disappointed crowd of cannabis applicants and activists in the marble chambers of City Hall and tell them that she was disappointed too. That the city had ended up hurting hundreds of people who took financial risks as they tried to nab a limited number of licenses. That she routinely told other cities not to do what L.A. did.

Cat Packer, L.A.'s cannabis czar, faced backlash from activists and applicants after a portal for license applications opened seconds early. Now, licensing for new shops has been put on hold.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

If Packer had once seemed to personify L.A.'s progressive vision for cannabis, she was now the public face of its stumbles in realizing that goal. Licensing for new shops had been put on hold. Wesson and Mayor Eric Garcetti had called for an audit. Packer was being berated by cannabis activists at public meetings and facing threats in her inbox.

Its one thing to pass an equitable policy, she told the crowd of applicants and activists. Its another thing in its entirety for it to be implemented.

**

Cat was not the name she was given when she was born in Germany, a military kid who was shuttled to Virginia, Arizona and Virginia again. Her mother still calls her Rina, a shortening of the German version of her name.

As a young teen, she turned to the police department to report being sexually assaulted by an officer, but the charges were ultimately dropped for insufficient evidence. Packer said that friends of the officer were involved in the investigation and even her attorney said it would be her word against his. It was an early experience, she said, of feeling let down by those in power.

Thats part of what led me to want to be an attorney, Packer said. I knew that I did not have to make the same decisions that they made.

After reporting the assault, Packer left Virginia to join her father in Ohio, where she would go on to college, grad school and law school at Ohio State University. She had envisioned herself fighting for marriage equality when she took a course on marijuana policy while reading Michelle Alexanders The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.

The words in one passage rang in her head: Nothing has contributed more to the systematic mass incarceration of people of color in the United States than the war on drugs. Yet her privileged classmates casually smoked pot, and cannabis was already becoming a legal business in some states.

Part of what was so astonishing to me, Packer said, was how easy it was for us to shift public policy when there was profit as a motive. In Ohio, an initiative to legalize a limited number of marijuana growers was headed for the ballot, a proposal criticized by some activists as setting up a monopoly.

Packer recalled sparring with a campaign official when he visited her class, pointing out to him that this initiative wasnt going to do anything for people of color. When her professor, Doug Berman, stopped her after class and urged her to go to work for the campaign once she graduated, Packer said she asked, Why?

Her seriousness of purpose was evident from the get-go, Berman recalled of his former student. He argued that, despite the shortcomings that Packer had pinpointed, the campaign would teach her things she couldnt learn in a classroom.

She could have reacted by saying, These folks are never going to get it, Berman said. Instead, she joined the campaign as its assistant director of internal communications a position she said amounted to doing just about everything.

The Ohio initiative ultimately failed. Packer had gotten back into grass-roots organizing in Ohio when she saw that the Drug Policy Alliance, a group seeking to reduce criminalization in drug policy, was hosting a strategy session in New York called Drug Policy Reform Is Racial Justice Reform. She hitched a Megabus east with a file folder loaded with business cards and copies of her resume.

The bus broke down, but she was still the first person to arrive at the conference. Lynne Lyman, the former California state director of the Drug Policy Alliance, said she immediately knew that Packer was the person who would help her secure passage of Proposition 64 the 2016 measure to legalize recreational pot and swiftly hired her as campaign coordinator.

In her new job, Packer soon began reaching out to cities about local programs to ensure social equity. Just months after Packer had moved to Los Angeles, she went to City Hall to urge L.A. to put equity at the forefront of its cannabis regulations, recounting statistics about black people being disproportionately arrested on marijuana charges.

When she stopped talking, Wesson piped up from his seat, Hey, Cat, do you have a resume? You just impress the hell out of me. Send one to me, please.

A cannaboss coffee mug sits in Cat Packers office. As a millennial queer woman of color, Packer says, Im trying to be my truest self in ways that are going to be advantageous for the communities that I serve.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

***

When Packer was chosen to head the Department of Cannabis Regulation, many were elated. Kika Keith, a South L.A. resident who wants to open a shop selling cannabis-infused beverages, said it was the same kind of hope she once had about another young, vibrant black leader Barack Obama and that it had ended in the same disappointment.

I still have love for her. I think shes a brilliant person, Keith said. But she failed us.

Packer said she should have done a better job at managing expectations about a program that would never provide licenses for everyone who wanted them and that moved slower than they had hoped. But many of the problems now roiling the department were rooted in decisions made years earlier, she said, some before she was even appointed.

Under rules approved by the City Council, the Department of Cannabis Regulation had to first grant approval to existing shops that had followed city rules, then the growers and manufacturers who had supplied them, before it could start licensing new operators like Keith.

It was a huge task for a fledgling department with only a handful of employees in January 2018. No one could have done what they were asking her to do, said Adam Spiker, executive director of the cannabis industry group Southern California Coalition.

As the department struggled to get through the paperwork for hundreds of businesses, more than a year and a half passed before it was ready to start licensing new shops under its social equity program, which was meant to help those hit hardest by the war on drugs. Many of those entrepreneurs, eager to grab coveted storefronts, were already forking over steep rents.

Amid pleas for the city to get moving, Wesson moved to set a hard deadline for the next round of licensing. L.A. ended up moving forward with the process before it had set up most of its programs to help train and guide applicants in its social equity program, which is meant to help people from communities disproportionately affected by marijuana criminalization. That decision, Packer later said, left those entrepreneurs vulnerable to predatory practices from corporate investors and landlords

If the city and Herb Wesson were serious about social equity, they would have funded it first, Lyman said, pointing out that the bulk of the funding for the program was not provided until midway through 2019. Instead they pressured her to give out licenses without a program being developed.

Packer had also raised concerns about another fateful decision: Council members decided that a limited number of licenses for new shops would be handed out on a first-come, first-served basis, in what Spiker later called a fastest computer contest. L.A. was flooded with hundreds of applications in minutes, far exceeding the available licenses.

In October, after activists released a video showing someone accessing the system early, Packer publicly stated that two people had gotten in minutes early after resetting passwords but were pushed back in line to where they would have been if theyd started right on time. But a top aide to Wesson privately told an applicant that more people had gotten in early.

You gotta be completely transparent about what happened. You cant omit information, right? Andrew Westall said on a video of that discussion, recorded without his knowledge. Because as my wife always tells me, its still lying if you dont tell me.

In December, days before parts of that video were released, the department confirmed the system had opened a little early and a dozen more people had gotten in seconds before the 10 a.m. start time. City officials said those applicants also were bumped back, but Keith and other applicants felt that Packer had lied to them.

Theres no trust there, said Virgil Grant, a cannabis industry leader who had pushed for the social equity program. They were covering up when they should have been honest.

Packer said when she spoke in October, department officials saw early access as people getting into the system before it was activated, not before 10 a.m. Still, I wish that I could have communicated and would have communicated things better, she said.

Local activists have also questioned whether L.A.'s program will ultimately help people of color, whose communities bore the brunt of the drug war. Grant has repeatedly drawn attention to the number of likely licensees with Armenian surnames.

The program does not single out anyone by race and cannot do so under California law. It is aimed at poor people with marijuana arrests, as well as people who have lived in areas heavily affected by such arrests.

Packer pointed out that researchers had pinpointed the policing districts where marijuana arrests were especially steep, but the council based its program on ZIP Codes a decision that ended up looping in areas such as Los Feliz, where arrests werent as common. If cities want to target black and brown communities, Packer said, we have to be surgical with our approach.

**

One of the enduring concerns among activists is whether Packer was vocal enough about such concerns as the council hammered out and tweaked its rules. She should have pushed back, Grant said. Dont explain to the council after the fact.

Packer said she preferred to advocate privately with council members and to mobilize community members to push publicly for needed changes. When her department was short on staff, for instance, cannabis activists turned up at City Hall to prod the council for more resources. Many blame city leaders for not equipping her department properly.

They definitely set her up to fail, said Luis Rivera, who once worked for Mayor Eric Garcetti and now heads a nonprofit that assists social equity applicants. But he argued that Packer could have been more forceful in insisting that the city have assistance programs up and running before new shops could apply.

Wesson and other officials picked a token person they felt they could work with because of her inexperience at City Hall, Rivera said. Lyman likewise said that because Packer was young and didnt have any political connections of her own, City Council felt like they could push her around.

Wesson has declined to be interviewed about Packer while the audit of the application process requested by Garcetti is pending. When the video of Westall came out, a Wesson spokesman said their office had met with concerned applicants in confidence to hear their grievances and assure them we will do everything possible to restore trust and integrity to the application process.

Outraged applicants have flocked to City Hall, denouncing the process as tainted. At the last meeting of the Cannabis Regulation Commission, industry activist Donnie Anderson declared that if nothing was fixed, its gonna be 1992 all over again an allusion to the violence that roiled South L.A. after officers were acquitted in the beating of Rodney King.

Spiker, of the Southern California Coalition, said the city was bad at managing expectations about the program but so were cannabis consultants who led people to bank on getting a license. In the face of overwhelming demand, you had a minute chance, Spiker said. Was anyone talking about that? No.

For Packer, the pressures of the job are compounded by the historic nature of her appointment. She said her impeccable suits are, in part, a rejoinder to the college advisor at Ohio State who insisted Packer would have to wear skirts in the workplace.

Its also a form of professional armor as a millennial queer woman of color.

Im trying to be my truest self in ways that are going to be advantageous for the communities that I serve, she said. The concern is that if I do something thats too radical, theyre not letting any more young people in here, theyre not letting any more queer people in here, theyre not letting any more black people in here, and the women gotta watch out.

But Packer doesnt regret taking the job. We have to be willing to take on the tough jobs, she said. Theres no substitute for the work. We can pontificate all we want. But someone has to do the work.

