Category Archives: War On Drugs

Attorney General Jeff Sessions says fighting violent crime is his top priority, and in a memo released Wednesday, the former Alabama Senator dropped a hint as to how hed like to achieve that through reviving the wildly unpopular and largely unsuccessful war on drugs.

During the Obama administration, politicians from both sides of the aisle conceded that the war on drugs had not, in fact, solved violent crime, and, rather, led to soaring prison populations, costing the federal government about $80 billion annually (an estimated $1 trillion when you account for the fiscal burden on welfare as a result of mass incarceration),disproportionately pulling poor, vulnerable or minority communities into the dragnet of the criminal justice system.

But that appears to be the focus of the Trump administrations Department of Justice. In a new memo released Wednesday, Sessions emphasized that addressing violent crime must be a special priority, and called for federal authorities and local law enforcement to crack down on drug trafficking as a means to reduce violent crime.

Disrupting and dismantling those drug organizations through prosecutions under the Controlled Substances Act can drive violent crime down, Sessions wrote. One way, he said in an appearance on conservative talk radio host Hugh Hewitts show, would be by prosecuting marijuana. Asked whether he would pursue federal racketeering charges (or RICO charges) for dispensaries selling marijuana, he replied, We will enforce the law.

Its not clear exactly what Sessions has in mind; the memo merely promises further guidance and support in executing this priority. Legal experts consulted by Politico speculate that Sessions may be on the verge of throwing out policies set by Attorney General Eric Holder in 2010 and 2013, which instructed prosecutors to avoid pursuing mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses a sentencing scheme that was seen as one of the primary drivers behind mass incarceration.

But Phil Stinson, an associate professor of criminal justice at Bowling Green State University, says that the memo is just another example of grandstanding to create a moral panic and generally confuse the public. Stinson says, the memo left him scratching his head, mostly because federal, state and local law enforcement agencies already work together to crack down on violent drug-related crime.

It is more in the realm of political crime control rhetoric to make it look like the Attorney General has a new idea, Stinson said. He doesnt.

New ideas or not, criminal justice reform continues to have support in Congress.

And on both sides of the aisle. On Wednesday, a bipartisan group of senators introduced a bill to create a National Criminal Justice Commission, which would be tasked with analyzing the criminal justice system and come up with ideas to reform it.

Excerpt from:

Jeff Session hints at plan to ratchet up the war on drugs VICE News - VICE News

Are we hearing the last yelps of the dinosaurs of the war on drugs, or the roars of a racist ideology coming back from the verge of extinction? GEORGE PFROMM

Richard Nixon and Ronald and Nancy Reagan would be watching this White House with a smug sense of satisfaction. Not because of President Donald Trump's coziness with Russia, or his cavalier attitude about sexual assault, but because of the Trump administration's views on drugs and criminal justice. It's hard not to imagine all these old white people in a chorus line together celebrating locking people up for using cannabis.

Trump has not spoken explicitly about cannabis policy since he took office in January, but he told a joint session of Congress last week that "drugs" are "poisoning our youth." His administration has shaken the confidence of the legal weed industry with statements suggesting punitive action toward recreational weed. White House press secretary Sean "Spicy" Spicer told reporters two weeks ago that the Trump administration saw medical marijuana as a "very, very different subject" than recreational marijuana. Subsequently, he said the Department of Justice would start a "greater enforcement" of existing federal cannabis laws. Asked for specifics, Spicer referred reporters to the Department of Justice.

The head of the Department of Justice, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, spent his first two weeks as the nation's top law-enforcement official expressing an interest in restarting the war on drugs. He has reportedly told some senators in private that he won't crack down on legal weed, but his on-the-record statements have been consistently threatening toward states with recreational cannabis. He told attorneys general from around the country last week that he found it "troubling" that from 2010 to 2015, federal drug prosecutions declined by 18 percent. He promised that "under my leadership at the Department of Justice, this trend will end." He also said last week that "experts are telling me that there's more violence around marijuana than one would think" and that he was "definitely not a fan of expanded use of marijuana."

