Monthly Archives: April 2017

Creative Secrets From The Advantages Product Video Winner – Advertising Specialty Institute (press release)

Posted: April 14, 2017 at 12:16 am

By C.J. Mittica Published in Web Exclusive

Wednesday, April 12, 2017

SnugZ USA (asi/88060) claimed the first Advantages Product Video Contest with Germ Warfare," a video that touts the benefits of the companys hand sanitizer products in killing off bad nasties the germs that exist in our everyday life. Catchy and well shot, the video is not an exception for the West Jordan, UT-based supplier; SnugZ has produced dozens of creative videos, shot in-house on little budget. The SnugZ marketing team shares the secrets (and some fun making-of photos) behind the winning video.

Q: How did SnugZ come up with the idea for the video?

SnugZ: Video is an essential component of our marketing strategy here at SnugZ USA. In the case of Germ Warfare, [SnugZ Senior Content Strategist] Jeff Andertons daughter was part of the inspiration when she came home sick from school. From there the creative process took over, and we began piecing together what would become a funny and educational video about sanitizer.

Q: Your company has produced a lot of creative videos whats the idea generation process?

SnugZ: As a marketing team, we hold ourselves to a very high personal standard. We set our creative bar at whatever is currently moving the social zeitgeist meter in the video realm. We are constantly noting the work that moves us, makes us laugh and gets us thinking. We find that over the years we have built such a library of ideas that it becomes a relatively straightforward process to collaborate, brainstorm, and finally concept several ideas based on our objectives.(You can do this while watching a movie in the middle of the day. Did I say that out loud?)

Our brainstorm sessions typically begin with identifying the root of the problem or need that can be fulfilled with a SnugZ promotional product. Consumers buy through emotion, so we ask ourselves, How do we create that connection? At that point were then able to develop a creative way to tell that story through video, ads, social media, sales sheets and more.

Keep in mind there is always a dual purpose behind the campaign: convey a message that resonates with our distributor customer while also providing them with a marketing tool to help them do their job of selling to the end-user. Therein lies the challenge.Most commercials and branded content do not require this next-level creative step.

Q: Was the video produced in-house? Are the people in the video employees or actors?

SnugZ: The Germ Warfare video was 100% shot and produced right here at SnugZ USA with our own actors who double as employees. I played Bad, Chris Duncan (our senior graphic designer) played Nasty, and Mickey Peterson (who works in sales support) was our sanitizer model (and on-set makeup artist). We had fun playing up the big personalities of the Bad Nasties. And youll be surprised at the talent you can discover right within your own company!

Q: There are lots of fun creative elements, especially the Bad Nasties. How did you create them and where did you get the costumes?

SnugZ: First off, you cant find these costumes at the store. Trust us, we looked for them.Our idea of the Bad Nasties started out as an animation, but as it evolved we thought having real characters would contribute a life-like element to the story.

Once we had determined to shoot everything practically, the first question was: Uhhh how are we going to make germs out of people? After several failed attempts (which we should have gotten on film for future generations), Jeff was at Home Depot one night looking at sprinkler supplies for his yard, when it hit him: Well use sprinkler piping. Twenty bucks of extruded plastic later, we were in business, and our videographer Wendy Gregory used other materials to handmake the rest.

Time after time weve found that you dont need a million-dollar budget to create high-quality video. It requires a vision, passion, and creative elbow grease up the wazoo. Anyone telling you they need a six-figure budget hasnt put themselves into their creative box. Once you set limits, it gives your team the freedom to dream up solutions you never would have thought of in a million years!

Q: Why are videos important for your company?

SnugZ: Video is the most consumed media there is. Period. By the end of 2018, 80% of all internet traffic will be video. Ninety percent of users say that seeing a video about a product is helpful in the decision process, and 46% take some sort of action after viewing a video ad. Stories are becoming more important than ever and its evident with Snapchat, Instagram Stories and now Facebook Stories.Thats why it is important to us, because thats how the world wants to consume and share content.

SnugZ Senior Content Strategist Jeff Anderton and Director Tanner Shinnick frame up the hand sanitizer bottles.

Mickey Peterson (who works in sales support for the company) pulls double duty, serving as the on-set makeup artist and star of the video.

Bad Nasties Chris Duncan (SnugZ senior graphic designer) and Cody Belnap (digital marketing coordinator) cheesin before the shoot for the companys Germ Warfare video.

Videographer Wendy Gregory (who made the costumes) and Anderton fit Duncan with his Bad Nasty costume.

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Creative Secrets From The Advantages Product Video Winner - Advertising Specialty Institute (press release)

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The 1917 Immigration Act That Presaged Trump’s Muslim Ban – JSTOR Daily

Posted: at 12:16 am

This year marks the centennial of the 1917 Immigration Act, which specified several categories of undesirables barred from entering the United States (such as idiots, epileptics, and anyone mentally or physically defective). Its most striking provision, however, was a total ban on immigration from a geographic area designated the Asiatic Barred Zone. Whereas European migrants were welcome if they did not tick any of the undesirable boxes and could pass a literacy test, no one from the Asia-Pacific zone, regardless of education or class, was permitted. The act expanded the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 to counter immigration from the Orient comprehensively.

Since President Trump announced Executive Order 13769 on January 27, barring nationals of seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States, critics have outlined the parallels between Trumps order and a trajectory of previous legislation aimed at curtailing the presence of various racial, ethnic, and religious groups in the United States. Although the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the 1924 Johnson-Reed Immigration Act, Executive Order 9066 (sanctioning Japanese internment), and, more recently, NSEERS (a variant of a Muslim registry) are key laws, the advent of the Asiatic Barred Zone is particularly relevant for our contemporary moment.