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Pilot of L.A.'s cannabis program must overcome stumbles, fury and threats - Los Angeles Times

Who Killed the Knapp Family? – The New York Times

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YAMHILL, Ore. Chaos reigned daily on the No. 6 school bus, with working-class boys and girls flirting and gossiping and dreaming, brimming with mischief, bravado and optimism. Nick rode it every day in the 1970s with neighbors here in rural Oregon, neighbors like Farlan, Zealan, Rogena, Nathan and Keylan Knapp.

They were bright, rambunctious, upwardly mobile youngsters whose father had a good job installing pipes. The Knapps were thrilled to have just bought their own home, and everyone oohed and aahed when Farlan received a Ford Mustang for his 16th birthday.

Yet today about one-quarter of the children on that No. 6 bus are dead, mostly from drugs, suicide, alcohol or reckless accidents. Of the five Knapp kids who had once been so cheery, Farlan died of liver failure from drink and drugs, Zealan burned to death in a house fire while passed out drunk, Rogena died from hepatitis linked to drug use and Nathan blew himself up cooking meth. Keylan survived partly because he spent 13 years in a state penitentiary.

Among other kids on the bus, Mike died from suicide, Steve from the aftermath of a motorcycle accident, Cindy from depression and a heart attack, Jeff from a daredevil car crash, Billy from diabetes in prison, Kevin from obesity-related ailments, Tim from a construction accident, Sue from undetermined causes. And then theres Chris, who is presumed dead after years of alcoholism and homelessness. At least one more is in prison, and another is homeless.

We Americans are locked in political combat and focused on President Trump, but there is a cancer gnawing at the nation that predates Trump and is larger than him. Suicides are at their highest rate since World War II; one child in seven is living with a parent suffering from substance abuse; a baby is born every 15 minutes after prenatal exposure to opioids; America is slipping as a great power.

We have deep structural problems that have been a half century in the making, under both political parties, and that are often transmitted from generation to generation. Only in America has life expectancy now fallen three years in a row, for the first time in a century, because of deaths of despair.

The meaningfulness of the working-class life seems to have evaporated, Angus Deaton, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, told us. The economy just seems to have stopped delivering for these people. Deaton and the economist Anne Case, who is also his wife, coined the term deaths of despair to describe the surge of mortality from alcohol, drugs and suicide.

The kids on the No. 6 bus rode into a cataclysm as working-class communities disintegrated across America because of lost jobs, broken families, gloom and failed policies. The suffering was invisible to affluent Americans, but the consequences are now evident to all: The survivors mostly voted for Trump, some in hopes that he would rescue them, but under him the number of children without health insurance has risen by more than 400,000.

The stock market is near record highs, but working-class Americans (often defined as those without college degrees) continue to struggle. If youre only a high school graduate, or worse, a dropout, work no longer pays. If the federal minimum wage in 1968 had kept up with inflation and productivity, it would now be $22 an hour. Instead, its $7.25.

We were foreign correspondents together for many years, periodically covering humanitarian crises in distant countries. Then we would return to the Kristof family farm in Yamhill and see a humanitarian crisis unfolding in a community we loved and a similar unraveling was happening in towns across the country. This was not one towns problem, but a crisis in the American system.

Im a capitalist, and even I think capitalism is broken, says Ray Dalio, the founder of Bridgewater, the worlds largest hedge fund.

Even in this presidential campaign, the unraveling of working-class communities receives little attention. There is talk about the middle class, but very little about the working class; we discuss college access but not the one in seven children who dont graduate from high school. America is like a boat that is half-capsized, but those partying above water seem oblivious.

We have to stop being obsessed over impeachment and start actually digging in and solving the problems that got Donald Trump elected in the first place, Andrew Yang argued in the last Democratic presidential debate. Whatever you think of Yang as a candidate, on this he is dead right: We have to treat Americas cancer.

In some ways, the situation is worsening, because families have imploded under the pressure of drug and alcohol abuse, and children are growing up in desperate circumstances. One of our dearest friends in Yamhill, Clayton Green, a brilliant mechanic who was three years behind Nick in school, died last January, leaving five grandchildren and all have been removed from their parents by the state for their protection. A local school official sighs that some children are feral.

Farlan, the oldest of the Knapp children, was in Nicks grade. A talented woodworker, he dreamed of opening a business called Farlans Far Out Fantastic Freaky Furniture. But Farlan ended up dropping out of school after the ninth grade.

Although he never took high school chemistry, Farlan became a first-rate chemist: He was one of the first people in the Yamhill area to cook meth. For a time he was a successful entrepreneur known for his high quality merchandise. This is what I was made for, he once announced with quiet pride. But he abused his own drugs and by his 40s was gaunt and frail.

In some ways, he was a great dad, for he loved his two daughters, Amber and Andrea, and they idolized him. But theirs was not an optimal upbringing: In one of Ambers baby pictures, theres a plate of cocaine in the background.

Farlan died of liver failure in 2009, just after his 51st birthday, and his death devastated both daughters. Andrea, who was smart, talented, gorgeous and entrepreneurial, ran her own real estate business but accelerated her drinking after her dad died. She drank herself to death, her uncle Keylan told us. She was buried in 2013 at the age of 29.

In the 1970s and 80s it was common to hear derogatory suggestions that the forces ripping apart African-American communities were rooted in black culture. The idea was that deadbeat dads, self-destructive drug abuse and family breakdown were the fundamental causes, and that all people needed to do was show personal responsibility.

A Harvard sociologist, William Julius Wilson, countered that the true underlying problem was lost jobs, and he turned out to be right. When good jobs left white towns like Yamhill a couple of decades later because of globalization and automation, the same pathologies unfolded there. Men in particular felt the loss not only of income but also of dignity that accompanied a good job. Lonely and troubled, they self-medicated with alcohol or drugs, and they accumulated criminal records that left them less employable and less marriageable. Family structure collapsed.

It would be easy but too simplistic to blame just automation and lost jobs: The problems are also rooted in disastrous policy choices over 50 years. The United States wrested power from labor and gave it to business, and it suppressed wages and cut taxes rather than invest in human capital, as our peer countries did. As other countries embraced universal health care, we did not; several counties in the United States have life expectancies shorter than those in Cambodia or Bangladesh.

One consequence is that the bottom end of Americas labor force is not very productive, in ways that reduce our countrys competitiveness. A low-end worker may not have a high school diploma and is often barely literate or numerate while also struggling with a dependency; more than seven million Americans also have suspended drivers licenses for failing to pay child support or court-related debt, meaning that they may not reliably show up at work.

Americans also bought into a misconceived personal responsibility narrative that blamed people for being poor. Its true, of course, that personal responsibility matters: People we spoke to often acknowledged engaging in self-destructive behaviors. But when you can predict wretched outcomes based on the ZIP code where a child is born, the problem is not bad choices the infant is making. If were going to obsess about personal responsibility, lets also have a conversation about social responsibility.

Why did deaths of despair claim Farlan, Zealan, Nathan, Rogena and so many others? We see three important factors.

First, well-paying jobs disappeared, partly because of technology and globalization but also because of political pressure on unions and a general redistribution of power toward the wealthy and corporations.

Second, there was an explosion of drugs oxycodone, meth, heroin, crack cocaine and fentanyl aggravated by the reckless marketing of prescription painkillers by pharmaceutical companies.

Third, the war on drugs sent fathers and mothers to jail, shattering families.

Theres plenty of blame to go around. Both political parties embraced mass incarceration and the war on drugs, which was particularly devastating for black Americans, and ignored an education system that often consigned the poor especially children of color to failing schools. Since 1988, American schools have become increasingly segregated by race, and kids in poor districts perform on average four grade levels behind those in rich districts.

Farlans daughter Amber seemed to be the member of the Knapp family most poised for success. She was the first Knapp ever to graduate from high school, and then she took a job at a telecommunications company, managing databases and training staff members to use computer systems. We were struck by her intellect and interpersonal skills; it was easy to imagine her as a lawyer or a business executive.

PowerPoint presentations and Excel and pivot charts and matrix analytics, thats what I like to do, she told us. She married and had three children, and for a time was thriving.

Then in grief after her father and sister died, she imploded. A doctor had prescribed medications like Xanax, and she became dependent on them. After running out of them, she began smoking meth for the first time when she was 32.

I was dead set against it my whole life, she remembered. I hated it. Id seen what it did to everybody. My dad was a junkie who cooked meth and lost everything. You would think that was enough. It wasnt. She bounced in and out of jail and lost her kids.

Amber knew she had blown it, but she was determined to recover her life and her children. We had hoped that Amber would claw her way back, proof that it is possible to escape the messiness of the Knapp family story and build a successful life. We texted Amber a few times to arrange to get photos of Farlan, and then she stopped replying to our texts. Finally, her daughter responded: Amber was back in jail.

Yet its not hopeless. America is polarized with ferocious arguments about social issues, but we should be able to agree on what doesnt work: neglect and underinvestment in children. Heres what does work.

Job training and retraining give people dignity as well as an economic lifeline. Such jobs programs are common in other countries.

For instance, autoworkers were laid off during the 2008-9 economic crisis both in Detroit and across the Canadian border in nearby Windsor, Ontario. As the scholar Victor Tan Chen has showed, the two countries responded differently. The United States focused on money, providing extended unemployment benefits. Canada emphasized job retraining, rapidly steering workers into new jobs in fields like health care, and Canadian workers also did not have to worry about losing health insurance.

Canadas approach succeeded. The focus on job placement meant that Canadian workers were ushered more quickly back into workaday society and thus today seem less entangled in drugs and family breakdown.

Another successful strategy is investing not just in prisons but also in human capital to keep people out of prisons. The highest-return investments available in America may be in early education for disadvantaged children, but there are also valuable interventions available for adolescents and adults. We attended a thrilling graduation in Tulsa, Okla., for 17 women completing an impressive local drug treatment program called Women in Recovery.