Let's be clear here: "Greater enforcement" of federal drug policy and a resurgent war on drugs means locking people up for drug use, including weed use. While states like Washington have spent the last two decades slowly relaxing weed laws, the Trump administration's views on weed have not advanced passed the Reagan era. Current federal law has a 15-day mandatory minimum jail sentence for someone convicted of their second misdemeanor possession charge. Get convicted of having one gram of cannabis twice, and a federal judge is forced to send you to jail for at least 15 days.

The effects of such policies, which Sessions praises with a small smile and his Southern drawl, are well documented. From 1980 to 2008, the US prison population quadrupledit went from about 500,000 inmates to 2.3 million. Our country's incarceration rate is not only the highest in the world, it's a statistical anomaly. We imprison people at five times the world's average incarceration rate, and African Americans are jailed at nearly six times the rates of whites. A study in 2012 showed that black people in Washington State use less marijuana than white people and yet are arrested for marijuana at 2.9 times the rate of white people.

There are still 226,027 misdemeanor marijuana possession convictions and 10,765 felony cannabis convictions in the Washington State Patrol's database, according to records obtained by The Stranger.

Almost 30 years after Reagan left office, we are only just starting to dismantle the racist drug policy system's legacy. President Barack Obama's administration worked at the federal level to reduce drug chargeshence that drop in drug prosecutions that terrifies Sessionsand Washington State's passage of I-502 legalizing weed in Washington in 2012 certainly helped, eliminating future weed arrests in this state. But it did nothing to address the decades of harm caused by our state's cannabis laws of the past.

Some Washington State lawmakers are trying to change that, and they introduced a bill this year to make it easy for anyone with a misdemeanor marijuana possession conviction to clear their record of that crime. After all, misdemeanor possession is no longer against state law. Oregon passed a similar law two years ago, but Washington's version has an uphill fight in Olympia.

While the federal government appears emboldened by the idea of locking more people up for using cannabis, it's worth wondering: Are we hearing the last yelps of the dinosaurs of the war on drugs, or the roars of a racist ideology coming back from the verge of extinction?

***

Washington State governor Jay Inslee and Attorney General Bob Ferguson have put themselves on the national stage in their opposition to Trump's agenda. Their lawsuit against Trump's ban on immigration from seven majority-Muslim countries effectively knocked out the president's executive order after it prevailed in US District Court and Appeals Court.

Inslee and Ferguson are also fighting to preserve local laws when it comes to cannabis. They sent the Trump administration a letter in February making the case for our state's legal pot industry. Within hours of Spicer's threat of "greater enforcement" of federal cannabis laws, Ferguson issued a statement vowing to "use every tool at our disposal to ensure that the federal government does not undermine Washington's successful, unified system for regulating recreational and medical marijuana." That's a strong statement from an attorney with a 20 record against the Trump administration, but the only problem is, this time the law is not on Ferguson's side.

If Sessions or Trump wanted to start enforcing federal weed laws today, they could immediately start charging the cannabis industry's growers, retailers, budtenders, bankers, accountants, and casual smokers with federal crimes.

US representative Adam Smith, who represents parts of Seattle, Bellevue, and Tacoma, said that fact is worrying. "In the plain language of the law, if the federal government wants to come in and start busting marijuana shops, we are somewhat at their mercy," he said. "And that is very, very concerning."

Obama's Department of Justice issued the Cole Memo and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) issued a guidance, both aimed at placating nerves in the legal weed industry. The Cole Memo, signed by US deputy attorney general James Cole, told states with legal weed that the federal government would adopt a hands-off approach to federal cannabis laws if states followed a few guiding principles, namely keeping weed out of the hands of kids and profits away from organized crime. The FinCEN guidance, issued by the Department of Treasury, told the banking industry that banks would not be prosecuted for money laundering if they opened accounts with cannabis businesses, as long as those businesses were compliant with the Cole Memo.

But those are guidance memos, not laws. They establish no legal precedent and can be rescinded at any time by the current administration.