Whereas the nineteenth century was characterized by attempts to curtail the yellow peril of China, the 1917 law was a response to demographic shifts at home. The Pacific Northwest, in particular, had seen outbreaks of antiSouth Asian violence. As the historian Erika Lee explained in the Pacific Historical Review, South Asian migrants first came to Canada as part of a complex migration pattern that crossed imperial and continental lines, but later moved to the United States, attracted by higher wages.

Their reception was not kind. Newspapers reported in sensationalist fashion that these dusky Asiatics and Hindu hordes posed a bigger threat to job security and the cultural fabric than Japanese or Chinese laborers. It wasnt long before national security became the proxy for discussing the issue, a compound of racism and economic anxiety. A 1906 letter writer to the Puget Sound American suggested that the Hindus were very well-versed in firearms. This, combined with their bad code of morals, would inevitably lead to innocent people getting butchered. Hindus, however, was an erroneous designation, as most South Asian migrants were Sikh. The firearms were the result of these particular migrants roles as police officers, as many initially came to Canada from Hong Kong after having served in the British imperial forces.

However, the U.S. is not the only country with a long history of exclusionary policies. American concerns about the rise of Asian immigration, eventually resulting in the 1917 act, were linked to measures taken across the continent. As Lee notes, Canadas 1908 Continuous Journey Law marked a significant shift; as its title suggests, the law only allowed entry to individuals coming directly from their homeland. With no direct steamboat service between India and Canada, the law in effect prohibited all immigration from India. Instead, South Asians chose Seattle and San Francisco as their destinations.

Trumps executive orderalsoconjures the ghost of the1908 Canadian Continuous Journey Law.

Trumps executive order conjures the ghost of this Canadian law. It targets Muslims without explicitly stating sothough the White Houses definition has been muddyusing the guise of national security to explain why the seven countries were selected.

The Canadian parliaments linguistic acrobatics in excluding South Asian British subjects, the manufactured principle of continuous journey, allowed it to avoid accusations of overt discrimination, but the measure did not fool anyone. Whereas boats from Europe made the trip across the Atlantic directly, the journey from the British Raj was so long that it could not be completed without a stopover in Hawaii or Japan. In the most notorious, heartbreaking example of the regulations consequences, 356 passengers of the steamship Komagata Maru, sailing from Hong Kong, were refused entry and eventually escorted out of Vancouvers harbor. After the ship returned to Calcutta, riots and subsequent violence claimed the lives of many passengers. This past May, the Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau formally apologized in the House of Commons for the prejudice faced by the passengers and by South Asian communities as a whole.

The same prejudice awaited in the United States. With the increased arrival of migrants from all over Asiaand, after the Canadian ban, of South Asians in particularconcerns over national security and racial purity ensured that the Chinese Exclusion Act no longer sufficed in the eyes of many Americans. On the West Coast especially, people demanded immigration reform.

Producing urgency for such measures, and further fanning the flames of xenophobia, were cultural texts that vilified Asians and cautioned against their economic voraciousness. Author Jack London, in a series of science fiction stories, warned that China was to be feared not in war, but in commerce, and that its population was increasing so quickly that there would soon be more Chinese in existence than white-skinned people. As the literary scholar John N. Swift notes, Londons writing is reflective of anxiety about the precarity of white racial supremacy, articulated particularly through fear of Asian sexual reproduction. Racialized subjects were seen as predatory, spreading disease, and as reproducing at an alarming rate, thereby threatening the racial status and purity of whites.

With advances in genetic science, fears about public hygiene and the risk that foreigners posed intensified. In The Unparalleled Invasion (1910), London wove all these strands together by writing about a China unprecedented in its birth rate, its inhabitants carriers of a fatal plague germ. In the story, the West resorts to biological warfare to halt Asian expansion. In reality, the United States closed its doors.

Asians were imagined as aliens, perpetually foreign to the United States.

As the literary scholar Stephen Hong Sohn argues, these yellow-peril fictions, such as Londons, did not emerge in a vacuum. After Japan became the first Asian nation to defeat a Western power in the 1905 Russo-Japanese War, Asia increasingly was seen as a threat. Asians were imagined as aliens, spatially and temporally removed, perpetually foreign to the United States. Sohn suggests that this view remains a force to draw upon to allegorize racial tension and exclusion, resulting either in movies like Blade Runner and The Matrix that depict orientalized futures, or in more subversive or complex articulations by Asian-American authors like Karen Tei Yamashita or Larissa Lai.

In 1917, such othering provided the impetus for overhauling immigration policy. Rather than regulating immigration, the Asiatic Barred Zone catapulted the restriction of immigration to the top of the national agenda. To say that there are echoes of that law in the current moment would be an understatement. Even though anti-Asian racism is at the margins of narratives about the Trump administration, his myriad statements on China most notably his assertion that the country is ripping off the United States and stealing jobsare well known. Trump also zeroed in on Japan as an economic threat. Most tellingly, at a rally in Tampa, Florida, Trump accused India, China, Singapore, and Mexico of the greatest jobs theft in the history of the world. This rhetoric, combined with his America First policy, invokes the specter of Asian aggression and dominance once again.

The Asiatic Barred Zone legislation shaped national attitudes on race. The barred zone remained in effect until 1952, and restrictions on migration from Asia were not lifted until 1965, when Lyndon B. Johnson called race-based immigration policies a cruel and enduring wrong in the conduct of the American nation. Asian-exclusion laws were a transnational reality; Canada and Latin American countries also adopted such policies.

