Monthly Archives: February 2022

Vermont Business Magazine Decriminalize Vermont, a broad coalition of organizations dedicated to social and economic justice, including criminal justice, drug policy, and law enforcement reform, announced its public launch today.

Decriminalize Vermont is working alongside a group of 42 Democratic, Progressive, and Independent state legislatorsto advance a groundbreaking bill, H.644, that would decriminalize possession of small personal use amounts of drugs.

This initiative builds on the growing support in Vermont and across the nation for approaching drugs and drug use through the lens of public health rather than continuing the failed War on Drugs approach.

With nearly a third of the chamber signed on as original co-sponsors, H.644 is the most broadly-supported decriminalization bill in the nation.

Several coalition members testified at hearings held by the House Committee on Judiciary on H.644 over the past few weeks.

Our current drug laws are overly punitive and deeply harmful. Decriminalize Vermont is working to support a new approach that prioritizes public health and social justice, said Tom Dalton, Executive Director of Vermonters for Criminal Justice Reform. We are thrilled to see such a positive response to this bill so far this legislative session.

If passed, H.644 would eliminate criminal penalties for drug possession for personal use;establish a treatment referral system by which Vermonters who need help with substance use disorders can access treatment services; set up a board of drug policy experts to determine appropriate personal use threshold levels for each drug; and create a financial incentive for people with substance use disorder to participate in a health needs screening.

Vermonters have long called for a public health approach to substance use, and yet we as a state have not done nearly enough to make that vision a reality, said Jay Diaz, General Counsel at ACLU-VT. As the devastating human toll of the states failed war on drugs becomes more apparent every year, it is time to insist on bolder, more ambitious solutions including badly overdue drug policy reforms that respect the dignity, health, and well-being of every member of our community.

The coalition includes the following Founding Organizational Members: American Civil Liberties Union of Vermont (ACLU-VT), Better Life Partners, End Homelessness Vermont, Ishtar Collective, Law Enforcement Action Partnership (LEAP), Next Generation Justice, Pride Center of Vermont, Recovery Vermont, Rights and Democracy (RAD), Vermont Cares, Vermont Legal Aid, Vermont Network Against Domestic and Sexual Violence, Vermonters for Criminal Justice Reform, Vermont Interfaith Action, and the Women's Justice and Freedom Initiative.

Decriminalize Vermont is a Vermont-based coalition dedicated to creating a healthier and more just Vermont by reducing the harms and injustices embedded in Vermonts current drug laws.

Montpelier, VT(February 16, 2022) Decriminalize Vermont

Continued here:

New group works to decriminalize small 'personal use' amounts of drugs - Vermont Biz

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The War on Drugs Is a Century Old. These Vancouver Activists Are Pushing to End It - TheTyee.ca

Thedeath of Michael K. Williams put another familiar and widely cherished face among the many that perished from drug overdoses in the US. Most known for his role in The Wire but also for his community activism and public comments on race, class and own drug struggles, Williams died of an accidental poly-drug overdose. Last week, four men were charged in his death with narcotics conspiracy to distribute fentanyl-laced heroin.

The US Attorney Damian Williams said: This is a public health crisis. And it has to stop. Deadly opioids like fentanyl feed addiction and lead to tragedy. NYPD Commissioner Keechant Sewell applauded the polices efforts and stated they had brought a measure of justice to Williams' family.

But the tragedy of Williams fate, alongside the other 100,000 lives lost to a combination of tainted drug supplies and lack of access to life-saving medicine in the last year in the US alone, is exacerbated by a failure to deliver meaningful justice by addressing the root causes of the opioid crisis.

The criminal justice systems highly individualised response to drug-related deaths where responsibility is placed on an individual or a group rather than a system of marginalisation and criminalisation - does not allow for the transformational justice needed to truly fix the error that led to Williams death in the first place: the War on Drugs. Instead, it is avenging Williams suffering with yet more pain: arresting (potentially for life) all those found to be involved in this specific instance of drug supply.

I cant help but feel like real justice has not been, and could never be, found in this response. How can more criminalisation bring any closure to someone that was forced to seek out their drug of choice from a source thats illegal (and therefore of unknown quality or origin) in the first place?

Vilifying the drug seller is an intrinsic feature of the War on Drugs. Even when there is evidence that they often look out for the health of their customers, it hides the fact that many are pushed into the drug trade as a means of survival. Prohibition ensures that drug sellers are seen as responsible for all the violence that happens in the trade, when much of its violence is a by-product of its illegality.