The graduates had an average of 15 years of addiction each, and all were on probation after committing crimes. Yet they had quit drugs and started jobs, and 300 people in the audience including police officers who had arrested them and judges who had sentenced them gave the women a standing ovation. The state attorney general served as the commencement speaker and called them heroes, drawing tearful smiles from women more accustomed to being called junkies or whores.

I thought wed be planning a funeral instead, said one audience member whose younger sister had started using meth at age 12 and was now graduating at 35. Women in Recovery has a recidivism rate after three years of only 4 percent, and consequently has saved Oklahoma $70 million in prison spending, according to the George Kaiser Family Foundation.

Bravo for philanthropy, but the United States would never build interstate highways through volunteers and donations, and we cant build a national preschool program or a national drug recovery program with private money. We need the government to step up and jump-start nationwide programs in early childhood education, job retraining, drug treatment and more.

For individuals trying to break an addiction, a first step is to face up to the problem and thats what America should do as well. Our own reporting in the past focused on foreigners, affording us an emotional distance, while this time we spoke with old friends and had no armor. It has been wrenching to see them struggle. But ultimately we saw pathways forward that leave us hopeful.

One of our dear friends in Yamhill was Rick (Ricochet) Goff, who was part Indian and never had a chance: His mom died when he was 5 and his dad was, as he put it, a professional drunk who abandoned the family. Ricochet was a whiz at solving puzzles and so dependable a friend that he would lend pals money even when he couldnt afford medicine for himself. We deeply felt Ricochets loss when he died four years ago, and we also worried about his adult son, Drew, who is smart and charismatic but had been messing with drugs since he was 12.

Drews son, Ashtyn, was born with drugs in his system, and we feared that the cycle of distress was now being passed on to the next generation. We exchanged letters with Drew while he was in prison but lost touch.

Then, when we were visiting a drug-treatment program in Oregon called Provoking Hope, a young man bounded over to us. Its me, Drew, he said.

We have been close with Drew since, and he fills us with optimism. With the help of Provoking Hope, Drew will soon celebrate two years free of drugs, and he holds a responsible job at the front desk of a hotel. He has custody of Ashtyn and is now an outstanding dad, constantly speaking to him and playing with him. Drew still has a tempestuous side, and occasionally he has some rash impulse but then he thinks of Ashtyn and reins himself in.

Im a work in progress, he told us. The old me wants to act out, and I wont allow that.

Drew keeps moving forward, and we believe hes going to thrive along with Ashtyn, breaking the cycle that had enmeshed his family for generations. With support and balance, this can be done if we as a society are willing to offer help, not just handcuffs.

Its a tightrope Im walking on, Drew said. And sometimes it seems to be made of fishing line.

Nicholas Kristof is an Opinion columnist. Sheryl WuDunn is a business consultant. Their book, Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope, will be published Jan. 14.

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Who Killed the Knapp Family? - The New York Times

Marijuana Will Be Legalized in New York in 2020, Cuomo Vows – The New York Times

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ALBANY, N.Y. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo vowed on Wednesday to legalize marijuana in New York, prioritizing a push that fell apart last year amid tensions over who should be allowed to sell the drug and where the revenue should go.

The governor described the effort as a long overdue criminal justice reform that could help salve wounds in communities affected by the decades-long war on drugs.

For decades, communities of color were disproportionately affected by the unequal enforcement of marijuana laws, Mr. Cuomo said in his annual State of the State address. Lets legalize adult use of marijuana.

The effort comes as the state faces down a $6 billion budget gap; on Wednesday, Mr. Cuomo, a third-term Democrat, said that legalized marijuana program could bring in $300 million a year in tax revenue, and billions of dollars more in economic activity when fully implemented, though that could be years away.

The governors proposal was part of a lengthy agenda that included bids to boost environmental spending, support small businesses and address a range of social ills, from overpriced feminine products to a lack of diversity on the states farms.

Little mentioned, however, were specific answers to how to solve the looming budget deficit, which is largely a result of overspending on Medicaid.

Mr. Cuomo did not say whether he supported raising taxes on the wealthy a proposal popular with progressives in his party, including the Democratic-led State Assembly or cutting spending to tackle the fiscal imbalance. Instead, Mr. Cuomo said that he wants to slice tax rates for small businesses by a third, something he said would help some 36,000 taxpayers.

At the same time, Mr. Cuomo retained his penchant for higher-priced infrastructure projects, proposing to invest $300 million to repurpose the Erie Canal to attract tourists, $9 million to build a drone facility upstate and an unspecified sum on an ambitious plan to revamp Penn Station to accommodate an additional 175,000 riders by building eight new tracks.

Again and again, Mr. Cuomo sought to position such projects and other accomplishments from more than nine years in office as an example of his brand of pragmatic progressivism, which he says emphasizes results over idealism.

Progressive government by definition must be functional, the governor said, returning to a common theme and citing his father, the former governor, Mario M. Cuomo.

The governors address kicks off the start of the years legislative session, and comes on the heels of a historic year in Albany, where lawmakers passed major new laws on rent, climate change and congestion pricing, among other issues.

Last year was also a period of transition for Mr. Cuomo: For the first eight years in office, Mr. Cuomo worked with a Republican State Senate, which often backed his pleas for fiscal austerity and batted back progressive reforms. That changed in the 2018 midterm elections, when Democrats took control of the Senate with the help of a number of young, liberal candidates who repeatedly challenged Mr. Cuomo, sometimes leading to heated conflicts.

That rift has already surfaced this year, as the governor and other Democrats grapple with the political fallout from a new law that sharply reduced the use of cash bail. The law went into effect on New Years Day, and since then, concerns over a spate of anti-Semitic incidents and other recent alleged crimes committed by those released have led to calls for changes in the law, including by Mr. Cuomo himself.

Mr. Cuomo made no mention of the bail reform on Wednesday during his speech, which included quotations from George Washington, Henry David Thoreau and the singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen, and an extended nautical theme, with mentions of rocky shores, rough seas, and a political and social superstorm of anger and divisive rhetoric.

Considering the states financial straits, Mr. Cuomo leaned heavily on proposals that would need little or no state funding, like banning gun ownership for people who have committed certain misdemeanor crimes in other states, banning foam food containers and outlawing synthetic opioids similar to fentanyl.

The governors marijuana proposal came with numerous caveats: He said that he intended to coordinate New Yorks plan with similar efforts in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Connecticut, though his office later clarified that the state would not wait on other states to pursue its own plan.

He also proposed that New Yorks state university system be enlisted to do research on marijuana and its effects, likening the drugs potential peril to that of opioids.

The federal government failed Americans with opioids, Mr. Cuomo said, in a briefing book released with the governors speech. And we cannot allow that to happen with cannabinoids.

The governors agenda entitled Making Progress Happen also outlined a robust list of social proposals, with many geared at improving womens status in the state, including studies to increase representation for women on corporate boards (California just enacted a law guaranteeing that) and $20 million in grants for female entrepreneurs. Mr. Cuomo also promised to take aim at the so-called pink tax, by which businesses charge women more for services and personal care items.

Mr. Cuomo has trumpeted his actions on gay rights including legalizing same-sex marriage in 2011. His top-line proposal for the L.G.B.T.Q. community permitting paid gestational surrogacy had failed to gain enough support in 2019, after some advocates for womens rights and religious groups argued that such surrogacy commodifies the body.

On Wednesday, even before Mr. Cuomos speech ended, the states Catholic Conference, said surrogacy is a dangerous policy that will lead to the exploitation of poor, vulnerable women, and has few safeguards for children.

Mr. Cuomo also said that he supported paid sick leave for workers of businesses with five or more employees, and wanted to codify benefits and protections for workers of the growing gig economy, although he did not offer specifics.

Other ideas were recycled, like an equal rights amendment to establish factors such as sex and sexual orientation as protected classes; a law change to allow movie theaters to sell alcohol; and a law to allow automatic voter registration. That idea passed last year, but was waylaid by technical legal concerns; the legislature will pass it again on Thursday. The governor also brought out a revised version of an idea that he recently vetoed: legalizing e-bikes and scooters.

Like last year, Mr. Cuomo made the environment a cornerstone of his agenda: He proposed leveraging $3 billion in bonds to restore wildlife habitats and mitigate flood risks, while offering plans to preserve 4,000 acres of land in the Mid-Hudson Valley and upgrade the wastewater treatment plant at Lake George, a popular vacation spot.

No economic strategy, no social justice reform, no education policy will be worth a damn if we dont have a planet that we can live on, Mr. Cuomo said.

Mr. Cuomo also took aim at sexual predators, proposing legislation to ban high-risk sexual offenders from New York Citys subway and prohibit them from using social media, dating apps and video game chats.

If 2019 was any indication, Mr. Cuomo tends to get what he wants from his yearly wish list. The overwhelming majority of his proposals were approved last year, except for marijuana legalization.

The governor suggested he would insist on more accountability from local governments in the way they manage Medicaid programs, setting up a potential clash with New York City and Mayor Bill de Blasio, the governors intraparty rival, who called the proposal concerning. Cuomo administration officials later said that they did not intend to ask local governments to pay more, but rather root out waste, fraud and abuse within the system.

In recent years, Mr. Cuomo had chosen to unveil his budget during the State of the State address. But facing a budgetary quagmire this year, the governor decided he would present his budget separately later in the month.

Its the $29 billion elephant in the room and he knows it, said Andrew Rein, the president of the Citizens Budget Commission, a fiscal watchdog, referring to the states projected cumulative budget gap of $28.8 billion through 2023.

When you have a structural problem, the longer you delay addressing it the larger it becomes, he added.

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Marijuana Will Be Legalized in New York in 2020, Cuomo Vows - The New York Times

The rise in meth and cocaine overdoses, explained – Vox.com

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Americas drug overdose crisis is still largely dominated by opioid overdose deaths. But stimulants like cocaine and especially methamphetamine seem poised for a comeback.