The effects are still felt today. The startling reality is that, in 2017, debates over who belongs and does not belong, and who is worthy of admission, still employ ethnic, racial, and religious terms. These debates have not only remained unresolved, but also reasserted themselves with even greater force, both domestically and internationally. We question the humanity of millions, both explicitly and implicitly, by challenging rights or withholding aid.

By: Erika Lee

Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 76, No. 4 (November 2007), pp. 537-562

University of California Press

By: John N. Swift

American Literary Realism, Vol. 35, No. 1 (Fall, 2002), pp. 59-71

University of Illinois Press

By: Stephen Hong Sohn

MELUS, Vol. 33, No. 4, Alien/Asian (Winter, 2008), pp. 5-22

Oxford University Press on behalf of Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States (MELUS)

By: Aimee Bahng

MELUS, Vol. 33, No. 4, Alien/Asian (Winter, 2008), pp. 123-144

Oxford University Press on behalf of Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States (MELUS)

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North Korean, Now a Texan, Tells of His Life Under Oppression, and … – Reporting Texas

Posted: at 12:16 am

By Alvaro Cspedes

Reporting Texas

Joseph Han (right), who fled North Korea in 1999, has taught at Texas A&M University since 2009. He is pictured here at an April 2016 science day at the university. Photo courtesy of Texas A&M University

In the 1990s, Joseph Han was one of the very few outstanding students to be accepted at one of North Koreas public universities. But his college ambitions were cut short when a famine swept across the country.

In 1999, he risked his life and fled into China, and a few years later made it into South Korea. In 2009, he arrived in College Station, where he does advanced physics research at Texas A&M University.

Han is one of about 500 North Koreans living in the United States people who escaped from one of the most oppressive regimes in the world. While he now enjoys a comfortable life, with a wife, three children and a good job, his story provides a window into a country that has become one of the most severe threats to the security of the United States.

President Kim Jong-Un was just 27 in 2011 when he succeeded his late father, Kim Jong Il, as supreme leader of the country. Kim Jong-Un has been conducting an increasing number of missile tests that threaten South Korea, Japan and the U.S. military base in Guam, and has declared his intention to make his country a nuclear power.

Food is in short supply, there is no Internet or access to information from outside the county, and everyday life is a struggle for many of the 24 million citizens. There are more than 120,000 political prisoners in forced labor camps, according to the George W. Bush Policy Institute, part of the Bush Presidential Center in Dallas.

Han declined to talk about some issues out of concern for the safety of relatives still in North Korea. He didnt want to detail parts of his own escape. Had he been caught as a defector, he said, he would have been imprisoned or publicly executed.

Han was born in Chongjin, a town in the northern part of the country. In college, he studied physics but wanted some books that were not available in his country. He took a risk and smuggled the books from China.

If someone knew that I read foreign books and that person reported me to the police, me or my whole family would be sent to prison camps, he said.

In December 1996, Han had to drop out of college when a famine swept across the country, triggered by bad weather that destroyed many crops.

The university asked me to provide food for myself, so I went back home and got a job as a high school teacher, he told Reporting Texas.

Back in Chongjin, he tried to make some extra money by selling vegetables in a local street market an illegal practice under the strict communist regimeand the principal of the school accused him of advocating capitalist ideas.

He asked me, Youre a young man, what are you doing in that market? I got angry and said to him, I might be a young man, but I also need to eat, Han said.

As he watched people around him dying from the famine, Han decided to leave. He fled his home country in February 1999, risking his life.

Taking advantage of the regions harsh winters, Han made it to the border with China, where he managed to walk across the frozen Tumen River.

After I left North Korea, agents of State Security Department used to keep inquiring [asking] my mom where I went, he said. But the government had no idea what had happened to him. The national system was very chaotic due to the crisis in those days, he said.

In China, North Koreas closest ally, he stayed out of the sight of authorities, which were likely to deport defectors if they caught them.

Han sustained himself for 3 1/2 years by working odd jobs, including cutting wood, taking care of farm animals and waiting tables. He said abusive bosses exploited him.

In most cases, Iwasnt paid, he said. When he did get paid, I received about one fifth of the workers income in China.

But he saved whatever he could so he could flee to South Korea in 2003. The country is the primary destination for most North Korean refugees and grants them immediate citizenship. Han didnt explain how he made it out of China, but said many refugees seek help from South Korean consulates there.

He enrolled in college and finished his undergraduate degree in physics and a masters in experimental particle physics from Yonsei University in Seoul.

He then set his sights on getting to the U.S. to pursue a doctorate in nuclear physics. Han applied to Harvard and MIT, but decided that the Ph.D. program in advanced physics in Texas A&M was the best option for him.

He is now a postdoctoral research associate at the Institute for Quantum Science and Engineering at Texas A&M.

He still remembers the oppression of life in North Korea.

Here, I can go to church if I want, said Han, who is a Christian. In North Korea, there are no churches, there is no religion. Also, in China, I read the Bible in a secret shelter for North Korean defectors which was supported by South Korean and American churches.

The North Koreans living in the United States include some 200 refugees and 300 immigrants who are now South Korean citizens, according to Lindsay Lloyd, who leads the Freedom in North Korea Project at the Bush Institute. The project works to raise awareness about human rights abuses there, assists refugees with scholarships and makes policy recommendations.

The nonprofit Liberty in North Korea, with rescue teams in South Korea and the U.S., also helps refugees and assisted Reporting Texas in connecting with Han.

