Daily Archives: April 27, 2017

On April 20, the unofficial stoner holiday 4/20, supporters of legal marijuana and opponents of the U.S. war on drugs took to the internet. The words accompanying one widely shared image say in part: More American police officers died during prohibition of alcohol than any other time in history. 300 died in 1930 alone. After prohibition ended, police deaths didnt reach 200 a year again until the year Nixon declared war on drugs.

A quick Google search showed us the image has been making the rounds since at least 2015.

We wondered if the data actually support that message.

Marijuana and other drugs had been illegal in the United States for years before the federal government under President Richard Nixon launched what we now call the war on drugs. He called for harsher drug laws and millions of dollars in extra spending, and Congress complied.

Comparing Prohibition with the drug war is common in American culture. But is it also fair to compare police deaths during the two periods?

Its correct that 1930 was the deadliest year in U.S. history for police. The National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, which tracks officer deaths going back to 1791, says 307 officers died in 1930. Its also correct that police deaths decreased sharply after Prohibition.

But the numbers behind the claim that police deaths didnt reach 200 a year again until the year Nixon declared war on drugs are a bit off.

Nixon began the war on drugs in 1971, but police deaths actually topped 200 the year before that, in 1970. And that wasnt any sort of a spike. The number of deaths had been just below 200 all throughout the late 1960s.

And thats not the only thing wrong with this claim.

The image clearly uses the violence associated with organized crime to make its point. However, not every officer who dies is killed in the line of duty by someone else. Many officers die from car crashes, illnesses and other causes. Yet the data this viral post cites on police deaths include all deaths of police officers each year violent and non-violent, on-duty and off-duty.

In 2007, according to the memorial group, 202 officers died. According to FBI data, 57 of those were killed while on duty by a criminal.

That means nearly three-fourths of the deaths that year were not the kind of violent deaths this image is alluding to. And even while on duty that year, an officer was more likely to have been killed in an accident than by a criminal.

We focused on 2007 for a reason. In the past 36 years, only 2007 and 2001 (due to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks) have had more than 200 officer deaths.

As for the number of officers who die each year during the war on drugs, in reality thats only happened 12 times, and only twice since 1981.

Nicholas Kristof wrote in 2015 that toddlers are killed by guns more often than on-duty police officers are, which PunditFact rated Mostly True.

And whatever the cause of officers deaths in a given period, the war on drugs still doesnt compare to Prohibition, when for 14 years an average of 252 officers died every year. Since Prohibition ended more than 80 years ago, however, there have been more than 250 officer deaths only twice in 1973 and 1974.

In fact, during most years from the 1990s until today, the number of officer deaths has been roughly the same as 100 years ago, when there were far fewer officers.

Police deaths have largely been on the decline for decades even as the drug war continues, and the number of officers has grown significantly. Since the image uses a semi-accurate statistic to make a misleading comparison,we rate this claim Mostly False.

After prohibition ended, police deaths didnt reach 200 a year again until the year Nixon declared war on drugs.

Viral image on Thursday, April 20th, 2017 in posts on social media

Here is the original post:

Online post misleads on police deaths during drug war - Atlanta Journal Constitution

News & Observer

The war on drugs: PolitiFact NC looks into the number of police ... News & Observer A viral image making the rounds last week (during the stoner holiday of 4/20) made a surprising implication: That ending the war on drugs could make life safer ... Viral 4/20 image blazes through a misleading claim about the drug ...PolitiFact all 2 news articles »

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The war on drugs: PolitiFact NC looks into the number of police ... - News & Observer

New York Daily News

Rachael Leigh Cook makes new egg-centric PSA about 'War on Drugs' New York Daily News Rachael Leigh Cook revisited her visceral anti-heroin PSA from 1997 to address how the justice system deals with white people versus minorities when it comes to drug charges. "This is one of the millions of Americans who uses drugs and won't get ... Remake of classic '90s ad explains: 'This is your brain on drug policy.'ThinkProgress Remake of Classic 'Your Brain on Drugs' Ad Slams Disastrous Drug WarSalon 20 Years Later, 'This Is Your Brain On Drug Policy' Is The PSA You Need To SeeCivilized Glamour -Collider.com -YouTube -YouTube all 46 news articles »

More here:

Rachael Leigh Cook makes new egg-centric PSA about 'War on Drugs' - New York Daily News

Photo Courtesy of Boom Arts

Jeff Sessions wants to bring back the War on Drugs. If youve forgotten about the racist legacy of these get tough laws, I recommend you see Spiritrials, a play created and performed by Dahlak Brathwaite, running now through April 30 at Disjecta.