Sam Mendez, the former executive director of the University of Washington's Cannabis Law and Policy Project, said it would only take a simple injunction, a legal order to cease activity sent from Sessions to Washington State, to shut down the I-502 industry.

"They could just shut it down by legal means. This is an industry and state regulatory system that at its fundamental level is based on an illegality," Mendez said. "So that's their legal mechanism right there."

There is one law protecting medical cannabis businesses from federal action. The Rohrabacher-Farr amendment to the federal budget bars the Department of Justice from spending any money investigating medical cannabis businesses, but a 2016 federal court ruling narrowed the protections of that amendment to strictly medical transactions. It's unclear whether it would apply to Washington's pot industry, where the medical and recreational systems have been combined into one.

"The Rohrabacher-Farr amendment doesn't offer much help to most 502-licensed businesses because few of those businesses are likely to be limiting their sales to medical purposes," said Alison Holcomb, the former ACLU attorney who wrote the text of the I-502 law. "As long as a business is selling cannabis to a person using it for nonmedical purposes, it is fair game for a DEA investigation."

Trump has the law behind him if he cracks down on legal pot, but there are still daunting challenges standing between Trump and a wholesale attack on our legal weed system. To start, weed has never been more popular in America than it is right now. A recent poll found that 71 percent of Americans think Trump should not go after states that have legalized cannabis, and 93 percent of Americans support medical cannabis laws.

Since Trump is already on the line to deliver an unpopular border wall and repeal an increasingly popular health-care law, most people don't see this as a fight he would want to pick.

"It's hard to predict what Trump does around politics and policies given how inexperienced he is, but we do know that he cares a lot about public image and public opinion. This is not going to be something that is going to look very good," Mendez said.

And weed's popularity has generated a huge industry around it. There are thousands of pot farms and pot retailers operating in the 28 states where weed has been either recreationally or medically legalized, and prosecuting that many individuals and firms would require an immense number of lawyers and law-enforcement personnel. The federal government relies heavily on local law enforcement to carry out drug-enforcement raids, but because cannabis is legal under state law, local cops can't be used to shut down the industry.

"Think of how many hundreds or even thousands of businesses are out there operating. If they were going to go after all of those businesses, that would take thousands of pages of paperwork," Mendez said.

It would be much easier for Sessions to investigate individual businesses that he believes have violated the parameters of the Cole Memo. Aaron Pickus, a spokesperson for the Washington CannaBusiness Association, said the trade group is advising its members to closely follow the state's laws.

"Right now, we are emphasizing how important it is to make sure you are following the rules as set by Washington State," Pickus said. "Make sure you are dotting all your i's and crossing all your t's and following best practices to make sure that minors aren't getting into your store."

Individual enforcement against certain businesses would be better than wholesale destruction of the industry, but the Department of Justice would still be picking a fight with some well-connected individuals. In this War on Drugs II, the dealers aren't marginalized people operating in the shadowsthey are mostly white, male, wealthy businesspeople. It's probably easier for Sessions to lock up a poor person who doesn't look like him than to lock up a bunch of rich guys with millions in their bank accounts. And Congress, never one to miss out on a wealthy constituency, recently created the nation's first Congressional Cannabis Caucus to stand up for common-sense weed laws.

Plus, if state leaders and industry leaders and weed's powerful allies in Congress can't team up to scare Sessions away from touching our legal pot, our state could push the button on the so-called "nuclear option." As we previously described in The Stranger, we could technically erase any mention of marijuana from our state's laws, effectively legalizing and deregulating pot, and giving Trump a huge nightmare when it comes to keeping drugs away from kids and cartels.

That's all to say, it's unclear what will happen. The path forward for Trump shutting down legal weed is as clear as Spicer's response to a follow-up question on what he meant about "greater enforcement" of cannabis laws. He said, and I quote: "No, no. I know. I know what II thinkthen that's what I said. But I think the Department of Justice is the lead on that."

Got that?

He added, "I believe that they are going to continue to enforce the laws on the books with respect to recreational marijuana."