Provisional federal data suggests that national overdose deaths linked to psychostimulants, such as meth, spiked by more than 21 percent from 2017 to 2018. Overdose deaths linked to cocaine increased by around 5 percent.

That isnt the only evidence: A recent research letter published in JAMA Network Open analyzing more than 1 million drug testing results from routine health care settings found positive hits for meth were up nearly 487 percent from 2013 to 2019, and positive hits for cocaine were up nearly 21 percent.

Experts worry that the numbers for stimulants could foreshadow a larger epidemic a potential fourth wave in the overdose crisis thats killed more than 700,000 people in the US since 1999.

Every opioid epidemic in American history has been followed by a stimulant epidemic, Stanford drug policy expert Keith Humphreys told me.

The numbers for meth and cocaine are still dwarfed by opioids. In 2018, there were more than 13,000 estimated overdose deaths linked to stimulants, particularly meth, and more than 15,700 linked to cocaine, according to the provisional data. Meanwhile, there were nearly 48,000 overdose deaths linked to opioids. Synthetic opioids excluding methadone a category that mainly captures fentanyl were associated with more than double the fatal overdoses linked to cocaine or meth alone. (Theres some overlap between drugs in the figures, because overdoses can involve multiple drugs.)

But there are reasons to believe the crisis is broader than just opioids. A 2018 study in Science found that, while drug overdose deaths spiked in the 1990s and 2000s with the opioid epidemic, there has been exponential growth in overdose deaths since 1979. That suggests that Americas drug problem is getting worse in general, regardless of which drug is involved.

My question: Why are we as a country vulnerable to all of these drugs? Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, told me. What has happened that has made it possible for these drugs to take hold in a dramatic way?

The answers to those questions could require a shift in how America approaches drugs, focusing not just on the substances making headlines but also addiction more broadly and the causes of addiction. It would mean building a comprehensive addiction treatment system thats equipped to deal with all kinds of drugs. And it could require looking at issues that arent seemingly drug-related at first, like whether socioeconomic and cultural forces are driving people to use more drugs.

In the 1960s and 70s, heroin was the big drug of public concern. In the 1980s, it was crack cocaine. In the 1990s and early 2000s, it was meth. Over the past decade and a half, opioid painkillers, heroin, and then fentanyl became the center of Americas drug problem.

Its not clear if the next phase is here yet opioids are still a huge problem but the worry is stimulants will start to pick up if opioids plateau and fall.

The drugs are driven by fads, a little bit of fashion, Volkow said. So you have eras when you have a flourishing of a particular drug and then another one takes over.

According to experts, there are many reasons for that. One is supply. Starting with the launch of OxyContin in 1996, there was a huge proliferation of opioid painkillers, letting people try and misuse the drugs. That was followed by waves of heroin and fentanyl as traffickers tried to capitalize on the demand for opioids jump-started by painkillers. Some research shows the supply of prescription opioids was a key driver in the rise of the current overdose crisis.

There are now reports of drug cartels producing and shipping more meth than before across the US-Mexico border a shift from the homegrown market of the 1990s and 2000s. And in general, illicit drugs have become cheaper and, in some cases, more potent over time. Federal data tracking the street price and potency of the drugs tells the story: In 1986, for example, meth was on average $575 per pure gram and on average at 52 percent purity; in 2012, it was $194 per pure gram and 91 percent purity. The price drop is similar for other drugs, though purity levels have fluctuated depending on the substance.

This makes it cheaper for someone to start using drugs. The central focus of the US war on drugs for decades has been to prevent this by fighting drug traffickers and dealers but its failed as drug cartels have consistently remained ahead of the authorities, bolstered by new technologies and globalization making it cheaper and easier to ship drugs around the world.

New demand for drugs is also a major factor for new epidemics as people could, for example, want to supplant or enhance their opioid use with stimulants. Maybe they mix opioids with cocaine (a speedball) or meth (a goofball) because they like the mixed effects. Maybe they use stimulants after heroin or fentanyl to wake themselves up. Maybe they want to stop using opioids, whether due to the risk of overdose or some other reason, and believe stimulants are a better option.

People get tired of it have been there, done that, and move on, Steven Shoptaw, a psychologist and researcher at UCLA, told me. There is some of that with all addictions. Some people walk away from [opioid addiction], which is great. But then they walk away from it by using stimulants.

Humphreys noted an important factor in this cycle: Probably more Americans than ever know a drug dealer. As millions of Americans have misused and gotten addicted to opioids, theyve established ties with drug dealers that they didnt have before. That makes it easier to go from heroin or fentanyl to meth or cocaine.

Underlying all of this, Volkow argued, is a sense that something deeper has gone wrong in society. She pointed to the research by Princeton economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton showing that theres been a rise in deaths of despair drug overdoses, but also alcohol-related mortality and suicides. Case and Deaton have pinned the rise on all sorts of issues, including the collapse of economic opportunities in much of the country, a growing sense of social isolation, and untreated mental health issues.

If all of these social factors were there, and we didnt have the supply of drugs, of course people would not be dying of overdoses, Volkow said. But it is the confluence of the widespread markets of drugs that are very accessible and very potent and the social-cultural factors that are making people despair and seek out these drugs as a way of escaping.

One caveat to all of this: Not every place in the US is following the same drug trends. According to the Science study and the provisional federal data, meth has historically been more popular in the southwest, while fentanyl has been more widespread in the northeast. Researchers have warned that could change if, for example, fentanyl reaches California in a big way. But it goes to show that what looks like a national epidemic or trendline could also be regional epidemics, with different populations and demographics, separately rising and falling.

There are things that can be done to combat drug epidemics in general.

One option is to attempt to reduce supply, as the drug war has generally focused on for decades. Plenty of critics are extremely skeptical of this, pointing to the fact that illegal substances have only gotten cheaper and continued flowing into the US since President Richard Nixon declared a war on drugs.

But some work by Jon Caulkins, a drug policy expert at Carnegie Mellon University, indicates that prohibition makes drugs as much as 10 times more expensive than they would be otherwise making the drugs less accessible and less ripe for an epidemic. Theres a logic in that: If drug dealers and traffickers have to grow, ship, and sell drugs while actively evading law enforcement, and therefore cant built up the kind of mass production seen in legal markets, that adds costs.

Another potential policy response is to address what some experts call the root causes of drug addiction by rebuilding economic opportunities, helping people feel more connected, or addressing mental health issues. Theres some real-world evidence this could work: Iceland set up an anti-drug plan focused largely on providing kids and adolescents with after-school activities, which journalist Emma Young described as a social movement around natural highs, and saw drug use fall among younger populations in the subsequent years.

There are other possible prevention efforts, such as doctors more routinely screening for drug addictions or public awareness and education campaigns (although, as the surgeon generals 2016 addiction report cautioned, some types of campaigns work better than others).

The most impactful intervention that you can do for a medical condition is prevent it, Volkow argued.

Broadly, the US also needs to invest much more on addiction treatment. According to the surgeon generals report, only about one in 10 people with a substance use disorder obtain specialty care, largely because its inaccessible and unaffordable. More money to addiction care could help boost access, although that would have to be paired with an emphasis on more evidence-based practices.

At the same time, a one-size-fits-all approach for all drugs is going to fall short.

For one, drugs are simply different from each other. For opioids, the biggest health risk is a fatal overdose. For stimulants like cocaine and meth, overdose is still a major concern, but the bigger health risk is the long-term damage the drugs do to the brain and cardiovascular system.

From a harm-reduction standpoint, this means that simply averting overdoses can do a lot to prevent the worst health risk of opioids, even if someone continues using for years. But for stimulants, deadly harms cant be fully reduced until levels of consumption are reduced as well. So, for example, safe consumption sites, in which trained staff supervise drug use, might have more protective benefits for opioids than stimulants. (Still, the sites can provide a lot of other services for people who use stimulants, like sterile syringes, advice on how to use as safely as possible, and a connection to addiction treatment.)

Along similar lines, treatment is, for now, more effective for opioids than it is for stimulants. For opioids, we have effective medications in buprenorphine, methadone, and naltrexone, which, according to studies, cut the mortality rate among opioid addiction patients by half or more and keep people in treatment better than non-medication approaches. In France, the expansion of buprenorphine was a major factor in a 79 percent drop in overdoses from 1995 to 1999.

There arent equivalent medications for stimulant addiction. In fact, the only treatment that really stands out for stimulants, according to a recent review of the research in The Lancet, is contingency management, which provides incentives, financial or otherwise, to keep people from using drugs. But this treatment is controversial not many people want to pay people who use drugs to stop using drugs. So its hugely underused in addiction treatment, outside of the Veterans Affairs health care system.

So simply building up Americas addiction treatment system isnt enough to address all of the countrys drug problems. What kinds of treatment are done and how different drugs are treated also matter. And in the case of stimulants, treatment is probably going to produce disappointing results unless treatment facilities adopt an approach many are averse to and until researchers uncover better approaches.

This is why experts and advocates have long warned about focusing too much on the drug crisis of the day. While the opioid epidemic is a problem that needs to be addressed now, its important to be realistic about what could come next and taking steps to prevent not just the current kind of drug crisis but also what could follow.

We do have a problem in the US of tending to think of one drug at a time, Humphreys said. During the 90s, everyone was worried about meth, but there were plenty of people dying of alcohol. During the 80s, crack cocaine, even though plenty of people were dying of heroin.

The recent rise in stimulant deaths, though, suggests that America remains unprepared.

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The rise in meth and cocaine overdoses, explained - Vox.com

Thousands of pot convictions in county to be cleared after Prop 64 – danvillesanramon.com

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Thousands of marijuana convictions out of Contra Costa County will be dismissed as part of a push by the district attorney's office to abide by the terms of Proposition 64, which decriminalized personal use of cannabis in 2016.