Giulia Zampini, Senior Lecturer in Criminology at the University of Greenwich, added:

The very essence of criminal law is about individualising blame, so authorities who want to escape responsibility resort to it. We see this in cases such as Michael K. Williams, where the figure of the conniving drug dealer becomes the scapegoat. Time and again, this does nothing to address the real issues at the root of these structural problems: prohibition, inequality, trauma.

Sheila Vakharia, Deputy Director of the Department of Research and Academic Engagement at the Drug Policy Alliance,highlighted the issue with individualising the blame for Williams death, raising that these men may not have necessarily known that the heroin they sold contained fentanyl. The infamous opioid has become widely available and frequently mixed into supply, either by a small-scale dealer or by anyone else in the supply chain. Bringing justice to an overdose death in the current criminal justice system implies that all those involved in the drug supply should be charged for this crime. This would be the best-case scenario for law enforcement, who would claim they had successfully served justice to overdose victims.

In Williams case, the US Attorney rightly recognised the nations rampant drug overdoses as a public health crisis: he knows you cannot arrest your way out of it. When a drug policy system wages war on the people that use, produce or sell drugs, that system is inherently, intrinsically, and structurally unjust. This system is not able to address the injustice of the ongoing public health crisis because it has created it, perpetuating its harm by criminalising drugs. This same system deviously prevents the funding and distribution of the harm-reduction tools needed to avoid these tragic fatalities.

Political theoristIris Marion Young, who has written extensively on identifying structural injustices, has defined them as social processes that place groups of people under systematic threat of domination or deprivation of the means to develop and exercise their capacities. Although originally it described how poverty limits peoples available opportunities to improve their situations, the same critique can be applied to prohibition. People who use drugs many times do not have the means to trust the safety of their supply, forced to take huge risks every time they use them.

As Michael K. Williams himselfsaid about the War on Drugs: It's destroyed lives, torn families apart, filled our jails and prisons and hijacked countless futures of black and brown youth - but that's what it was supposed to do. He understood that in the US (but globally under prohibition), no justice can be exacted in a system that has been built to punish certain groups in society, either because of the colour of their skin or the illegality of their substance of choice.

Someproponents of carceral punishment are exploring how drug dealers could be charged with homicide when their clients fatally overdose from fentanyl. In fact,since 2011, 45 states in the US have proposed or implemented increased fentanyl-related penalties to supposedly act as a deterrent to its use.

Obviously, this seems like the next logical step in an eye-for-an-eye model of justice, where a clear culprit must be found wholly responsible for someones death. Imani Mason Jordan, Communications Strategist at Release, disagrees:

They [the state] are completely ignoring any evidence and relying on neoliberal responses that focus on individuals that break a rule rather than structural issues they themselves are causing. That is the real tragedy. If I die of an overdose, I want to be the very last person to die of an overdose! And this is totally within the scope of possibility.

To truly bring justice to every senseless drug death, a radical transformation about the way we deal with drugs in society is needed. Work in this department has already been started with harm reduction, through policies that reduce the number of overdoses,provide life-saving medicine like naloxone, anddistribute fentanyl testing kits to identify dangerous adulterants.

The current criminal justice system does not allow for such opportunities to develop because it is built on blaming people, not identifying and transforming its structural faults.

Would this bring any sense of justice to those that have died? Would they have wanted their circumstances to be used to further criminalise others within their community? Or would it be better to radically overhaul the system that created and continue to fuel the drug overdose crisis? I think Michaelwould have agreed:

As the war on people turns 45, we must collectively acknowledge that it is one of the greatest American injustices ever committed, and turn outrage and frustration into action and progress.

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Where's the Justice in Arresting Michael K. Williams' Drug Sellers? - TalkingDrugs

Dedicated to Ned Cook, Salvation Army, killed in Nukualofa, Tonga, 20 May 2020.

This analysis is informed by a desk-based literature review and interviews with government officials, regional and national law enforcement agencies, civil society, regional organisations, academia, and the private sector. Interviews were conducted in Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Tonga, Vanuatu, Samoa, Hawaii, Australia, and New Zealand during the period November 2018 to December 2019. Due to the highly sensitive subject matter and the implications for individuals and communities, some interview participants have not been identified.