***

If you ask Holcomb, who is often called the architect of I-502 because she wrote the successful initiative, why we need legal weed, she will point to one issue.

"The point of I-502 was to stop arresting people for using marijuana," Holcomb said. "And I-502 was the right vehicle at that time to move us in that direction, and depending on what happens now, we may have to move in an entirely new direction. But the North Star is the same North Star: Don't arrest people... because they use marijuana or grow it and want to share it with others."

Thanks to Holcomb's initiative, the state has spent the last five years doing exactly that: not arresting people for cannabis crimes. But bad laws take a long time to stop affecting people. Punitive Reagan-era laws still haunt people who were caught in the war on drugs dragnet, and I-502 was a proactive law, meaning it did not address any of the thousands of people who were previously charged with cannabis crimes. As for those 226,027 misdemeanor marijuana possession convictions mentioned earlier, the ones still in the Washington State Patrol's database, each one of those drug convictions continues to haunt the people carrying them, according to Mark Cooke, an attorney with the ACLU of Washington.

"Criminal conviction records allow others to discriminate against that individual in different contexts, including employment, housing, and education," Cooke said.

It may seem like in this modern, weed-friendly world, a misdemeanor possession charge doesn't mean much, but that is not the case. The types of background checks that many employers or landlords use lack specificity. Applications often ask if you have been convicted of any drug charges, according to Prachi Dave, another attorney for ACLU-WA.

"Frequently the question is 'Do you have any drug related activity convictions?' So a prior marijuana conviction could certainly fall into that category, which means a lot of people could be excluded from housing or employment," Dave said.

Someone carrying a misdemeanor possession charge can ask a court to clear their record, but there are a number of different reasons a judge could deny that request. Representative Joe Fitzgibbon, who represents West Seattle and Vashon Island in the state legislature, wants to change that. He introduced a bill in Olympia this year that would require courts to automatically expunge a person's misdemeanor marijuana conviction upon request.

"Currently, there are a bunch of caveats, but even if they meet all of the caveats, the judge can still say no," Fitzgibbon said. "The bill would make it much easier for someone with a misdemeanor marijuana possession to vacate their record."

Oregon passed a similar law in 2015, but Fitzgibbon's bill failed to make it out of committee in Olympia this year. He's introduced a version of this bill every year since 2012, when voters legalized adult possession of cannabis here. The current bill won't get another chance until next year.

Fitzgibbon said he will keep fighting for the law. "I think it's about fairness and about second chances. The voters of the state very clearly said that they didn't think possession of marijuana should be a crime," Fitzgibbon said.

Kevin Oliver, executive director of the Washington chapter of NORML, said his organization plans to step up its lobbying for the bill. "We have a lobbyist on the ground full time, our new PAC is raising money and we're going to start throwing it at these legislators, and I think that might make a difference," Oliver said.

If they act quickly, they might be able to clean up the beach before this second war on drugs sweeps in.

See the rest here:

Trump Signals That He Wants to Restart the War on Drugs - The Portland Mercury (blog)

The Philippines has voted to introduce the free and lawful use of medical marijuana, just one day after it voted to reinstate the death penalty for certain drug offenses. Last week, President Duterte said he would restart the war on drugs, a movement that has caused the death of over 7,000 people as a result of extra-judicial killings.

House Bill 180 explains who and how medical marijuana should be used. It details who will be approved to prescribe itqualified medical cannabis physicians; who will be allowed to receive itcannabis patients with an ID card; and who can assist in its distributionqualified medical cannabis caregivers and qualified cannabis compassionate centers, according to the Asian Correspondent.

Rep. Seth Jalosjos proposed the bill and said that legalizing marijuana for medical use will benefit thousands of patients suffering from serious and debilitating diseases.

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Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte speaks before Philippine Councilors League in Pasay city, Metro Manila, Philippines, March 8. Despite Duerte's reinstatement of the death penalty for certain drug offenses, a bill proposing the legalizing of medical marijuana has been approved. REUTERS/Erik De Castro

I have high hopes under the Duterte administration that this measure would be enacted into law. Finally, there is hope for our people, especially our children, who suffer from medical conditions like epilepsy, cancer and multiple sclerosis, Jalosjos told the PhilStar.