Not long before the United States elected its first Black president, a young Black man was pulled over in his car for the 10th time. In all nine previous stops, he had been doing nothing wrong, and after varying degrees of police harassment, was released without being charged. But this time, hed smoked some weed and had some magic mushrooms in his possession. How am I going to get out of this? he wondered. Hes a good guy. Hes been raised to be a credit to his racenot a statistic.

Dahlak Brathwaite Photo Courtesy of Boom Arts

Using his original hip-hop compositions (with live scoring by DJ Dion Decibels) and dramatic performance, Brathwaite takes us through his autobiographical story, pointing out where and how his run-in with the criminal justice system could have taken a different course: The cop did not need to search him on a routine traffic stop. But he does. Finding a very small amount of mushroomsan amount that in 48 other states could have resulted in merely a misdemeanorthe cop couldve let him go. But he doesnt. The DA could seek one of two avenues of prosecution for a first-time nonviolent drug offender: One would wipe his record clean, the other would forever label him a felon and addict. The DA chooses felon.

In Spiritrials, Brathwaite dramatizes his experiences in court and in a drug recovery center, embodying characters he meets there: Pastor, the old black clich Dahlak tells us he never wanted to be, and Samples, the gold chain-wearing addict who makes souvenirs of tattoos and stories. Through these humorous and poignant performances, as well as his own narrative, Brathwaite explores racism, code-switching, black cultural history, his own shame and guilt at being another statistic in the black community, and his sense that it was inevitable.

Ordered by the court to call himself an addict and find God, Brathwaites performance works through his shame and guilt with art instead. He uses rich wordplay, hip-hop, and levity to find himself again, and to show the ruinous and dehumanizing impact of the criminal justice system and how people of color are ensnared in it every step of the way. Its a powerful and persuasive account of the racism and injustice the War on Drugs has wrought.

Continued here:

Spiritrials Reveals the Reach of the War on Drugs - The Portland Mercury

A

s New Jersey Governor Chris Christie takes the lead in crafting the Trump administrations response to the opioid crisis, he and his colleagues need to understand that we cant fix the problem until we kick our long-term addiction to the war on drugs and accept overdoses for what they are: a health issue.

Although the majority of Americans who consume illicit drugs do so without addiction, opioid overdose has become a deadly reality. Every day, 120 to 140 people in the US die from drug overdoses, more than from gunshot wounds or car accidents. About 90 of these are due to opioids.

A growing number of Americans believe that drug misuse is a health problem. Yet we continue to rely on law enforcement and the criminal justice system to deal with it, despite resounding evidence that punishment does not stop people from misusing drugs. Hefty penalties for the possession or sale of drugs have been on the books for decades. They have done little to reduce the use of illicit substances, but have instead led to out-of-control incarceration, deprived communities, and wasted public resources.

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Expecting the criminal justice system to solve a health crisis does more harm than good. For example, many jurisdictions are still reluctant to distribute naloxone a lifesaving antidote to opioid overdose to drug users and their families and friends. Instead, they limit its distribution to police officers and first responders. Police who carry naloxone can save lives, even though basic emergency medical technicians along with family members and friends of people who use drugs are more likely to be present and able to respond immediately to an overdose.

Chris Christie brings heartfelt approach to Trumps opioid commission, but some controversy too

Treating law enforcement as the primary responder to overdoses encourages punitive responses, like charging overdose survivors and bystanders with drug possession and other offenses. One town in Ohio has even started penalizing survivors with a misdemeanor charge of inciting panic punishable by up to 180 days in jail and a $1,000 fine after saving them with naloxone. These penalties discourage people from calling for help when someone around them is overdosing and will likely cause more deaths than they prevent.