The famine that Han escaped eventually killed his father and countless other North Koreans. As the food shortage worsened, Lloyd said, The problem was aggravated by the governments policies. As resources became more scarce, the first shot of any food would go to the elite, the military and the ruling party.

There is no publicly available official data on how many people died in the famine from 1994 to 1999, but the Bush Institute calculates that between 200,000 and 2 million people lost their lives, or as much as one eighth of the population.

Before the famine, the Kim regime was seen as one that provided for the people. But afterward, young people in particular became more skeptical and cynical, Lloyd said.

Hans mother and sister left the country shortly after he did and now live in South Korea. His brother managed to escape while working for the North Korean government in Russia and eventually made it to South Korea.

Despite the sharp cultural differences, North Koreans adapt well to life in the United States, Lloyd said.

Actually most of these people are doing well. Theyre not on public assistance. Theyre working or going to school and theyre adapting well to life in the U.S. [] On balance theyre doing fine, but its a difficult transition, he said.

Han now uses an American first name, but said hes had to adjust to some aspects of life in Texas.

People are very individual; they have to do everything by themselves. If I have some problem, I need to fix it by myself.

But, he added, Nobody dies of starvation here.

2015 Reporting Texas. All rights resrved

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Pitts: War on Drugs is back – Peoria Journal Star

Posted: at 12:15 am

Leonard Pitts Jr.

Looks like the War on Drugs is back.

The Washington Post reported Sunday that the new attorney general, Jeff Sessions, is preparing a return to the same hardline strategies that have so spectacularly failed to reduce drug use since 1971. Indeed, the nation has spent more than a trillion dollars, made itself the biggest jailer on the planet and yet seen the use, availability and quality of drugs rise like a rocket from a launch pad while the cost dropped like a watermelon from a skyscraper.

That's why it was welcome news when President Obama quietly dismantled much of the machinery of the drug war. His Department of Justice radically scaled back federal involvement in so-called "civil asset forfeitures," a program wherein police confiscate your cash and require you to prove it's not drug money before you can get it back. The Obama DOJ looked the other way as states liberalized marijuana laws. It also extended clemency to incarcerated nonviolent drug offenders and declined to seek harsh mandatory minimum sentences for the ones facing trial.

It made sense, so it couldn't last. Back in February, Donald Trump himself announced that there would be a new drug war and it would be "ruthless." Leaving aside that the old drug war was hardly ice cream and roses, there is no reason to believe being more "ruthless" will help.

After all, you can be beheaded for drug-related offenses in Saudi Arabia. Yet the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime reports that in 2008 the most recent year for which statistics seem to be available the Saudis seized 12.8 tons of amphetamines.

So much for ruthless.

There is a reason the 18th Amendment, the one outlawing liquor, was the only one ever repealed: Prohibition doesn't work. You cannot arrest people out of wanting what is bad for them. But, as we've seen with liquor and tobacco, you might be able to educate, legislate and persuade them into wanting it less.

Diane Goldstein, a retired lieutenant commander with the Redondo Beach Police Department, calls the new drug war "a horrible idea." Goldstein is an executive board member of Law Enforcement Action Partnership, a group of law enforcement veterans who think that in asking police to solve a medical problem, we've made a costly mistake.

She cites a 1994 Rand Corporation study which said that using health care strategies to combat drugs "returns seven times the value for every dollar spent on it to the taxpayer. Shouldn't we be looking at what is not just cost effective, but also returns better results for people who are impacted by chronic substance abuse?"

Problem is, that wouldn't allow some of us to brag how "ruthless" they are.

African Americans, who have been locked up at obscene rates, even though whites are the nation's biggest users and sellers of drugs, should regard this new "war" as a clear and present danger. Pot users of all colors in states where marijuana is now legal should feel the same; from now on, the feds will no longer be looking the other way.

They, and anyone else who is appalled by this, should tell that to the attorney general.

You'll find an online contact form at: https://www.justice.gov/doj/webform/your-message-department-justice.

The DOJ comment line is: 202-353-1555. The main switchboard is: 202-514-2000.

And here's the street address: U.S. Department of Justice, 950 Pennsylvania Ave., NW, Washington, D.C. 20530-0001.

However you register your opinion, please do. We've already had a War on Drugs.

And one was more than enough.

Leonard Pitts Jr. writes for the Miama Herald. Contact him at lpitts@miamiherald.com.

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Reported new White House drug czar aligned with ‘war on drugs’ backers – Salt Lake Tribune

Posted: at 12:15 am

Whether that approach continues is something of an open question. Former drug czars from a more militant drug policy era have been publicly agitating to "bring back the war on drugs." Trump's attorney general, Jeff Sessions, is moving to put criminal justice back at the forefront of drug policy.

Marino appears to be in that camp as well, but his views are unlikely to influence the administration's policy in the same ways Sessions' views do. That's because the drug czar's office has traditionally played a limited role in setting policy --instead, it coordinates drug control strategy and funding across the federal government.

Still, with the selection of Marino, another piece of Trump's drug control strategy falls into place. In Congress, Marino voted multiple times against a bipartisan measure to prevent the Justice Department from going after state-legal medical marijuana businesses. (The measure ultimately passed.)

Similarly, he voted against a measure to allow Veterans Affairs doctors to recommend medical marijuana to their patients, as well as against a separate measure to loosen federal restrictions on hemp, a nonpsychoactive variant of the cannabis plant with potential industrial applications.

Those votes place Marino well to the right of dozens of his Republican House colleagues who supported the measures. He also voted against a measure that would loosen some restrictions on CBD oil, a nonpsychoactive derivative of the cannabis plant that holds promise for treating severe forms of childhood epilepsy.