Main image: Flags from the Pacific Islands countries fly onthe final day of the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) Nauru-Pacific Summit, 5 September 2018. On this day, PIFmembers signed a security agreement promoting cooperation on issues such as transnational crime, illegal fishing and cybercrime. The agreement, called the Boe Declaration, also recognised the need for joint action on non-traditional threats, primarily climate change(Mike Leyral/AFP via Getty Images)

References

[1] This analysis uses the term transnational crime as distinct from transnational organised crime following Bruinsmas clarification that transnational crime is not synonymous with organised crime, even when organised crime groups are very active crossing borders with their crimes. States, governments, armies or business corporations, and many entrepreneurial individuals also have a long tradition in committing and facilitating transnational crimes. See Gerben Bruinsma, Histories of Transnational Crime (New York: Springer, 2015), Chapter 1: Criminology and Transnational Crime, 1.

[4] Joe McNulty, Western and Central Pacific Ocean Fisheries and the Opportunities for Transnational Organised Crime: Monitoring, Control, and Surveillance (MCS) Operation Kurukuru, Australian Journal of Maritime and Ocean Affairs, Vol. 5, No. 4 (2013), 145152.

[11] Simon Mackenzie, Transnational Criminology: Trafficking and Global Criminal Markets, (Bristol University Press, 2021), 21.

[12] Sandeep Chawla and Thomas Pietschmann, Chapter Nine: Drug Trafficking as a Transnational Crime, in Handbook of Transnational Crime & Justice, (ed) Philip Reichel, (Sage Publications Inc, 2005), 160.

[16] Interview with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime official, Wellington, 12 August 2019.

[18] Ibid, 9. For wastewater analysis on the rise in consumption of methamphetamine and cocaine in Australia, see Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission, National Wastewater Drug Monitoring Program: Report 9, 10 March 2020, https://www.acic.gov.au/publications/national-wastewater-drug-monitoring-program-reports/national-wastewater-drug-monitoring-program-report-09-2020; for similar findings on methamphetamine usage in New Zealand, see New Zealand Police, National Wastewater Testing Programme Quarter 2, 2019, https://www.police.govt.nz/about-us/publication/national-wastewater-testing-programme-quarter-2-2019; and New Zealand, Ministry of Health, Annual Update of Key Results 2019/20: New Zealand Health Survey, 14 November 2019, https://www.health.govt.nz/publication/annual-update-key-results-2019-20-new-zealand-health-survey.

[19] Interview with Fijian law enforcement officer, Nadi, March 2020.

[20] Pacific Transnational Crime Network, Transnational Crime Assessment 20172018, 3.

[24] Pacific Transnational Crime Network, Transnational Crime Assessment 2017-2018.

[26] Interview with Pacific Islands security sector official, Suva, Fiji, 11 September 2019.

[28] Sue Windybank, The Illegal Pacific Part 1: Organised Crime, Policy, Winter 2008, Vol. 24, No.1, 3238.

[36] Pacific Transnational Crime Network, Transnational Crime Assessment 20172018, 6.

[37] Interview with Tongan law enforcement official, Nukualofa, 26 February 2019.

[38] Statistics on offences for the period 20162019 provided by the Attorney Generals Office, Tonga, 25 February 2019.

[39] Interview with Tongan Attorney Generals Office official, Nukualofa, Tonga, 25 February 2019.

[43] Takashi Riku, Ryuichi Shibasaki, and Hironori Kato, Pacific Islands: Small and Dispersed Sea-locked Islands, in Ryuichi Shibasaki, Hironori Kato, and Cesar Ducruet (eds), Global Logistics Network Modelling and Policy: Quantification and Analysis for International Freight, (Elsevier: 2020), 276.

[48] Pacific Transnational Crime Network, Transnational Crime Assessment 20172018, 16.

[50] Interview with regional security sector official, 2019.

[51] Pacific Transnational Crime Network, Transnational Crime Assessment 20172018, 16.

[53] Pacific Transnational Crime Network, Transnational Crime Assessment 20172018, 16.

[55] Pacific Transnational Crime Network, Transnational Crime Assessment 20172018.

[59] Pacific Transnational Crime Network, Transnational Crime Assessment 20172018, 17.

[62] American Samoa, Fiji, Kiribati, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu.

[66] Pacific Transnational Crime Network, Transnational Crime Assessment 20172018, 17.

[67] Interviews, Apia, Samoa, 22 August 2019; Nukualofa, Tonga, 27 February 2019.

[69] Interview with Tongan deportee, Nukualofa, Tonga, 27 February 2019.