Prosecutors worked with Code for America to cull through thousands of records in order to identify and clear 3,264 marijuana convictions for roughly 2,400 people eligible under the law, according to the Contra Costa County District Attorney's Office.

Prop 64 allows anyone 21 years old or older to buy and possess up to 28.5 grams of marijuana and up to 8 grams of "concentrated cannabis."

In 2018, then-Gov. Jerry Brown signed a law that requires prosecutors to review all marijuana convictions by July 1, 2020 to determine if they are eligible to be dismissed and sealed from public view.

The law requires courts to automatically reduce or dismiss such convictions if prosecutors don't file a dispute by that same date.

"Far too often old criminal convictions for minor drug offenses can leave a lasting mark on an individual's life," District Attorney Diana Becton said in a news release. "The removal of these convictions effectively reduces barriers to licensing, education, housing and employment."

The effort is intended to "address wrongs caused by the failed war on drugs" that disproportionately affected people of color, prosecutors said.

About 36% of county residents whose marijuana cases will be dismissed are African-American, 15% are Latino, 2% are Asian or Pacific Islanders, 45% are white and 2% are "other" or unknown, prosecutors said.

Becton said it's "extremely unlikely" any of the dismissals will result in anyone being released from jail since "these are just not the types of offences that would have received very lengthy sentences."

"Having one on your record does interfere with a persons ability to move on with their lives," she said.

Prosecutors used Code for America's "Clear My Record" technology, which automatically culled through huge amounts of criminal history data from the California Department of Justice going back to about 1970 in mere moments, and saved Becton's office untold hours of painstaking work.

"I can't even imagine how many hours it would have taken us to pull together this kind of data," she said.

Code for America, which donated its time and resources to the county, is a nonprofit organization that works to develop technology solutions to make government more accessible and efficient.

Contra Costa County is the fifth county to work with Code for America to clear marijuana convictions; other counties include San Francisco, Sacramento, San Joaquin and Los Angeles.

While the county doesn't have a way to contact every individual affected by the dismissals, people can email the DAs Office at DA-Prop64@contracostada.org to see if their records are involved.

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Thousands of pot convictions in county to be cleared after Prop 64 - danvillesanramon.com

Stories of the Past-Jan. 12: Watson provides spark as Arabs tip Gauchos – Imperial Valley Press

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50 years ago Friday night, it was James White who supplied the spark with some strong defensive play as the Imperial Valley College basketball team opened the Desert Conference season with a 67-65 win over MiraCosta.

Saturday night, it was James Watsons turn. Watson, in perhaps his finest all-around game of the year, tossed in 28 points and contributed some fine defensive plays as the Arabs made it 2-0 in league play with an 86-63 decision over the Saddleback Gauchos.

Coach Jim Walkers charges will get back into action at 8 Tuesday night, hosting the University of Hawaii, Hilo campus, in a non-conference contest.

Then Friday night, the Arabs make their first road trip of the league campaign, traveling to Mt. San Jacinto. Saturday, the defending champions get their first look at College of the Canyons in Newhall.

Wilson divided his scoring evenly, getting 15 points in the first half and 13 in the second half. He missed the 30-point mark when, after he had stolen the ball and was driving toward the basketball all alone, the Arabs called time out with two minutes and 10 seconds left to play.

At that point, with IVC on top, 84-59, Walker turned the game over to the reserves, benching all the regulars except James Speed.

Saddleback, a team with an offense very similar to that of MiraCosta, gave the Arabs some problems during the first half, due primarily to the outside shooting of Cameron Smith and Eric Christensen.

After IVC had moved out to an 8-3 lead with 17 minutes to go in the opening frame, the Gauchos came back to take the lead at 9-8 on field goals by Marv Lawrence, Smith and Christensen.

Ernie Adams and Smith traded two-pointers before Watson put the Arabs back on top 12-11, with 13:49 left. Then Rick Edward dropped in a field goal for Saddleback to give the Mission Vielo club its final lead of the night.

40 years ago CALEXICO Police here today are investigating the brutal murder of an unidentified man whose body was discovered late Wednesday behind a restroom building at Border Park.

Police Commander John Hignight today said the man had been stabbed about 20 times with a sharp instrument. The body reportedly has not been identified. There was absolutely nothing found in the victims pockets to help with the identification, Hignight said.

The man, aged about 25, was found after police responded to a reported disturbance at the park at First and Paulin.

Police said the victims throat had been cut, a portion of his chin was missing and numerous stab wounds were found in the chest area near the heart.

What appeared to be defensive wounds were located on the victims left hand.

Apparently someone heard a cry for help come from inside the restroom shortly before 9 p.m. By the time our officers arrived, the man was already down and appeared to be dead, Hignight said.

The victim was taken to Calexico Hospital where he was pronounced dead on arrival.

The man was the second person murdered in Imperial County in the past two days.

30 years ago Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-45th District, suggested sending the Navy, Air Force and National Guard to help Customs and the Border Patrol shore up the border with Mexico to keep drugs out.

During a news conference at Otay Mesa Wednesday, Hunter proposed using Air Force and Navy base commanders to direct the interdiction of aircraft suspected of smuggling drugs and inspecting cargo imported into the county. Hunters statement, which was released to this newspaper, said the U.S. needs to reinforce its fences and install lights to keep drug smugglers out. However, Hunters proposal does not indicate the cost of the plan or how it would be funded.

But such a plan is unlikely to help the United States flagging image with Mexico and the Latin American countries and wont stop the flow of drugs into this country, according to Dr. Alfredo Cuellar, a research fellow for the Institute of Border Studies at San Diego State University, Calexico campus.

The war on drugs is distracting attention from other ills, like housing and unemployment, Cuellar said.

The USSR is more peaceful now, its no longer the villain and drugs are taking is place as the villain with the Bush administration.

In December, Hunter proposed permanently assigning guardsmen to assist in searching vehicles and cargo at international border crossings and harbors during an interview with this newspaper.

Wednesday Hunter suggested pairing guard units with the Border Patrol to let the guardsmen take over some duties like transportation and clerical work. That would free Border Patrol agents to patrol the fence.

Hunter pinpointed 12 border areas covering 120 miles where the vast majority of the drug smuggling takes place from the San Diego-Tijuana corridor, where 45 percent of the smuggling occurs, to Brownsville-Matamoros in Texas. Calexico was one of the areas he noted as a crossing that could use assistance.

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Stories of the Past-Jan. 12: Watson provides spark as Arabs tip Gauchos - Imperial Valley Press

Of numbers and trust – INQUIRER.net

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From birth to death, numbers are quite ubiquitous in our daily lives. On the day we were born, a number, or some numbers have already been associated with us: our birth date, the time, day and year, and even the order of birth, if we are in a household of multiple siblings.

On the day of our birth, we become part of that days statistics. When we die, it is the same thing.

And journalists write 30 when they die. In between birth and death, we deal with numbers in everything we do. In elementary and high school, numbers starting with 75 up to 95 mean a lotthese numbers become the determinants of your place in school. You are either part of the slow learners section with 75 as your average grade, or you are part of the honors class if your grades are within the 90s. In college, students with grades of the least number, like 1, enjoy accolades and perks as graduates with Latin titles (summa cum laude, magna cum laude).

Numbers also define peoples socioeconomic location, in terms of their familys income and what this income can do to put them and their family in an esteemed place in society. So if the numbers associated with family income are quite meager, some people resort to nefarious activities to even up the equation, to be able to enjoy the perks of having a lot of money at their disposal. As one former coworker once said to me, It would be nice to go to a department store and not look at the price tags of things I want to buy and just grab and show everyone that I am the least concerned about the cost

On the other hand, trust is something that we all need to have to be able to forge lasting relationshipsfilial, friendly, romantic, platonicall these are nourished with trust as the foundation. These relationships later on would be shattered when trust between or among partners is broken.

But, can we use numbers to measure trust in our leaders?

What does it mean when the President sitting in Malacaang enjoys a trust rating of more than 50 percent? Is this level of trust characteristic of a satisfactory relationship between the President and the mass of Filipinos, whose children cannot go to school because of poverty? Many of these children live in isolated, hard-to-reach areas where there are no schools. Some children in Mindanao have not been going to school because they are frequently evacuating due to recurring violence in their communities. The recent 42-page report of Vice President Leni Robredo has used a lot of information with numbers, all of which are sourced from the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA), the Philippine National Police and other related government agencies working on the drug problem. In her report, the Vice President argues that despite governments relentless efforts in the war on drugs, the consumption of illegal drugs continues to rise, thus, the war on drugs is largely a failure.Sen. Ronald Bato dela Rosa, the promoter of Operation Tokhang, has denounced the report, saying among others that the government has been successful, just by the huge numbers of people killed in police operations. This could be a self-incriminating retort, but he doesnt seem to know the repercussions of what he said.Ironically, the Vice Presidents figures are based on data the PNP and other government agencies have provided her.

At least, the Vice President has made an incisive and provocative analysis of the numbers she got from PDEA, et al.; unlike Dela Rosa, who incriminated himself by admitting to the huge number of people killed under Operation Tokhang.

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Of numbers and trust - INQUIRER.net

Thousands of Contra Costa County Pot Convictions to Be Cleared Under Prop 64 – NBC Bay Area

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Thousands of marijuana convictions out of Contra CostaCounty will be dismissed as part of a push by the district attorney's office toabide by the terms of Proposition 64, which decriminalized personal use ofcannabis in 2016.

Prosecutors worked with Code for America to cull throughthousands of records in order to identify and clear 3,264 marijuana convictionsfor roughly 2,400 people eligible under the law, according to the Contra Costa CountyDistrict Attorney's Office.