Asked about marijuana legalization last fall, Marino told a reporter that "the only way I would agree to consider legalizing marijuana is if we had a really in depth-medical scientific study. If it does help people one way or another, then produce it in pill form." But, he added, "I think it's a states' rights issue."

As a congressman, Marino called for a national program of mandatory inpatient substance abuse treatment for nonviolent drug offenders. "One treatment option I have advocated for years would be placing nondealer, nonviolent drug abusers in a secured hospital-type setting under the constant care of health professionals," he said at a hearing last year.

"Once the person agrees to plead guilty to possession, he or she will be placed in an intensive treatment program until experts determine that they should be released under intense supervision," Marino explained. "If this is accomplished, then the charges are dropped against that person. The charges are only filed to have an incentive for that person to enter the hospital-slash-prison, if you want to call it."

Forced inpatient treatment in a hospital-slash-prison would presumably include drug users who are not necessarily drug abusers. Only about 21 percent of current marijuana users meet diagnostic criteria for abuse or dependence, for instance. The other 79 percent do not need treatment for their drug use.

Marino acknowledged that implementing such a policy nationwide would "take a lot of money."

Whether he'll push for such a strategy as drug czar remains an open question. Beyond that, the office's track record on meeting its drug policy goals is not the greatest. In 2010, the office set a series of ambitious goals to reduce overall drug use, overdoses and drugged-driving incidents. A 2015 Government Accountability Office report concluded that it failed to meet any of them.

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No Good Will Come of Sessions Reigniting the War on Drugs – Newsweek

Posted: at 12:15 am

This article first appeared on the Cato Institute site.

As a candidate, Donald Trump held a relatively moderate line on drug prohibition, often arguing that issues like marijuana legalization should be left to state governments.

His selection of Jeff Sessions as attorney general, however, sent an entirely different message. Sessions is a longtime champion of the federal drug war, and since taking over the Justice Department he has continued to make statements that hint at a return to a much harsher federal approach to drug prohibition.

Related: What Jeff Sessions has said about marijuana

The Washington Post ran a story last weekend detailing some of the shifts taking place at the Department of Justice, including a green light for federal prosecutors to step up prosecutions for low-level offenses and to rely on heavy mandatory minimums to leverage plea deals.

Sessions is also expected to take a harder line on the punishment for using and distributing marijuana, a drug he has long abhorred. His crime task force will review existing marijuana policy, according to a memo he wrote prosecutors last week.

The Post story also highlights the central role of Steven H. Cook, a former police officer and federal prosecutor, within the Sessions Department of Justice. Cook has been traveling with Sessions as the attorney general makes the case for a return to the tough-on-crime posture of the '80s and '90s, arguing that efforts to treat even low-level drug offenses as anything less than violent crimes are misguided and soft.

Related: Is the White House serious about cracking down on weed?

Kevin Ring, president of Families Against Mandatory Minimums, expressed his alarm to the Post:

If there was a flickering candle of hope that remained for sentencing reform, Cooks appointment was a fire hose. There simply arent enough backhoes to build all the prisons it would take to realize Steve Cooks vision for America.

Cook, like Sessions, believes that the drug market is inherently violent and therefore the only response is to crack down:

Drug trafficking is inherently violent. Drug traffickers are dealing in a heavy cash business. They cant resolve disputes in court. They resolve the disputes on the street, and they resolve them through violence.

Its true that the black market for drugs relies on cash transactions and violence, but Cook and Sessions ignore the obvious implication. The drug market has to rely on cash transfers and violence because drugs are illegal. Drug market violence is a function of the markets illegality, not of the drugs themselves.

A worker waters cannabis plants on Steve Dillon's farm in Humboldt County, California, on August 28, 2016. Adam Bates writes that Justice Secretary Jeff Sessions is a long-time champion of the federal drug war, and since taking over the Justice Department, he has continued to make statements that hint at a return to a much harsher federal approach to drug prohibition. Rory Carroll/reuters

The same was true of alcohol distributors under prohibition. In 2017, if two alcohol distributors have a dispute, they settle it in court. If two alcohol distributors in 1929 had a dispute, they settled it on the street corner with Tommy guns and Molotov cocktails.

Drug trafficking isnt inherently violent; drug prohibition is.

The Trump administration has yet to announce much in the way of concrete policy changes, but the personnel choices and the drug warrior rhetoric coming from the new administration are causes for concern looking forward.

Adam Bates is a policy analyst with Catos Project on Criminal Justice.

For more on drug policy recommendations, the Director of Catos Project on Criminal Justice Tim Lynch recently produced a chapter on the federal drug war for Catos Handbook for Policymakers. The chapter calls for the repeal of the federal Controlled Substances Actand the abolition of the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Those with an interest in the mass incarceration problem in America may also be interested in an upcoming book forum featuring Fordham law professor John Pfaff, whose new book argues that local prosecutors are a primary and underappreciated force behind mass incarceration. The forum will take place at the Cato Institute on April 26.

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No Good Will Come of Sessions Reigniting the War on Drugs - Newsweek

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Police official with graft case allowed to travel for ‘war on drugs’ – Inquirer.net

Posted: at 12:15 am

Senior Superintendent Eduardo Acierto and Chief Inspector Nelson Bautista. (Photo courtesy of UNTV.)

MANILA The Sandiganbayan has granted travel permission to a high-ranking police official facing graft chargeswho invoked the Duterte governments war on drugs in his travel motion.

Senior Supt. Eduardo Acierto, officer-in-charge deputy director for administration of the Philippine National Police Drug Enforcement Group (PNP-DEG), said he would attend an operational meeting with the Taiwan Coast Guard next week.