[70] Leanne Weber and Rebecca Powell, Ripples across the Pacific: Cycles of Risk and ExclusionFollowing Criminal Deportation to Samoa, in Shahram Khosravi (ed), After Deportation: Ethnographic Perspectives, (Global Ethics Series, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).

[71] For example, from the United States alone, street gangs such as the Tongan Crip Gang (TCG), the Sons of Samoa (SOS), Tongan Style Gangsters (TSG), Salt Lake Posse (Tongans and Samoans), Park Village Crip (PVC), Samoan Pride Gangsters (SPG), the Baby Regulators, and Park Village Compton Crips have all had members deported back to the Pacific.

[72] Pacific Transnational Crime Network, Transnational Crime Assessment 20172018, 17; Interview with Tongan police officer, Nukualofa, Tonga, 27 February 2019.

[73] Tim Fadgen, Australia and Aotearoa New Zealands Deportation Policy and Practice in Regional Context, Australian Outlook, Australian Institute of International Affairs, 20 April 2021, https://www.internationalaffairs.org.au/australianoutlook/australia-and-aotearoa-new-zealands-deportation-policy-and-practice-in-regional-context/; Henrietta McNeill, Oceanias Crimmigration Creep: Are Deportation and Reintegration Norms being Diffused?, Journal of Criminology, Vol. 54, No. 3, 305322.

[75] Pacific Transnational Crime Network, Transnational Crime Assessment 20172018, 17.

[76] Interview with Pacific Islands official, Suva, 2019.

[77] Interview with Tongan civil society member, Nukualofa, Tonga, 27 February 2019.

[80] Danielle Watson and Sinclair Dinnen, History, Adaptation and Adoption Problematised, in Sara N Amin, Danielle Watson, and Christian Girard (eds), Mapping Security in the Pacific: A Focus on Context, Gender and Organisational Culture, (Routledge: New York, 2020).

[88] Interview with senior Tongan health official, Ministry of Health, Nukualofa, Tonga, 27 February 2019.

[89] Interviews with law enforcement officials in Suva and Nadi, Fiji, Port Moresby Papua New Guinea, and Nukualofa, Tonga.

[90] Carolyn Nordstrom, Shadows of War: Violence, Power, and International Profiteering in the Twenty-first Century, (University of California Press: 2004).

[91] Interview with Tongan church leader, Nukualofa, Tonga, 28 February 2019.

[94] Interview with Ned Cook, Salvation Army, Nukualofa, Tonga, 28 February 2019.

[96] Pacific Transnational Crime Network, Transnational Crime Assessment 20172018, 7.

[97] Email communication with Ned Cook, Salvation Army, 28 April 2019.

[98] Interview with health advocate, Suva, Fiji, 2019.

[99] Barbara Dreaver, Tonga's Children Targeted by Meth Dealers.

[100] Email communication with Ned Cook, Salvation Army, 28 April 2019. In 2018, 92 per cent of clients were male and eight per cent female. The youngest client was 13 years and the oldest 63.

[101] Interview with health advocate, Apia, Samoa, 20 August 2019.

[103] Interview with health advocate, Suva, 10 September 2019.

[104] Interview with Ned Cook, Salvation Army, Nukualofa, Tonga, 28 February 2019.

[106] Danielle Watson, Jose Sousa-Santos, and Loene M Howes, Transnational and Organised Crime in Pacific Island Countries and Territories: Police Capacity to Respond to the Emerging Security Threat, in Pamela Thomas and Meg Keen (eds), Perspectives on Pacific Security: Future Currents, Development Bulletin 82, Australian National University, February 2021, 151155.

[108] The Honiara Declaration (1992) on Law Enforcement Cooperation; the Aitutaki Declaration (1997) on Regional Security Cooperation; and the Nasonini Declaration (2002) on Regional Security.

[114] Pacific Transnational Crime Network, Transnational Crime Assessment 20172018.

[115] Pacific Islands Chiefs of Police, Pacific Methamphetamine Action Plan, 2018.

[116] Interview with Tongan official, Nukualofa, Tonga, 29 February 2019.

[117] Fijian Drug Taskforce Gets US Help, 19 July 2019, Radio New Zealand, https://www.rnz.co.nz/international/pacific-news/394745/fijian-drug-taskforce-gets-us-help; and US Embassy in Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, Tonga, and Tuvalu, US Sponsoring Methamphetamine Drug Enforcement Training, 10 September 2018, https://fj.usembassy.gov/slide/u-s-sponsoring-methamphetamine-drug-enforcement-training/.