Prop. 64 allows anyone 21 years old or older to buy andpossess up to 28.5 grams of marijuana and up to 8 grams of "concentratedcannabis."

In 2018, then-Gov. Jerry Brown signed a law that requires prosecutorsto review all marijuana convictions by July 1, 2020 to determine if they areeligible to be dismissed and sealed from public view.

The law requires courts to automatically reduce or dismisssuch convictions if prosecutors don't file a dispute by that same date.

"Far too often old criminal convictions for minor drugoffenses can leave a lasting mark on an individual's life," said DistrictAttorney Diana Becton in a news release. "The removal of these convictionseffectively reduces barriers to licensing, education, housing andemployment."

The effort is intended to "address wrongs caused by thefailed war on drugs" that disproportionately affected people of color,prosecutors said.

About 36 percent of county residents whose marijuana caseswill be dismissed are African-American, 15 percent are Latino, 2 percent areAsian or Pacific Islanders, 45 percent are white and 2 percent are"other" or unknown, prosecutors said.

Becton said it's "extremely unlikely" any of thedismissals will result in anyone being released from jail since "these arejust not the types of offences that would have received very lengthysentences."

"Having one on your record does interfere with a personsability to move on with their lives," she said.

Prosecutors used Code for America's "Clear MyRecord" technology, which automatically culled through huge amounts ofcriminal history data from the California Department of Justice going back toabout 1970 in mere moments, and saved Becton's office untold hours ofpainstaking work.

"I can't even imagine how many hours it would havetaken us to pull together this kind of data," she said.

Code for America, which donated its time and resources tothe county, is a nonprofit organization that works to develop technology solutionsto make government more accessible and efficient.

Contra Costa County is the fifth county to work with Codefor America to clear marijuana convictions; other counties include SanFrancisco, Sacramento, San Joaquin and Los Angeles.

While the county doesn't have a way to contact everyindividual affected by the dismissals, people can email the Contra Costa CountyDistrict Attorney's Office at DA-Prop64@contracostada.org to see if theirrecords are involved.

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Thousands of Contra Costa County Pot Convictions to Be Cleared Under Prop 64 - NBC Bay Area

The Deadly Reverberations of U.S. Border Policy (Review) – NACLA

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As demonization of immigrants from Latin America continues at a fever pitch, two recent analyses of U.S. border policies and their consequences could not be more timely: John Carlos Freys Sand and Blood: Americas Stealth War on the Mexico Border and Todd Millers Empire of Borders: The Expansion of the U.S. Border Around the World.

Like Empire of Borders, Freys Sand and Blood examines U.S.-Mexico border history by placing the present brutal treatment of undocumented migrants in the context of a long history of white supremacist U.S. politics. Frey, a veteran investigative reporter, writes in clear, down-to-earth prose about the impact that U.S. immigration and border security policies have had on Latinx migrants.

Frey himself had a traumatic childhood experience with border authorities which gave him first-hand insight into the darker side of U.S. law enforcement. He was born in Mexico but his family moved to the United States when Frey was a toddler. Since his father was a U.S. citizen, Frey became naturalized but his mother remained in this country thanks to a green card. When he was about 12, Frey was taking a walk with his mother near their home in rural San Diego and briefly separated from her. When he went looking for her his mother was gone. She had been picked up by a Border Patrol agent who targeted her because of her dark skin. Though in the U.S. legally, she had not brought her ID with her. The agent did not allow her to return home for her ID; instead he took her into custody and she was deported. [See also NACLAs review of The Death and Life of Aida Hernandez.]

Frey opens Sand and Blood by describing the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, an early example anti-immigrant racism in the United States. That legislation allowed the military to patrol the U.S.-Mexico border to block Chinese workers from entering this country. By the time the Border Patrol was officially established in 1924, U.S. laws restricted entry to Asians, illiterates, prostitutes, criminals, contract laborers, unaccompanied children, idiots, epileptics, the insane, the diseased and defective, alcoholics, beggars, polygamists, anarchists, among others.

Large agricultural interests kept Mexicans from being added to that list because those big landowners needed underpaid laborers to maintain hefty profit margins. Mexican workers crossed the border regularly, sometimes daily, to toil on large farms in California, Texas, and Arizona. Though granted entry, these men and women were treated abysmally: for more than 40 years, the delousing of Mexicans crossing between Juarez and El Paso involved being sprayed with cyanogen, which is toxic to humans.

Frey describes how, in 1917, a teenager named Carmelita Torres stood up to that inhumane process by refusing to strip for the spraying ritual, then convincing 30 other women at the bridge between Juarez and El Paso to resist also. These women sparked a wave of resistance later called the bath riots, and Mexicans began avoiding the official checkpoint altogether. Authorities in El Paso responded by assigning patrols of mounted agents, precursors to the U.S. Border Patrol, to monitor unauthorized crossings.

Sand and Blood fast-forwards from that initial wave of illegal crossings to the Bracero (manual laborer in Spanish) program created by the U.S. and Mexican governments during WWII labor shortages. This program, which ran from 1942 to 1964, allowed millions of farmworkers to work in the United States. Some of the workers stayed in the United States without government permission, contributing to a much greater Latinx population in the Southwest and elsewhere. Big agribusiness was happy to continue to employ workers who overstayed the expiration of their work permits.

Frey argues that the current military enforcement of the U.S.-Mexico border can be traced to Ronald Reagans 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, under which employers of undocumented workers were fined and border security was tightened to lessen immigration flows.Unlike todays approach, however, pathways to citizenship were left flexible. Reagan stated, I believe in the idea of amnesty for those who have put down roots and lived here, even though sometime back they may have entered illegally.

Such support for a path to legal permanent residency was not wildly popular among other politicians. Many focused on lawbreakers among immigrants and exploited nativist fears of illegal aliens. In his 1995 bid for reelection, Californias governor Pete Wilson turned around a losing campaign by playing on paranoia about undocumented brown people overrunning California. In the 1990s, Bill Clinton also gained political capital by sounding like a hardline Republican on immigration. While Frey notes that after the September 11, 2001 attacks George W. Bush oversaw a near doubling of the size of the Border Patrol, he writes, The blueprint for a militarized approach, one that caused massive death, began in earnest under the administration of a Democrat, Bill Clinton. Frey meticulously lays out a case that, in its messaging, the Clinton Administration perpetuated a negative, anti-immigrant stereotype that remains in the political lexicon today.

U.S. trade policies in the 1990s only exacerbated economic insecurity in Mexico, which in turn increased the influx of migrants from our Southern neighbor. Under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), U.S. corn flooded into Mexico, driving rural farmers from their traditional livelihoods. This and other aspects of NAFTAs pro-business economics helped increase Mexicos extreme poverty rate from 21 percent in 1994 to 37 percent in 1997. [2]

As more Mexicans decided to leave their homeland in the wake of NAFTA, the Clinton Administration responded with a policy called prevention through deterrence, which increased Border Patrol enforcement in and near El Paso, San Diego, and other urban areas. The result: Migrants began crossing in remote rural areas, and more and more died of exposure in the desert.

As part of the War on Drugs, George H.W. Bush committed to using the U.S. military to stop drug smuggling at the southern border. Frey notes that though 97 percent of cocaine and close to 100 percent of heroin and methamphetamine entered the U.S. by land or sea vehicles, inspections of such vehicles did not increase. Instead, as the 1990s went on, the military worked in tandem with the Border Patrol to target migrants on foot.

War on Terror alarmism after September 11, 2001 replaced the drug interdiction rationale for border crackdowns. Suddenly the specter of terrorist attacks from the south became a talking point for fear-mongering nativists. Congressman Silvestre Reyes, former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, told Frey, There was no terrorist threat coming from Mexico and there never has beenPoliticians have used Mexicans and immigrants as scapegoats for so long that they believe there is a real threat so its not too far to go to turn them into real terrorists. The George W. Bush Administrations Department of Homeland Security oversaw the new agency Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a billion-dollar bludgeon to be wielded against undocumented immigrants. In 2003, the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) was created as a sister agency to ICE. CBP, in effect the largest police force in the United States, with a budget of $13.5 billion, oversees the Border Patrol.

A Border Patrol agent told Frey, After 9/11, the gloves came off, and we were trained to see the migrants as possible terrorists. Abuse of migrants became commonplace. To quickly increase the size of the Border Patrol, the Bush administration lowered hiring standards with less thorough vetting of recruits and less training. Frey has reported on incidents of Border Patrol agents firing at and killing Mexican nationals across the border. He has spent years investigating Border Patrol killings of migrants and, after repeated information requests, received no useful feedback on those killings from the U.S. government. But despite government stonewalling, the Southern Border Communities Coalition has documented 80 cases of immigrants killed by Border Patrol agents with no guilty verdicts for agents who were responsible.

Though Barack Obama has the reputation of being more humane than his predecessor, Frey notes: Obama continued the legacy of all U.S. presidents and administrations since Ronald Reagan, making life more difficult for immigrants. In his time in office, Obama deported more than 5 million people. Obamas presidential campaigns received large contributions from defense contractors who profited greatly from border spending: Boeing, which received a billion-dollar contract for a virtual fence that failed on all counts, gave Obama around $191,000 in 2012. Lockheed Martin also gave generously.

Frey cultivated sources inside government agencies and doggedly peppered elected officials with questions mainstream media outlets tend to avoid. He also did more than spending time talking with people attempting to make it across the border: After making contact with a high-ranking member of the Sinaloa cartel who oversees a large number of highly profitable illegal crossings, Frey participated in a trek of migrants across the border. After walking all day in the blazing sun, Frey woke up with blisters on his feet, a parched throat, and little remaining water. He soon told the cartels guide that he couldnt go on. But unlike others attempting the journey, Frey had a satellite phone to call for help. As an air conditioned vehicle took him away, Frey reflected that if he had stayed in the desert, the smugglers would have left him to die.