As the mayor of Davao City, Duterte conceded cannabis might be useful medically, despite his strong opinions against its use as a recreational drug. If you just smoke it like a cigarette, I will not allow it, ever. It remains to be a prohibited item and theres always a threat of being arrested. If you choose to fight the law enforcement agency, you die.

Medicinal marijuana, yes, because it is really an ingredient of modern medicine now. There are drugs right now being developed or already in the market that (have) marijuana as a component.

Studies have shown that, in American states where medical marijuana is permitted, deaths by painkiller overdose have dropped by 25 percent, while research by the National Institute of Drug Abuse in the U.S. has found that cannabis is not a gateway drug.

Jalosjos urged Filipinos to open their minds and to shed your fear of the unknown regarding medical marijuana, the Asian Correspondent reported.

See more here:

Philippines Votes to Legalize Medical Marijuana in Middle of Drug War - Newsweek

Photo of Jeff Sessions via powerlineblog.com.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions has sparked major controversy since recent statements involving both ending an attempt at decreasing private prisons and cracking down on marijuana. This, coupled with Trumps Law and Order campaign promises, is nothing new in U.S. politics. These sentiments reminisce Nixon and Reagans war on drugs almost to a T. I believe well be seeing a third wave of war on drugs in the near future granted Sessions and Trump have their way.

The origins of the war on drugs are rooted in the dawn of post-Civil War America, as characterized by the mass criminalization of black people. The 13th Amendment abolished slavery, but on one condition: The legal enslavement of criminals as a form of punishment. This placated the Southern states dire economic situation by replacing slavery with slavery of a new type. This legal base led to an economy relying on the free labor of black criminals (one can imagine the vicious bias of a wounded Confederate ideology), and this economy, in turn, led to ideas to justify it.

The branding of the black man as criminal was driven with ease into the already vehemently racist atmosphere of Reconstruction-Era U.S., with such cultural phenomena as the Ku Klux Klan, the film Birth of a Nation (U.S.s first blockbuster), the Lost Cause movement of the South (pushing ideas of generous plantation owners and content slaves), and so on. The transference of black identity from slave to criminal is paramount in the understanding of 20th Century U.S.

The Civil Rights Movement turned the idea of fear of criminalization on its head. Martin Luther King Jr. and others championed the idea of civil disobedience, calling for breaking the law as a goal of black people rather than something to be feared. Regardless of how effective this was, it further branded black people as inherently criminal to those who simply watched the movement on the surface without giving a second thought to its purpose.

As with all schemes created by the elite, a profit had to be involved to upkeep such a massive plague on U.S. society.

This rising tide of dissent, coupled with a massive anti-war movement, led Nixon and the rest of the United States imperialist regime to fear a shift in power. In reaction, Nixon repeatedly called for Law and Order, promising to crack down on the merchants of crime and corruption in American society. Nixon and his cabinet decided drugs were the sole culprit of this crime and corruption.

To put it bluntly, it was incredibly obvious this was a ploy to demonize dissent in the United States. John Ehrlichman, an adviser to Nixon, recently revealed these motives: The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the anti-war left and black people. You understand what Im saying? We knew we couldnt make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.

Eleven years later, Ronald Reagan revamped the war on drugs by dramatically increasing spending on anti-drug law enforcement, pushing an anti-drug agenda headed by his wife Nancy and the massive cutting of government programs such as welfare, housing, etc. I add the latter point because an increase in poverty leads to an increase in drug use, therefore leading to an increase in incarceration.

Throughout these wars, the incarceration rate in the United States blew up, with a prison population that grew from 218,466 in 1974 to 1,508,636 in 2014.

As with all schemes created by the elite, a profit had to be involved to upkeep such a massive plague on U.S. society.