[119] A Kumar, Chinas Alternate IndoPacific Policy, (Delhi: Prashant Publishing House, 2018).

[121] Interviews with officials, Suva and Apia.

[122] Mackenzie, Transnational Criminology, 21.

[123] Pacific Transnational Crime Network, Transnational Crime Assessment 20172018.

[126] Interview with Papua New Guinean customs officer, Port Moresby, 23 September 2019.

[127] Interviews with law enforcement officers, Port Moresby, Apia, and Nukualofa.

[128] Interview with Tongan official, Nukualofa, Tonga, 29 February 2019

[129] Pacific Transnational Crime Network, Transnational Crime Assessment 20172018.

[130] Interview with Brigadier General Lord Fielakepa, Chief of Defence Staff, His Majestys Armed Forces, Nukualofa, Tonga, 28 February 2019

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Drug trafficking in the Pacific Islands: The impact of transnational crime - The Interpreter

For years, advocates have struggled to overhaul societysresponse to drug use, replacing the war on drugs framework with a harm-reduction one. Their case is both empathetic and logical. Using drugs is not amoral failure, but it can be a risk factor for illness and death: Over 100,000people in the United States diedof an opioid overdose last year. Manymore drug users are at serious risk of life-threatening health problems: One study showedthat up to 40 percent of drug users admitted to hospitals have bacterial or fungal infections.Intravenous drug use accounts for some 7 percent of new HIV infections each year, and upto 75 percent of people who use drugs have been exposed to hepatitis C,which asrecently as 2014 was the deadliest infectious disease in the country. (Fulldisclosure: I do communications work for Treatment Action Group, a policy thinktank focused on HIV, tuberculosis, and hepatitis C.)

The HHS grants caricatured as $30 million for crack pipeswill allow community groups to distribute suppliesincluding overdose reversal medication, cleansyringes, and balm to avoid cracked and bleeding lipsthat reduce the harms of drug use in various ways. Contrary to the denialsof liberals, unused glass pipes are another key harm-reduction tool: Glass isless likely than other materials to blister and burn the mouth, thus reducingthe likelihood of infection; its safer not to share pipes (sharing has beenlinked to transmission of both T.B. and hepatitis C) and to smoke drugs insteadof injecting them. (Meaning that pipes are used for many drugs, but singlingout crack specificallyand remaining mum about syringesis an awfullyobvious racist dog-whistle.) That Democrats foreclosed on the possibility offunding sterile pipes for people who need them, as a capitulation to thesensibilities of whomever the CRACK Act panders to, is an act of sheercowardice.

Harm reduction isnt some hypothetical thoughtexperiment on which were rolling the dice. Its track record makes it one ofthe most successful public health shifts of the past several decades. Studiesin boththe U.K. and Canada have shown that people often switch from injectingdrugs to smoking them when provided with safe supplies. Needle-exchangeprograms havereduced rates of HIV transmission by up to two-fifths; one program in NewYork alone estimated that 87 potential infections were averted. By the early2000s, one review had already identified 28 differentstudies concluding that clean syringe distribution decreased HIVtransmission. A study in Washington showedthat safer drug supplies curbed hepatitis infections by 60 percent. Safersmoking kits have also beendemonstrated to reduce riskybehaviors and infections. Safer smoking kits in Canada were correlatedwith a significantdecline in hepatitis C, and the program was considered so effective thatglass pipes have been included in vending machines. The vast majority of harm-reduction programming also offers health services for blood-borne and sexuallytransmitted infections. If I spent hours on this paragraph hyperlinking more andmore studies recommending harm-reduction practices, I still wouldnt run out ofavailable material proving their unalloyed value.

The evidence that harm reduction and facilitating safer druguse saves lives is overwhelming. To return to the status quo of the late 1980sin the face of all this progress is absolute madness, as is the idea that anarchconservative outrage cycle, based on obsolete notions with about as muchcurrency as theConfederate Greyback, could roll back these programs just as theyregaining long-overdue, and hard-won, mainstream acceptance is dismaying. Thatthe Biden administration wont stand wholeheartedly behind these communitygrants is equally enraging. The only problem, in fact, with the $30 millionthat had been previously allocated to these proven harm-reduction programs isthat we should be spending even more.

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Bush-Era Crack Panic Is Back, and Its Going to Get People Killed - The New Republic

As Connecticut prepares to launch its legal adult-use cannabis market later this year, the state is now open to applications from social equity cultivatorssubject to a $3 million licensing fee in each case. The fee flies in the face of lawmakers promise that legalization will benefit communities most targeted by the drug war.