A forensic anthropologist told Frey, Nobody cares about dead immigrants. Theyre invisible when theyre alive, and theyre even more invisible when theyre dead. No one knows how many thousands have perished while attempting to enter the US through desert terrain, and the U.S. government has little to no interest in tracking such deaths. And after members of the faith-based coalition No More Deaths placed gallon jugs of water in areas of migrant passage, Border Patrol agents were caught on camera kicking such jugs over, increasing the likelihood of yet more deaths from dehydration.

Such acts of wanton cruelty have been emblematic of the Trump presidency. His administration has systematically instituted zero tolerance policies under which young children are separated from parents without bothering to track them, children and adults die in detention camps, and asylum appeals are denied en masse.

Frey also spent time traveling with one of the Central American caravans that Trump demonized relentlessly. The large group offered safety in numbers to travelers who in isolation routinely face extortion, robbery, kidnapping, and rape while attempting to pass through Mexico. Many of the people Frey spoke to discussed leaving home because of gang violence and the grueling poverty that is endemic throughout Central America. But he also heard a climate cause rarely mentioned in U.S. media: The land itself was no longer hospitable to these poor people. A prolonged drought in the dry corridor of Central Americawhich includes parts of Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaraguahad resulted in almost complete crop failure in many areas.

Journalist Todd Miller, who has been writing about U.S. border issues for more than two decades, including in his previous books Storming the Wall: Climate Change, Migration, and Homeland Security (2017) and Border Patrol Nation: Dispatches From the Front Lines of Homeland Security (2014), expands on the connections between climate change and illegal immigration. His most recent book, Empire of Borders, focuses on border enforcement and climate-related refugees. He opens by quoting a climate scientist who describes Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador as ground zero for climate change in the Americas, then looks at Washingtons world-wide heavily militarized border security apparatus.

In Storming the Wall, Miller echoes Frey when he discusses the severity of the climate crisis in Central America. Citing a 2016 report, he writes, from 1995 to 2014 Honduras was indeed ground zero, the country most impacted by severe weather. During those 19 years, Honduras endured 73 extreme weather events and an average of 302 climate-related deaths per year. But reflecting on his time talking to activists and agricultural workers in Honduras, Miller writes, From the perspective of the border enforcement regime, its immaterial whether or not there is a drought, whether or not there is a harvest, or whether or not there is sufficient food. Droughts do not matter. Persistent storms do not matter. To the on-the-ground immigration authorities, when it comes to interdiction, incarceration, and deportation, it means nothing that a new era of climate instability has begun. All that matters is whether or not a person has the proper documents.

Though the current occupant of the White House claims to not believe in climate change, the U.S. military has for years been making contingency plans for its future effects on immigration. In 2015, a U.S. Brigadier General told Miller, As it gets hotter, as the catastrophic events become more frequent, its having an impact on how they grow their agriculture in the Latin American countries, and employment is becoming a problem, and its driving people up north. U.S. military planning for wide-scale flight from climate changes includes the equivalent of war games. This is a continuation of policy leanings going back more than 20 years: In 1994, Secretary of State Madeline Albright said, We believe that environmental degradation is not simply an irritation but a real threat to our national security. This threat involves an enormous amount of people who will need new places to live: the numbers who will be fleeing extreme weather in their home countries is staggering, with estimates that go as high as one billion by 2050.

In Empire of Borders, Miller encounters soldiers familiar with BORTAC, the little-known special forces and tactical unit of the U.S. Border Patrol, at the border between Guatemala and Honduras. BORTAC, which Miller describes as Border Patrol robocops, has had a global presence in the Americas and the Caribbean, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Ukraine, Kosovo, and Tajikistan. The U.S. influence on global border construction and enforcement is staggering. Miller writes, Close your eyes and point to any land mass on a world map, and your finger will probably find a country that is building up its borders in some way with Washingtons assistance.

Millers analysis of the history of punitive measures on the U.S.-Mexico border dovetails with Freys. Clearly Donald Trumps brutally sadistic policies built on and worsened already existing policies from Obamas presidency. Miller cites a 2011 report that details the permanent separation of 5,100 children from their families. He makes a convincing case that the roots of such racist policies go back to the creation of the U.S.-Mexico borderthe result of a bloody war of conquest in which the U.S. seized land that today makes up much of Southern California and the southwestern states.

But it is not just at Mexicos northern border that the United States maintains a heavily militarized presence. The American Civil Liberties Union calls the 100-mile zones around both the southern and northern borders Constitution-free zone(s). Miller spoke to a CBP official who pointed out that the Fourth Amendment does not apply to the Department of Homeland Security, which CBP is part of. CBP and DHS are also exempt from restrictions on racial profiling that apply to other branches of the U.S. government.

Millers travels to global hot spots where CBP has a profound influence leads him to quote a journalist who calls the organization global capitalisms bouncers. He also cites anthropologist Jeff Halper, who argues that global border enforcement promotes a certain social order while also ensuring the smooth flow of capital.

Miller talks to activists from different countries who argue for military-free open borders. Despite the global siege mentality, he documents so effectively in Empire of Borders, Miller sees the possibility of radically more humane arrangements than the current state of affairs. Miller notes, Leaders talk of border security as if it were as natural and timeless as a mountain or a river. It is not. The hardened militarized borders insisted upon by politicians are a recent phenomenon, as are political boundaries between nation-states, as are nation-states themselves.

Against this backdrop, I found Millers optimism about the possibilities of a shift toward global solidarity and empathy beyond the confines of nation state provincialism the least convincing part of Empire of Borders. The lack of compassion for others in the right-wing, anti-immigrant regimes now in power in the United States and elsewhere dont seem likely to make a leftward shift toward open borders any time soon. As Miller notes elsewhere in this excellent book, In the climate era, coexisting worlds of luxury living and impoverished desperation will only be magnified and compounded.

The reality of millions driven from their homes is not some dystopian future scenario: The UN High Commissioner on Refugees reported in 2015 that their were more than 65 million forcibly displaced people in the world. That number does not include migrants forced to move by global poverty.

Although the powerful countries most responsible for our climate crisis show little interest in becoming more welcoming to climate refugees, the more positive possibilities that Miller points to are worth fighting for. To mangle a riff from the great Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, no matter how much pessimism dominates our intellects, optimism of the will still has a chance to prevail.

Ben Terrall is a San Francisco-based writer whose work has appeared in CounterPunch, In These Times, The San Francisco Bay Guardian, Noir City, January Magazine, and other outlets.

Disclaimer: Todd Miller is a member of NACLAs Editorial Board.

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The Deadly Reverberations of U.S. Border Policy (Review) - NACLA

We All Want Someones Best Songs of the 2010s – We All Want Someone To Shout For

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While making our best albums of the decade list wasnt an easy task, figuring out our best songs was ten times more difficult. Do you pick the obvious single or that hidden gem that revealed its true glory with every new listen? How many songs do I even include? 200 is a lot, 100 is too little to really showcase the best of ten years. So I had some fun with it (the only sane way to take on an insane task like this) and decided that since its 2020, Id do a list of 220 songs.Like any list of this sort, theres a lot that you will probably expect, some obvious choices and hopefully, some that you wont. I always try and make it clear that these are more so my favorite songs that anything that I think is the best, as these are indeed distinctly different concepts.

All of these songs were obsessed over at some point by me, whether it be the many hours spent alone in my car to and from shows, working on this blog in college, hanging with friends, whatever it may be, these were the songs that soundtracked the last decade.

Find the full list posted below and of course a giant Spotify playlist that I challenge you to listen in its entirety. (2 songs on the list Joanna Newsom Divers + Flyte Light Me Up werent on Spotify)