Private prisons didnt spring up until the 80s, with a dramatic increase through the 90s with George Bush and Bill Clintons further carrying of the War on Drugs. Private prisons house 6 percent of the nations incarcerated (in atrocious living conditions), and the revenue generated reaches in the billions.

The largest injustice incarceration serves, however, is the exploitation of practically free inmate labor. Many corporations invest in prison labor which pays as low as 17 cents an hour. Scenes of prison labor in many cases eerily resemble antebellum plantations.

Therefore, the War on Drugs and mass incarceration, in general, are pursued, continued and utilized for profit motives. Mass incarceration and the conditions in which prisoners live help no one except those who profit from it.

Sessions and Trump want to continue this tradition. Private prison stock from the two largest companies has doubled since Trumps win. These companies have also donated large sums of money to the Trump campaign, obviously for the payoff to come. Jeff Sessions has called for the end of former Attorney General Sally Yates proposal to decrease private prisons. Trumps Law and Order campaign is nearly identical to Nixon, Reagan, Bush and Clintons, all of whom directly increased the criminalization of poverty and its effects via mass incarceration. Sessions crackdown on marijuana (a soft drug) foretells a sharp rise in narcotics arrests, and, therefore, imprisonments. A sheriff has even offered free prison labor to help build The Wall.

All the signs point to the obvious: Trump and Sessions, if allowed to, will revamp the war on drugs once again, and continue the deadly trend of mass incarceration in the land of the free.

college projects Donald Trump Jeff Sessions Ronald Reagan War on Drugs

Excerpt from:

Trump, Sessions and the imminent war on drugs - The Vermilion

MANILA President Rodrigo Duterte on Wednesday again defended his controversial war on drugs, amid criticism that it is only targeting the poor.

Critics say majority of the victims of the governments war on drugs are from poor families.

Duterte, however, said killing the poor who get quick money from selling drugs is necessary in destroying the apparatus. Besides, he added, it does not make sense for moneyed people to get involved in street-level drug peddling.

Ang sabi nila, puro mahirap iyan, eh wala na tayong magawa eh. Naghihintay siguro silang mag-recruit ng mga milyonaryo. Wala namang mayamang mag-standby dyan sa lugar mo, sa munisipyo mo, Duterte said in a speech in Pasay City.

Iyung talagang mahirap, iyan nga ang problema. We have to destroy the apparatus. It needs people killed. Wala talaga tayong magawa thats just how it is. You cannot stop the movement of drugs in the entire country kapag hindi mo yariin lahat.

International non-government organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) recently released a report detailing police abuses in Dutertes war on drugs.

Among the groups findings is that the war on drugs seemed to have only targeted the poor, and that many of the victims in the cases it examined were mere drug users, not dealers.

Almost all of the victims were either unemployed or worked menial jobs, including as rickshaw drivers or porters, and lived in slum neighborhoods or informal settlements, HRW said.

Since of the most of the killings took place in the slums, suspected drug users most of the time find themselves defenseless when policemen, who are sometimes accompanied by plainclothes men, bang on their door and barge into their rooms, in violation of their basic rights.

The assailants would not identify themselves or provide warrants. Family members reported hearing beatings and their loved ones begging for their lives, HRW said.

The shooting could happen immediately behind closed doors or on the street; or the gunmen might take the suspect away, where minutes later shots would ring out and local residents would find the body; or the body wold be dumped elsewhere later, sometimes with hands tied or the head wrapped in plastic.

Local residents often said they saw uniformed police on the outskirts of the incident, securing the perimeter but even if not visible before a shooting, special crime scene investigators would arrive within minutes.

Originally posted here:

Drug war only targeting the poor? That's how it is, says Duterte - ABS-CBN News

MANCHESTER, N.H. As thousands of students from across the region made their way into the Southern New Hampshire University Arena for the states first-ever Youth Summit on Opioid Awareness, organizers were finalizing a surprise Tuesday morning.

That surprise was a real crowd shocker as Attorney General Jeff Sessions strode to the stage.

I want you to know that what is happening here today is not an ordinary event, Sessions said after taking the podium. It is a special thing. That is why I cleared my schedule here today to be with you.