Cannabis cultivators will be licensed to grow and produce cannabis, selling their products to other businesses rather than directly to consumers. The $3 million licensing fee is written into the law, so cant be reduced or waived unless lawmakers take action.

Jason Ortiz, president of Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP), told Filter that this was not what advocates like him fought for in Connecticut. Lawmakers and Governor Ned Lamont (D) approved provisions like this one in last-minute compromises over the bill.

So the government is going to charge someone who is certified as low-income multiple millions of dollars in order to skip the line. That is in no way, shape or form equitable.

On paper, social equity applicants are getting an earlier opportunity to apply for a cultivator license; the state will hold a lottery to award additional licenses later this year. But the astronomical fee effectively wipes out that benefit. MJBizDaily reported that $3 million is likely the highest fee for social equity applicants anywhere in the US.

So the government is going to charge someone who is certified as low-income multiple millions of dollars in order to skip the line, Ortiz said. That is in no way, shape or form equitable.

Yet Connecticut is, in theory, committed to social justice in legalization. The states Social Equity Council states that its goal is to [ensure] that funds from the adult-use cannabis program are brought back to the communities hit hardest by the war on drugs.

In Connecticut as elsewhere, cannabis prohibition has targeted Black and other marginalized communities. The ACLU found that in 2018, Black residents were over four times likelier than white residents to be arrested for marijuana possessionand that despite the state decriminalizing marijuana in 2011, racist disparities in enforcement actually got worse afterwards. Nationwide, Black and white people use marijuana at similar rates.

Licensing is being used to keep poor folks, people of color out of the industry, Ortiz said. If were going to say that fees can be unlimited, were creating a very blatant pay-to-play situation. He suggested that advocates should push for federal intervention to prevent the provision, though thats unlikely.

Would-be social equity cultivators in Connecticut whose businesses are located in Disproportionately Impacted Areasdesignated by the state for high rates of drug convictions or unemploymentwere able to apply for licenses as of February 3. But the state defines social equity applicants quite broadly, only requiring that at least 65 percent of a business be owned by an individual with less than 300 percent of the state medium household income in the past three tax years.

The fee makes it likely that a small group of well resourced companies will benefit instead. Connecticut previously legalized medical cannabis in 2012, and there are currently only four licensed cultivators in the stateall of them large corporations operating in multiple states, and none of them headquartered in Connecticut.

The state will now allow these medical license-holders to jump into the adult-use market. They can apply to expand to adult-use whenever they wantunlike social equity cultivators, who have a limited 90-day window to apply. To transition, they must first pay a $3 million fee as a producer, or $1 million as a dispensary owner. But Connecticut will cut those fees in half if the companies agree to partner with social equity applicants, through Equity Joint Venturesbusiness entities that are at least 50 percent owned by a social equity applicant.

And therein lies the game in Connecticut: incentivizing social equity applicants to partner with multi-state cannabis corporations. Equity applicants are incentivized to enter these agreements because the larger companies have more money and resources; the companies get their entry fees reduced.

Ortiz slammed the Equity Joint Ventures, arguing they only exist to benefit established medical cannabis companies, not disadvantaged businesses. The medical companies can enter into an unlimited number of joint ventures, exempting them from limits on how many licenses one company can hold.

Were going to see a crunch at the legislature to change something before the end of the year.

Because theyre unlimited, it means the current operators can set up 20 or 30 of them, and they get to skip the lottery, skip the whole process and will dominate all the real estate in the state before the lottery even happens, Ortiz said. So you have very limited licensing for the general population and equity applicants, and unlimited licensing for the multi-state operators.

Ortiz and other advocates are pressuring the Governor to repeal limits on the number of licenses available and create a more equitable market. And he predicted that voters will push lawmakers to do something, too. People are going to start freaking out about the details and were going to see a crunch at the legislature to change something before the end of the year.

Photograph of a cannabis cultivation facility by Alexander Lekhtman

Excerpt from:

Social Equity Applicant to Grow Weed In Connecticut? That'll Be $3 Million. - Filter

Central to this characterization is the drug trafficker recurrently referred to only as a bandido whose image is associated with that of a young, poor, Black man, seen as dangerous and heavily armed, who holds power over a territory and its residents. The drug trafficker defies the monopoly of violence and the laws of the state.