His motion, however, still states his position as OIC-DDA of the now-abolished Anti-Illegal Drugs Group (PNP-AIDG).

Aciertos motion stated he has been scheduled to visit Taipei in the interest of the national campaign against illegal drugs headed by no less than the President of the Philippines, Rodrigo R. Duterte.

The anti-graft courts Sixth Division on April 6 allowed Acierto to leave the country from April 16 to 20, reporters learned on Tuesday.

As former chief of the Firearms and Explosives Offices Firearms and Licensing Division (FEO-FLD), Acierto was one of the police officials charged with graft in connection with the award of the exclusive license delivery contract to Werfast Documentary Agency, Inc.

This was despite the firms alleged failure to meet various requirements such as registration with the Securities and Exchange Commission, delivery authorization from the then-Department of Transportation and Communications, and accreditation from the Department of Science and Technology.

The Ombudsman in June 2015 also meted the penalty of dismissal to Acierto and the other police officials after finding them guilty of the administrative offenses of grave misconduct, serious dishonesty and grave abuse of authority.

But, the Court of Appeals on Feb. 12, 2016 reversed the decision and ordered Aciertos reinstatement. Later on, Acierto was appointed to the high-ranking position at the AIDG, which was disbanded in January in the aftermath of the killing of South Korean national Jee Ick-joo at Camp Crame.

It is an accepted fact in this case that accused Acierto, as a reinstated officer of the PNP, would be invited to several meetings, symposiums, or seminars in relation to his duties as OIC, DDA, AIDG, his motion read. SFM

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Police official with graft case allowed to travel for 'war on drugs' - Inquirer.net

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Our View: How to win war on drugs – Duluth News Tribune

Posted: at 12:15 am

Really? We can? Because that war was launched eight presidents and 46 years ago, and we don't seem to have made much progress.

"Last year we doubled down on the number of arrests, the number of search warrants, and the number of guns seized on search warrants related to heroin trafficking in Duluth. We did a tremendous job," Tusken argued. "Our violent crimes task force works around the clock to enforce the laws related to opioids."

However, the chief also opined that, "You can never arrest your way out of a drug problem. It can't be done. In 1971, (President) Richard Nixon launched the war on drugs. It's 2017, and we've not eradicated drugs in this country. You're not going to be able to arrest your way out."

But a three-pronged approach can be effective, Tusken said: "You have to do enforcement, a very important component of it. You have to do education. And you have to have treatment to get your community well."

Enforcement has been stepped up here in Duluth and across the Northland. Crime stats show it has been effective. Education is about to include a new and hopefully more-effective and less-criticized D.A.R.E. program with schoolkids, the chief said.

"And then there's the treatment component," he continued. "That's something we're lacking in our community. If you need treatment today, we can't get you in. ... It takes time, sometimes two weeks, three weeks, four weeks, to get you into a bed where you can get rehab, where you can get recovery."

So Duluth is winning on two of three fronts, according to the chief.

It was an assessment Mayor Emily Larson echoed at her State of the City Address last month. She listed addressing heroin, opioids and other drug woes among her top three priorities this year.

"Our commitment as a city is to work with St. Louis County, the Center for Alcohol and Drug Treatment, the 6th Judicial Court, local hospitals, and other partners to create an opioid withdrawal unit, a safe place for those who overdose and want help to go medically withdraw and be connected seamlessly to other support and resources," she said.

A summit is being planned for June to bring together political leaders, government officials, drug-treatment experts, educators, advocates, and others who can identify effective ways to counter opioid, heroin, and other drug use here.

"We're going to get into a room and we're going to figure out what that looks like, to make our community a little bit more responsive to and help start the healing process of this opioid epidemic in our city," Tusken said. "And it is an epidemic. It is killing people. It is very serious. And that is why we are spending so much time and resources trying to stem the tide of these poisons."

Deaths from heroin and opioid drug overdoses have more than doubled in St. Louis County in just the past few years. St. Louis County is now the deadliest county in Minnesota for opioid addicts, with 13.4 deaths per 100,000 population, according to Tusken.

He bristled at a suggestion from a luncheon attendee, though, of legalizing or decriminalizing drugs as a way to turn the toll.

"There are unintended consequences," he said, pointing to an uptick in traffic fatalities in Colorado after it legalized the recreational use of marijuana. His claim is backed up by FactCheck.org, which reported late last summer that from 2006 to 2014, marijuana-related traffic deaths increased by 154 percent, from 37 fatalities in 2006 to 94 in 2014.

Also, "Any time you legalize something, decriminalize something, (kids) are going to have more access to it," the chief warned. "Is (legalizing drugs) an approach that this country is going to have to look at, potentially, someday? Maybe. Maybe there'll be research to show that's the direction we should go. Right now, we're not there, certainly not there in this country. But we could be."

The Minnesota Legislature this year briefly discussed legalizing the recreational use of marijuana here. Such a move certainly would qualify as a new and different approach. That alone makes it worth at least considering. Clearly, what we've been doing during our more than 4-decade war on drugs hasn't been working.

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The War On Drugs Has Failed. But What Should Peace Look Like? – Huffington Post Australia

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Along with celibacy, eugenics and botox, the war on drugs has to be one of humanity's worst attempts to control our biology. What began with the prohibition movement against alcohol in the 1920s has become subsequent moral and political attacks on marijuana, cocaine, heroin and now amphetamines (aka ice).