The event, hosted by theMark Wahlberg Youth Foundation, is part of a grassroots effort to promote drug prevention among elementary, middle and high school students.

In a 10-minute address to a crowd, Sessions recalled his time as a federal prosecutor in the 1980s. He said history should serve as a blueprint to ending todays epidemic.

It was a terrible time for drugs, he recalled. Illegal drug use had surged. Cities were filled with heroin addicts. Families broke up, young people dropped out of schools and universities. Crime and violence threatened public safety, and the purity of street heroin and cocaine and marijuana at that time was much lower than it is today. But the impact was still enormous to our country.

Sessions spoke of a need to stop the thugs and gangs who use violence and extortion to move their products.

The president has issued an executive order, through the Department of Justice, to dismantle these organizations and gangs, he said. We are going after them. That you can be sure.

Eight thousand people remained hushed as Sessions criticized the over-prescription of painkillers, attributing mass distribution as feeding the epidemic of heroin addiction.

I believe we can do a much better job on enforcing the criminal violation in prescription drug abuse, he said.

The attorney general called on state law enforcement and those in attendance to help to get drugs off the streets.

We can turn the tide against drugs and addiction in America, just like we did previously, he said. We have proven that education and telling people the truth about drugs and addiction will result in better choices. Drug use will fall, lives will be saved, less money will be going into the cartels and drug gangs, weakening them.

He outlined a three-part solution in the new war on drugs, which calls for prevention, criminal enforcement and treatment. He cited 120 daily fatalities nationwide that could be prevented.

New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, in a speech following Sessions, had similar thoughts.

I think we can do more in our prevention programs, he said.

Although the states two top members of Congress, U.S. Sen. Maggie Hassan and U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, could not be in attendance, each submitted video messages driving home the point that education is crucial.

Here is the original post:

Sessions vows new war on drugs - Eagle-Tribune

But on the night of his killing, his partner, Jennilyn Olares, hurried from their shared shack in the Pasay City neighborhood of Santo Nio.

Upon seeing his body she pushed aside police officers and curious onlookers and instinctively drew it to her chest.

The waiting gaggle of press photographers had their shot. The next morning the image of the grieving woman and her partner, seemingly shot by vigilantes, was splashed across the front pages of the nation's newspapers.

They called it the Philippines "Pieta" photo, a nod to Michelangelo's sculpture of the same name, in which Mary clasps the dying Jesus.

If not for the searing image, Siaron might have been forgotten. Olares moved away after their home -- which had perched on stilts precariously over a stinking, trash-filled canal -- was demolished.

But even without the notoriety of his death, his memory might have lived on in another way.

Members of a local rap group called One Pro Exclusive, whose cramped home studio is in a tenement in the neighborhood where Siaron once lived, have paid tribute to their slain friend with hip hop.

The song is called "Hustisya," the Tagalog word for justice.

"When I wrote the song ... I was thinking of my friend, who was just trying to earn a living as a pedicab driver, but became a victim of the war on drugs," says Justins Juanillas, the group's main rapper.

The group also hail from Santo Nio -- the same "barangay," or neighborhood -- as Siaron.

Just like in the early days of hip hop in the Bronx, rappers in the poor neighborhoods of Manila draw from their background -- its poverty, powerlessness and arbitrary injustices -- for inspiration.

And the deaths meted out in the name of the war on drugs, which critics say disproportionately targets the poor, are a target for the country's artists.

Juanillas, stage name Jay, is wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with the word "Hustisya" and the hashtag #stopkilling.

The t-shirt uses the scales of justice as part of the typography, forming the "t" of the word. He says he decided to honor his friend in the most natural way for him as possible, through music.

"He's a close friend," the slight, wiry youth says from the group's makeshift studio, up a couple of narrow, rickety flights of stairs in a cramped neighborhood building.

The production desk is an old computer, and the tiny recording booth is lined with the amateur studio builder's best friend when it comes to soundproofing: egg cartons. When Jay steps inside the tiny, stifling room, no bigger than three or four square feet, sweat pours from his brows.