By sharing the territories occupied by drug traffickers and supposedly subjecting themselves to the laws, guardianship and protection of the self-proclaimed lords of the favelas residents of the shantytowns have been inadvertently criminalised. They are associated with the supposedly savage and dangerous masculinity of drug trafficking, which produces the separation between state territory and enemy territory.

Since the late 1990s, the idea of public security being associated with military masculinity has dominated among governors, mayors, and police chiefs in the state of Rio de Janeiro.

Nilton Cerqueira, who was the secretary of public security from 1995 to 1998, stated in 1996 that a bandido is not a civilian. Two years later, his successor, Noaldo Alves da Silva, went even further, proclaiming that a bandido who shoots at the police does not deserve to survive, he has to be eliminated from social life.

Security forces have adopted the warrior ethos in their police work. After the end of Brazils military dictatorship in the 1980s, the state police forces were not demilitarised, and the bandido came to replace the subversive guerrilla as the male enemy figure. In the police forces, the understanding of police officers as combatant soldiers prevailed. Even with the entry of women into the forces during the redemocratisation period, the basic institutional masculinity was maintained.

Public policies, such as the so-called Wild West bonus a bonus of 50-150% of the salary for police officers who demonstrated fearless courage in operations have also geared police towards confrontation and elimination of the adversary. The results of this policy, which was in place from 1995 to 1998, were fatal: after its introduction, the number of people killed in police operations increased significantly.

Yet even after the abolishment of the Wild West bonus, the masculine logic of war became more pronounced. In the early 2000s, there was already a sharp increase in the number of deaths caused by police officers, reaching more than 1,300 fatal victims in 2007.

After decades of a bloody war on drugs, the Pacifying Police Units (UPP) program was implemented in 2008 to establish a public security policy focused on respect for human rights, in line with the agenda of the left-wing Workers' Party that was, at the time, in the federal government. Some 38 pacification units were initially installed in the Rio de Janeiro capital and its outskirts.

The concept of the UPPs followed, to a large extent, an idea of humanising police work as a way of gaining the trust of the population. The intention was to break with the logic of war and place greater emphasis on citizen security, introducing community policing as a new model for public safety. This strategy, which at first proved to be effective, reducing shootouts and weapon circulation in the pacified favelas, soon began to show signs that it was not working as expected. Communal activities, such as funk parties, were banned and residents reported abusive policing practices, such as irregular body searches and sexual harassment.

The UPPs program began winding down in 2013 and was subordinated to the battalions of the Military Police four years later effectively marking its termination. Experts point out that the flaws in the program were basically due to a conflict of paradigms: on the one hand, community policing and human rights orientation, on the other, the persistence of the warrior ethos and the wild masculinity in the police identity.

In specialist or tactical police forces, in particular, such as the Special Police Operations Battalion (BOPE), the logic of war and confrontation prevailed in the territorial recovery of areas controlled by organised crime, a prerequisite for the introduction of UPPs. These tactical groups are known for their particularly brutal actions and have been denounced both domestically and internationally. As early as 2005, a UN report showed evidence of torture and summary execution of adolescents carried out by BOPE soldiers. In 2013, already during the UPP period, BOPE was responsible for a massacre in the Mar favela, leaving 10 fatal victims.

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Brazil's policing is a war of men. Civilians are caught in the crossfire - Open Democracy

SO PAULO The upcoming Summit of the Americas, which will gather leaders from across the hemisphere in Los Angeles in early June, comes at an opportune time. The meeting will occur as Latin America faces its darkest hour in decades, including a profound crisis of democracy, an uneven economic recovery, two destabilizing migration crises and an ongoing pandemic. But for the gathering to succeed, the host, President Joe Biden, will need to overcome a series of hurdles.

One of them is a perception that these meetings are no longer useful. Indeed, the very idea of regional cooperation has fewer subscribers today. The optimism that shaped the first Summit of the Americas, held in Miami in 1994, is long gone. The most recent version is largely remembered for being the first not attended by the U.S. president, after Donald Trump skipped it. Many regional ideas, like a hemisphere-wide free trade agreement first floated in the 1990s, are long dead, while others, like the Inter-American Democratic Charter, adopted in 2001, have failed to live up to their potential.

Nevertheless, there will still be opportunity in Los Angeles. Biden promised to rebuild regional cooperation after, as he put it, Donald Trump took a wrecking ball to our hemispheric ties. That is a laudable goal. After all, most of the Western hemispheres most urgent challenges, from organized crime and environmental degradation to migration and sluggish economic growth, cannot be successfully addressed without taking a regional approach.