220. Ski Lodge Just to Be Like You219. Mean Lady Bop Bop218. Murals Eyes Of Love217. Caroline Rose Soul Number 5216. Theme Park Milk215. Jens Lekman Whats That Perfume That You Wear?214. Summer Fiction Chandeliers213. Queens of the Stone Age I Sat By The Ocean212. The Districts Funeral Beds211. Tyler, The Creator Yonkers210. My Morning Jacket Holdin On To Black Metal209. John Maus Hey Moon208. Radiohead Lotus Flower207. The Weeknd The Morning206. Forth Wanderers Slop205. Houndmouth Sedona204. Tobias Jesso Jr. How Could You Babe203. Deafheaven Dream House202. Hundred Waters Murmurs201. Unknown Mortal Orchestra So Good at Being in Trouble200. Pantha Du Prince Stick To My Side (Feat. Panda Bear)199. The New Pornographers War On The East Coast198. Lower Dens Brains197. Jack White Over and Over and Over196. Sylvan Esso Coffee195. Beach House 10 Mile Stereo194. Japanese Breakfast Everybody Wants to Love You193. Leon Bridges River192. Real Estate Saturday191. Panda Bear Last Night At The Jetty190. Rubblebucket Came Out Of A Lady189. The War On Drugs Holding On188. Titus Andronicus A More Perfect Union187. Destroyer Kaputt186. Hamilton Leithauser I Retired185. Earl Sweatshirt -Chum184. Courtney Barnett Avant Gardener183. The Vaccines If You Wanna182. Beach Fossils Daydream181. Summer Camp Better Off Without You180. Pusha-T Trouble On My Mind (feat. Tyler, The Creator)179. Free Energy Dream City178. Portugal. The Man Sleep Forever177. Purple Mountains All My Happiness Is Gone176. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds Jubilee Street175. Blur Thought I Was a Spaceman174. Tennis Marathon173. Wild Nothing Chinatown172. Aldous Harding The Barrel171. Thee Oh Sees I Come From The Mountain170. Jay Som The Bus Song169. Ra Ra Riot Boy168. Big Boi Shutterbugg (feat. Cutty)167. Smith Westerns All Die Young166. Mac DeMarco Freaking Out the Neighborhood165. Deerhunter Helicopter164. Grimes Kill V. Maim163. Khruangbin People Everywhere (Still Alive)162. Caveman Old Friend161. Girls Honey Bunny160. Dirty Projectors About To Die159. Parquet Courts Stoned and Starving158. King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard Cellophane157. Daft Punk Instant Crush (feat. Julian Casablancas)156. Alvvays Not My Baby155. The National Dark Side Of The Gym154. Future Islands Balance153. Two Door Cinema Club What You Know152. Foxygen -Make It Known151. Lucy Dacus Night Shift150. Vampire Weekend Diplomats Son149. The XX Fiction148. Girl Band Paul147. Animal Collective FloriDada146. Kurt Vile Babys Arms145. Tanlines Real Life144. Wolf Alice Moaning Lisa Smile143. DIIV Doused142. Tame Impala The Less I Know The Better141. Cloud Nothings Im Not Part of Me140. Wild Beasts Wanderlust139. Wolf Parade What Did My Lover Say? (It Always Had to Go This Way)138. Ariel Pinks Haunted Graffiti Round and Round137. Whitney No Woman136. Bombay Bicycle Club Eat, Sleep, Wake (Nothing But You)135. Alt J Taro134. Little Green Cars My Love Took Me Down To The River To Silence Me133. Fiona Apple Every Single Night132. Kanye West Dark Fantasy131. Beach House Silver Soul130. Snail Mail Pristine129. The Black Keys Tighten Up128. Los Campesinos! Avocado, Baby127. Vince Staples Norf Norf126. Caribou Odessa125. The Gaslight Anthem American Slang124. Joanna Newsom Divers123. Run The Jewels Thursday In The Danger Room (feat. Kamasi Washington)122. Hot Chip I Feel Better121. Black Midi bmbmbm120. Craft Spells After The Moment119. Crystal Castles Baptism118. EL VY Return to the Moon (Political Song for Didi Bloome to Sing, with Crescendo)117. Flyte Light Me Up116. Palma Violets Best Of Friends115. Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin Sink/Let It Sway114. LCD Soundsystem Home113. The Vaccines All In White112. Arcade Fire Afterlife111. The Growlers Going Gets Tuff110. Ty Segall Youre The Doctor109. Soccer Mommy Your Dog108. The Drums Best Friend107. The Tins Green Room106. Magic Kids Hey Boy105. Yeasayer O.N.E.104. Danny Brown Grown Up103. Perfume Genius Slip Away102. Alvvays Party Police101. Wilco Art Of Almost100. The War On Drugs An Ocean in Between the Waves99. Sufjan Stevens Futile Devices98. Thee Oh Sees The Dream97. The Walkmen Blue As Your Blood96. Frightened Rabbit Holy95. Stornoway Zorbing94. Julia Holter Sea Calls Me Home93. Men I Trust Tailwhip92. Kevin Morby Harlem River91. Grizzly Bear Mourning Sound90. James Blake Retrograde89. Grimes Oblivion88. The Rapture How Deep Is Your Love?87. The Strokes Under Cover of Darkness86. MGMT Siberian Breaks85. Cut Copy Need You Now84. Real Estate Its Real83. Fontaines D.C. Boys in the Better Land82. Weyes Blood Andromeda81. Phoebe Bridgers Motion Sickness80. White Reaper Judy French79. Arctic Monkeys Do I Wanna Know?78. Deerhunter Desire Lines77. Port St. Willow Amawalk76. Spoon Let Me Be Mine75. CHVRCHES The Mother We Share74. Hop Along Tibetan Pop Stars73. Kendrick Lamar The Blacker The Berry72. St. Vincent Cruel71. Cults Go Outside70. Purity Ring Fineshrine69. Frank Ocean Ivy68. Tuneyards Bizness67. Julien Baker Something66. (Sandy) Alex G Change65. The Last Shadow Puppets Miracle Aligner64. The Horrors Still Life63. Chromatics These Streets Will Never Look the Same62. DAngelo Really Love61. Metric Black Sheep60. Sharon Van Etten Seventeen59. Alex Turner Stuck On The Puzzle58. Angel Olsen Shut Up Kiss Me57. Mitski First Love / Late Spring56. Arcade Fire The Suburbs55. The National Bloodbuzz Ohio54. Hamilton Leithauser + Rostam In A Black Out53. Big Thief Not52. Amen Dunes Believe51. Car Seat Headrest Bodys50. Vampire Weekend Step49. Arctic Monkeys Star Treatment48. Youth Lagoon Montana47. A Tribe Called Quest We The People.46. The National Oblivions45. The Walkmen Heaven44. The Twilight Sad It Never Was The Same43. Foals Spanish Sahara42. Pure Bathing Culture Ivory Coast41. The Radio Dept. Heavens On Fire40. Jay-Z & Kanye West Niggas in Paris39. Lana Del Rey Video Games38. Villagers Becoming A Jackal37. Bon Iver Holocene36. The Tallest Man on Earth Love Is All35. Pinegrove Aphasia34. Frank Ocean Thinkin Bout You33. David Bowie Lazarus32. Tame Impala Feels Like We Only Go Backwards31. Slowdive No Longer Making Time30. Courtney Barnett Pedestrian at Best29. Gorillaz On Melancholy Hill28. Kendrick Lamar FEAR.27. Robyn Dancing On My Own26. Daft Punk Get Lucky (feat. Pharrell Williams)25. Andy Shauf Quite Like You24. The Last Shadow Puppets The Dream Synopsis23. Childish Gambino Redbone22. Father John Misty So Im Growing Old on Magic Mountain21. The National Pink Rabbits20. The Morning Benders Excuses19. Arctic Monkeys Thats Where Youre Wrong18. Fleet Foxes Helplessness Blues17. Idles Never Fight a Man with a Perm16. Arcade Fire Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)15. Future Islands Seasons (Waiting on You)14. Beach House Myth13. Vampire Weekend Hannah Hunt12. M83 Midnight City11. Alabama Shakes Hold On10. Alex Turner Piledriver Waltz

9. Japandroids The House That Heaven Built

8. Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever Talking Straight

7. LCD Soundsystem Dance Yourself Clean

6. The War On Drugs Red Eyes

5. Wu Lyf We Bros

4. Kanye West Runaway

3. Radiohead True Love Waits

2. The National Terrible Love (Alternative Version)

1. Alvvays Archie, Marry Me

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We All Want Someones Best Songs of the 2010s - We All Want Someone To Shout For

Psychadelic Events Are Going Mainstream, Where The Much-Maligned Mushroom Industry Focuses On Mental Health – Forbes

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Psychedelics have been a mainstay for a millennia and appreciated in the counter-culture for decades. In 2020, whether consuming, investing, or both, mushrooms are having a moment.

PsychedeliTech, a ground-breaking new conference, incubator and discovery platform for psychedelic medicine will host Rick Doblin, Ph.D., Founder and Executive Director of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) as the keynote speaker at the first-ever PsyTech Summit, a forum for psychedelic science, innovation and investment conference, in Israel.

The inaugural PsyTech conference will take place March 29-30, 2020 at the Hilton Hotel, on the Mediterranean Sea in Tel Aviv.

PsyTech is a division of iCAN: Israel-Cannabis, which together with CannaTech, its medical cannabis events platform, has been a global participant in education and innovation for cannabis therapeutics and products with conferences in London, Sydney, Hong Kong, Panama and Cape Town, to date.

Saul Kaye, iCAN founder and CEO, said, Rick Doblin is an early pioneer and extremely effective advocate for the potential of psychedelics in the treatment of mental health disease and symptoms, including depression, anxiety disorders, and PTSD. We are thrilled he will join us at our first PsyTech Summit in Tel Aviv to share his enlightened vision and vast knowledge of the fast-developing therapeutic ecosystem that is about to explode as a wave of new information, research and consumer interest about psychedelics floods the market.

For the first 30 years of MAPS dedicated research, there were virtually no for-profit psychedelic business opportunities, apart from a few ibogaine and ayahuasca clinics and mushroom sales in countries where the substances are legal.

Psychedelics have the potential to impact and improve mental health.

For-profit entities emerging in the field of psychedelics, such as Cybin with microdosed psilocybin products and Mind Med with ibogaine, are directly due to the success of non-profit psychedelic therapy research, including the lifelong work of MAPS and other advocates.

"The new psychedelic industry will need to focus on public benefit as well as profit in order to avoid a cultural backlash against these historically misunderstood substances," cautions Doblin."I am looking forward to discussing these important issues at PsyTech, Israels first summit focusing on the therapeutic potential of psychedelics," he continued.

The global market for mental health medications was worth $88.3 billion in 2015, according to BCC Research.

Similar to the cannabis industry, psychedelics and medicinal mushrooms will require an ecosystem to effectively drive education, regulation, safety, investment, research and development.

These key issues, as well as personal stories of treatment, will be explored at PsyTech.

The topic of psychedelics is sparking worldwide mainstream interest. People who want to learn more about the companies developing the science of mushrooms can attend a conference in New York, prior to the upcoming one in Tel Aviv.

"This is an exciting new industry and it's just starting to grow, which is whyGMRis hosting a mini-conference on Psychedelics in New York," says Debra Borchardt, Editor-In-Chief of Green Market Report.

TheEconomics of Psychedelic Investing takes place onJanuary 24, 2020 in NYC.

For those who merely want to experience the effects of psychedelic mushrooms in a safe and welcoming environment, Irie Selkirk offers her guests a transformative psilocybin experience complete with farm-to-table meals and a psychotherapist on staff, at her immersion retreat in Jamaica.

With conferences, nascent investment opportunities and infused staycations available, magic mushrooms are going mainstream.

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Psychadelic Events Are Going Mainstream, Where The Much-Maligned Mushroom Industry Focuses On Mental Health - Forbes