The widespread adoption of drug courts praised by former US Attorney General Eric Holder as a way to strengthen public health and build stronger, safer communities is a similarly flawed solution. While some people have found help through drug courts, many of them rely on judges, not doctors, to make decisions about treatment. Drug courts often require total abstinence as a one-size-fits-all solution, sometimes ordering people off of medications like methadone or buprenorphine that are helping them reduce their reliance on heroin. Drug courts can also push people into the treatment system who arent dependent on drugs.

People for whom drug-court-ordered treatments dont work are then punished and pushed back into the criminal justice system, often with harsher prison sentences than they would have received in the first place.

Theres a better way. Its called harm reduction. This approach focuses on reducing the negative effects of drug use rather than on punishing people who use drugs in an often-futile attempt to make them stop. Harm reduction options like supervised injection facilities or drug consumption rooms have successfully prevented fatal overdoses and connected people to treatment in cities such as Vancouver, Sydney, Amsterdam, Barcelona, and Zurich; there are 74 official drug consumption facilities in Europe alone.

Expecting the criminal justice system to solve a health crisis does more harm than good.

Through its Open Arms program, So Paulo successfully provides housing, job training, drug treatment, and social services to people who use drugs without demanding abstinence. Switzerland, Germany, the Netherlands, and Denmark all permit doctors to legally prescribe medical heroin to longtime users who have failed other treatments. These are just a few examples of countless projects around the world that provide holistic harm reduction services.

Law enforcement can play an important role in harm reduction. In fact, police can respond more effectively when they put health first. In Seattle, the Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD) program lets police officers divert users and low-level dealers to harm reduction services instead of sending them to court and jail. That approach is catching on in cities across the country, including Santa Fe, N.M.; Albany, N.Y.; Baltimore; and Atlanta. University of Washington researchers found that LEAD in Seattle decreased recidivism by nearly 60 percent, and saved millions of dollars. LEAD participants were also significantly more likely to obtain housing, employment, and legitimate income.

In Vancouver, Canada, police have urged drug users to use the citys supervised injection facility, Insite, to prevent overdoses. In countries as diverse as Kyrgyzstan, Kenya, and Moldova, police have developed operational guidelines to respect the human rights of people who use drugs and advance public health goals like HIV prevention.

Opioid users flock to a safe place where they are monitored and not judged

If we are serious about preventing overdoses and reducing the harm associated with substance misuse in the US, similar programs should be created here. We need solutions that meet people where they are, treat them as human beings, and provide evidence-based services to help them make necessary changes to lead healthier and safer lives.

That means providing tools and services directly to drug users and their families and friends, and supporting frontline responses by health and social service providers. We need harm reduction options based on evidence, public health, and a respect for human rights.

Above all, we need to kick our harmful and ineffective addiction to punishment so police, health providers, and people who use drugs can work together to save and transform lives.

Marc Krupanski is a program officer with the Public Health Program of the Open Society Foundations, which aims to advance health and human rights by promoting social inclusion, transparency, accountability, and participation in health policy and practice. The Open Society Foundationss Public Health Program supports projects and organizations that advance the health and human rights of people who use drugs in over 26 countries.

Follow Marc on Twitter @policingwatch Add Marc on Facebook

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It's time to kick our addiction to the war on drugs - Stat - STAT

Clockwise from upper left: Shakey Graves, Trio Mediaeval, The Mountain Goats, Mr. Mitch, The War On Drugs, Elliot Moss, GAS Courtesy of the artists hide caption

For this week's show, Bob Boilen and I throw open the studio door to welcome a parade of guests from the NPR Music team, each sharing their favorite April releases. This includes Jake Witz, one of our fabulous Spring interns, who has some relatively restrained music from U.K. grime artist Mr. Mitch. We're also joined by Rachel Horn, who brought us some funktacular beats from Orgone; Viking's Choice curator Lars Gotrich has surprising new cuts from The Mountain Goats and ambient artist GAS; and NPR classical guru Tom Huizenga of Deceptive Cadence shares a gorgeous Icelandic hymn from Trio Mediaeval.

Oh, Bob and I have our own picks, too his a spare and woozy acoustic cut from Shakey Graves; mine some electronic soul from Elliot Moss (think James Blake). Once Bob's out of the studio I've also got a bonus cut from The War On Drugs an epic, mood-shifting guitar jam. Robin Hilton

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New Mix: Shakey Graves, The War On Drugs, The Mountain Goats ... - NPR