But it isnt just the limited success of past summits that Biden will have to overcome. There are at least three additional obstacles ahead.

First, there is a risk that Central Americas Northern Triangle, Haiti and Venezuela will absorb most of the attention at the summit. This is somewhat understandable given the relevance of the migration crisis to domestic U.S. politics. But those countries account to about 10% of Latin Americas population. Leaders of larger countries like Argentina and Peru justifiably fear being left on the sidelines with little to show for the long trek north when the summit is over.

Second, theres a risk that geopolitical concerns about China and Russia will contaminate the U.S.s relationships with its southern neighbors. For example, while numerous observers in Brazil thought Bolsonaros decision to visit Vladimir Putin at the height of the geopolitical crisis in Ukraine was a bad idea, U.S. pressure on Brazil to cancel the trip was seen in Braslia as an undue interference in Brazils affairs, and may have had the inadvertent effect of encouraging Latin American countries to preserve their ties to other major global powers. Given that the United States interests vis--vis Moscow and Beijing differ from the prevailing views in most Latin American capitals, the Biden administration should move these debates to closed-door meetings rather than making a push to include references to China and Russia in the summit declaration.

Finally, U.S. leaders should resist the temptation to frame too much of the conversation around ideology. After recent elections in Peru, Chile and Honduras, and with leftists leading in the polls in Colombia and Brazil, a simplistic and somewhat self-defeating logic has gained strength in Washington, that the emergence of center-left governments in Latin America sometimes described as a new pink tide are necessarily bad for the United States. Evan Ellis, a professor of Latin American studies at the U.S. Army War College, recently argued that there had never been a Latin America as dominated by a combination of leftists and anti-U.S. populist leaders, suggesting that left-wing governments are more open to closer ties with China.

This argument overlooks the fact that the U.S. has enjoyed highly constructive relationships with left-of-center governments in recent years in countries like Chile, Ecuador, Uruguay and Brazil. In fact, it is no exaggeration to say that U.S.Brazil relations reached a high point during the early Lula years, when Washington largely welcomed Braslias growing willingness to take on regional responsibilities, such as leading the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Haiti.

Or consider how center-right governments for example in Chile, Brazil and Uruguay have dealt with China. Latin American leaders are far more pragmatic and less ideological than analysts such as Ellis believe. Chiles conservative outgoing president Sebastin Piera has undertaken significant efforts to strengthen ties to China and ignored U.S. pressure to limit the role of Huawei as a component provider in the construction of the countrys 5G network. Uruguays center-right president Luis Lacalle Pou has pressed forward with a free trade deal with China that could have enormous consequences for the region, and Brazils trade with China has grown significantly under far-right leader Bolsonaro.

On several fronts such as the fight against climate change leaders like Chiles Gabriel Boric or Brazils Lula da Silva are likely to be much more constructive partners than Jair Bolsonaro or Chilean right-wing presidential runner-up Jos Antonio Kast, both of whom are critical of measures to combat climate change.

This is not to argue that this new pink tide is automatically good news for the United States. While some left-wing governments will be less keen to engage Washington, others, such as Hondurass new president Xiomara Castro, may turn out to be a better partner than the governments they replace. But if the history of failed bids for regional cooperation in Latin America holds any lesson, it is that efforts to work together too often depended on ideological alignment of participating governments.

When it comes to strengthening cooperation in fighting the pandemic or transnational crime, rethinking the war on drugs or finding joint solutions to the migratory crises, successful proposals to strengthen regional cooperation should be crafted in a way that they withstand the next electoral cycle.

How to go about establishing durable hemispheric cooperation? Rather than proposing ambitious but hard-to-achieve goals, perhaps the Summit should be used to mobilize governments around realistic goals such as, for example, achieving universal COVID-19 vaccine access in the Americas by 2023, strengthening regional efforts to combat against climate change and deforestation, and promoting greater cooperation in civil society across the region.

Oliver Stuenkel is a contributing columnist for Americas Quarterly and teaches International Relations at the Getulio Vargas Foundation in So Paulo. He is the author of The BRICS and the Future of Global Order (2015) and Post-Western World: How Emerging Powers Are Remaking Global Order (2016).

Any opinions expressed in this piece do not necessarily reflect those of Americas Quarterly or its publishers.

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How Biden Can Get the Summit of the Americas Right - Americas Quarterly