This quixotic mission of the past hundred years has failed to prevent the use of drugs so significantly that there is now a black market that generates over $1 trillion a year in revenue from the US alone -- roughly the same revenue as the entire global pharmaceutical industry.

We now have some countries that are waking up from the hangover of a century of bad policy. Countries like Portugal, Canada and parts of the US are starting to create approaches that reflect a changing social sentiment in our approach to recreational drugs.

I'm curious as to what we might learn and apply in Australia, so this year I'm on a quest to interview some of the world's greatest minds to imagine what a post-war-on-drugs world might look like in our own country.

I'm doing this because I think our approach to drugs in Australia is irrational. On one hand, it's okay to hand out amphetamines (ritalin) for ADHD but then, on the other, we ask Australians to dob in their dealer for handing out very similar chemical compounds on a weekend.

On one hand we deny clean needles to heroin users but on the other hand we allow people to become clinically addicted to pain medication (or hillbilly heroin as it has come to be known).

We love prime ministers who can skol beer, but we vilify young people in the media as 'binge drinkers' for doing the exact same thing on a Saturday night.

So what should we do? How do we make rational drug choices as individuals? How do we make rational drug policies as a community? I am on a mission to have some honest conversations with people who might have a few ideas for what we should do.

My first interviewee is the Oxford philosopher AC Grayling. Professor Grayling is a world-renowned author, lecturer and proponent of the idea that we should legalise all drugs. I caught up with him in a Sydney cafe this week to talk about his new book The Age of Genius, (which explores the creation of the modern mind in the 17th Century) to see what he might have to offer by way of philosophy when it comes to approaches to drug policy.

One of his ideas is that recreational drugs should be regulated in exactly the same way we regulate alcohol and nicotine. His argument for this approach is two-fold. First, the idea that the point of laws is to reduce the aggregate harms experienced rather than increase them, and second, the idea that in an autonomous society you have experimentation that actually moves a society forward.

Grayling contends that far from prevent the harms we are trying to avoid through their criminalisation, by making drugs illegal we inadvertently increase them:

"[Our current approach to drug laws] turn ordinary people into criminals. It wastes police time. It is an utter waste of resources. The anxiety of it is hard to understand. It is a case of the tail wagging the dog. People who are badly affected by drug use and abuse are mainly affected by the illegality of drugs in order to get hold of them."

Supporting this argument is the telling reality that, currently, over half of people in prisons are there because of the criminality of drugs. Moreover, research shows that over 50 percent of people who use illicit substances have a concurrent diagnosable mental health disorder. There is a great inequity in our society in which, although we are using drugs for the same biological reasons, when it comes down to it -- rich people go to rehab and poor people go to prison.

Grayling's second point is a more unconventional one; it is the idea that autonomy of choice actually helps us to push society forward through experimentation.

"I like the argument of Mill in his essay On Liberty -- it follows that if you allow people to make choices to try many things you get many different experiments and human possibilities and that way we will discover the best, we will discover the truth. Whereas if you narrow everything down and you try and control it you miss out on a great deal of what might be worthwhile."

This is an interesting idea. It raises the question that if there were more options than alcohol and nicotine for the drugs we use in our everyday life would the market find more efficient, less harmful drugs for the same purpose.

In pharmaceutical drugs we see generation after generation of drug development, but when it comes to recreational drugs we are stuck with the same few culprits. It's kind of like doctors using 1950's medication to deal with today's diseases. Just like we have reinvented anti-depressants, what if there was a similar investment in the reinvention of alcohol or nicotine that were tailored to different biologies?

I concluded my interview with AC Grayling with a question around what drugs he uses. He laughed at the question:

"I don't use drugs out of sheer timidity, because what passes for a brain up here is what I have for an instrument. Like having a violin and bashing it. But I've made up my mind that when I pass 90, I'm going to take up opium so I can go out in a high."

At 68, that's a couple of decades away. The question is, will he go out on a high or in handcuffs?

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The NFL’s Gambling Policy Is A Mess – Deadspin

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Last weekends news that the NFL is considering disciplinary action against a group of players who took part in a charity arm-wrestling event at a Las Vegas casino has brought renewed attention to the leagues policy on gambling. And its hard not to notice how much of that policy is just the NFL continually pulling things out of its ass.

The seven-page policy from 2015, the most recent version made available by NFL Communications, can be read below. It applies not just to players, but to all NFL Personnel, including owners. Spokesmen for the league and the NFLPA confirmed to me that it was not collectively bargained.

The policy is full of contorted logic. It wraps itself in the rectitude of preserving the games integrity, and vests all authority in the whims of commissioner Roger Goodell. This makes it of a piece with the NFLs drug, disciplinary, and domestic violence policies, which long ago revealed themselves to be more about public relations than anything else. But in light of recent events, the gambling policy now particularly stands out as an intentionally impenetrable tangle of words.

The NFL has always had an arms-length relationship with gambling, welcoming it as a tool to enhance fan interestremember when ex-bookmaker Jimmy the Greek Snyder used to run down the point spreads on the CBS pregame show?while carefully keeping it just over there to maintain appearances. The policy is ostensibly aimed at preventing the outcomes of games from being influenced by gamblers, which is fine. But it goes on to include language about vague gambling associations and advertising and promotional activities that reasonably can be perceived as constituting affiliation with or endorsement of gambling or gambling-related activities. This includes, without limitation, stuff like:

Thats the clause under which the league may choose to punish the players who took part in the arm-wrestling event, which took place at the MGM Grand Hotel and Casino, which no doubt appreciates the additional publicity this controversy has so ironically generated. CBS, one of the NFLs major broadcast partners, will be airing the arm-wrestling competition. Per USA Today, the active players who were there included James Harrison, Kenny Stills, NaVorro Bowman, Maurkice Pouncey, Marquette King, Mario Edwards, and Patrick Chung. All could face discipline, though the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, citing a source, reported that discipline would likely be a fine, rather than a suspension.

The situation is reminiscent of the NFLs decision two years ago to shut down a fantasy football convention organized by Tony Romo simply because it was held at a convention center whose naming rights had been sold to a casino. Keep that in mind, as Ill explain later. Now consider all of this in light of what Andrew Brandt of The MMQB pointed out the NFL is perfectly fine with:

Back to the gambling policy. As noted above, the promotion of state or municipal lotteries is a no-no, as is working for any of the following:

any casino (whether or not such casino operates a sports book or otherwise accepts wagering on sports), or other gambling-related enterprise, including, without limitation, any on-line, computer-based, telephone, or Internet gambling service, card rooms, lotteries, slot machine operations, horse or dog racing tracks, off- track betting services, as well as advisory services such as publications, tout services, and the like, whether or not such services address professional football or any other team sport.

Where does fantasy football fit into all this, you might be wondering? The policy makes a specific exception for traditional fantasy football, while making no mention whatsoever of daily fantasy:

Why the agnosticism toward fantasy football? As Vegas boxing promoter Bob Arum recently told the Wall Street Journal:

These owners are not dumb. Other than gate and TV, whats another source of revenue that they can go after thats bigger than both of them? Fantasy football. Believe me, they will organize whether the owners individually, or the league, they will get it licensed in Nevada, which will do it in a second, and they will use it to expand around the country. The proceeds from fantasy football will dwarf the revenues from TV and gateand these guys know it.

As the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette also noted, DraftKings runs ads on the scoreboard during Steelers games at Heinz Field, yet the NFL is waging a court battle to prevent New Jersey from legalizing gambling on pro sports, even as Delaware allows gamblers to bet on three-game parlays of NFL action. And on and on. None of that even comes close to the most obvious contradiction of all, though.

As the Raiders decision to relocate from Oakland to Las Vegas was taking shape, Goodell said, All of us have evolved a little bit on gambling. To me, where I cross the line is anything that can impact on the integrity of the game. If people think it is something that can influence the outcome of a game, we are absolutely opposed to that.

Last October, with Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson as a partner who helped provide some political muscle, the Raiders won approval from the state of Nevada for $750 million in public money to build a stadium. Adelsons company operates the convention center where Romos fantasy event was to be held, before the league found it to be in violation of the gambling policy. Adelsons primary interest was to prevent the state of Nevada from using those funds to make improvements to a rival, publicly owned convention center, according to this fascinating story by ESPNs Seth Wickersham and Don Van Natta Jr. Adelson eventually backed out of his partnership with the Raiders, who lined up someone else to loan them the balance of the stadiums costs before convincing the leagues owners to approve their move to Vegas.

Wickershams and Van Nattas story makes it clear that a number of NFL owners were skittish on the prospect of moving a team to Vegas, and on having Adelson working in tandem with Davis. Yet they were swayed by some politicking from Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, who has increasingly become the leagues true power broker.

Heres Wickersham and Van Natta:

Jerry Jones told [Nevada Gov. Brian] Sandoval that if that amount of public money were to be allocated for the stadium, the NFL would approve the relocation. The league would be a fool to turn down $750 million, Jones explained. And during their chat, Jones asked the governor for a return favor: to work to legalize daily fantasy sports in Nevada.

So thats where the NFL is headed, which ought to come as no surprise. Yet when it comes to the arm-wrestling event, the league still seems dead set on a strict reading of its gambling policy. Joe Lockhart, the NFLs vice president for communications and public affairs, told USA Today that no one involved in the arm-wrestling tournament sought pre-approval from the league. Had we been asked in advance if this was acceptable, we would have indicated that it was in direct violation of the gambling policy, Lockhart said. Brian McCarthy, the leagues vice president of communications, further reminded the Post-Gazette that [t]his is a longstanding policy.

Alan Brickman, one of the organizers of the arm-wrestling tournament, told USA Today he had sought approval from two different league departments, and that the league even suggested guidelines, even as it declined to participate as a partner.

Not aware of any contact with the league, Lockhart told me via email when I followed up. It would be helpful to know who they talked to so I can try to run that down.

Brickman did not return a request for comment.

The gambling policy states that Clubs are required to provide the league office with copies of all proposed gambling-related advertising and/or promotional agreements for review and approval prior to execution. I emailed Lockhart again to ask why a player, on his own time, out of season, independent of his team, would have to seek the leagues approval before partaking in a promotional event at a casino. He replied by sending me the following, which he said is from a manual distributed to all players, which he said also pertains to all club and league personnel (emphasis his):

NFL Personnel are prohibited from engaging in any advertising or promotional activities that reasonably can be perceived as constituting affiliation with or endorsement of gambling or gambling-related activities including, without limitation, the following:

(1) Making promotional appearances at casinos or other gambling-related establishments;

(2) Making promotional appearances at events that are sponsored by or otherwise marketed or advertised in connection with casinos or other gambling-related establishments;

(3) Using or allowing others to use ones name and/or image to promote, advertise, or publicize casinos, other gambling-related establishments, or events sponsored by or otherwise marketed or advertised in connection with casinos or other gambling-related establishments.

I wrote Lockhart back to ask why (3) did not apply to an NFL owner who had partnered with a casino owner to get approval for a publicly financed stadium. As of press time, he hasnt responded.

You can read the NFLs gambling policy here:

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