"Michael is good, he's not a pusher. He used drugs but he's not a pusher," he says, still referring to his friend in the present tense.

He died a pusher's death though, gunned down by an unknown assailant, a crude cardboard sign left by his side. It read: "drug pusher huwag tularan" "I am a drug pusher, don't imitate (me)."

It is an all-too common MO of the vigilantes who have added to the body count in Duterte's war on drugs. The killing remains unsolved.

Producer Stephen Bautista, who goes by the stage name Alek, says that Siaron was his friend's older brother.

"We weren't that close but I always (saw) him in the streets. It's really a common feeling when your friend is grieving for someone which is why I (produced) these songs."

As with the origins of hip hop in the west, the song goes some way to expressing the anger felt by poor youth.

They see their options as limited, and the outrage at what they see as unfair, discriminatory -- and often deadly -- policies visited upon their equally poverty-stricken peers.

The song, "Hustisya," which Jay wrote about Siaron, features lines like these:

Is this the new Filipino life?

I'm just a poor man, and I'm a man who lost someone

I'm still mourning, because what happened cuts deep

Is there still justice? No one can say

The lives were just part of a "quota"

Taken down because of links to drugs

They weren't given a chance to change

Killed, just like that, treated like animals

Duterte has mocked the "Pieta" image.

"Then you end up sprawled on the ground and you are portrayed in a broadsheet like Mother Mary cradling the dead cadaver of Jesus Christ. Well, that's very dramatic."

But for One Pro Exclusive, it's no joke.

"Hustisya" won't bring their friend back, and it's unlikely that their protest music will slow down Duterte's bloody campaign for even a second.

But, as has been seen time and again, the young and the poor turn to music to voice their anger at policies that ruin the lives of their friends and upend their communities.

Journalist Sara Fabunan contributed to this report.

Original post:

'Is this the new Filipino life?' Manila rappers blast Duterte's war on drugs - CNN

WATCH ABOVE: Police and council workers shut down a suspected drugs den in Devonport

Guns and drugs were found at the latest drug den uncovered in Plymouth - the latest in a string of grim houses and flats shut down by the police and council in recent months.

Plymouth City Council's Anti-Social Behaviour Team has been working with Devon and Cornwall Police as part of a crackdown aimed at ridding communities of their nightmare neighbours.

City chiefs have warned other drug users and anti-social tenants that nobody is safe as they continue to boot out the worst of Plymouth's households.

Councillor Dave Downie, the council's cabinet member for safer and stronger communities, issued the firing shot after a sex and drugs den in Grenville Road, St Judes, was shut down earlier this week.

Read next: These are the 12 most anti-social streets in Plymouth

He said: "We are pleased to have secured another successful closure order in the city this demonstrates that we are committed to tackling crime and anti-social behaviour and creating a safer Plymouth, working with our partners.

"Drug use and drug dealing, and the crime and anti-social behaviour associated with it, ruins people's lives and we will take tough action to address these issues.

"We will continue to work with Devon and Cornwall Police and landlords of all tenures to tackle this and we thank them for their continued support.

"We would also encourage any local residents suffering similar issues not to suffer in silence, but to report them, as we will take action you do not have to give your name."

You can report problems with anti-social behaviour anonymously by calling either Police 101 or our Anti-Social Behaviour Team on 01752 307047.

St Judes

Magistrates agreed to shut down this private flat described in court as a "shooting gallery" for drug addicts yesterday.

The three-month closure order was granted by Plymouth Magistrates after neighbourhood police and Plymouth City Council's Antisocial Behaviour Team put forward a host of evidence relating to the use of drugs, antisocial behaviour and weapons being kept at the property.

The councils ASB team, working with neighbourhood officers, initially applied to the court for a closure notice on February 20, and succeeded on gaining a full closure notice today on the ground floor flat of 172 Grenville Road in Prince Rock.

The court heard there had been months of antisocial behaviour at the property which made the lives of three young female Marjon students a misery.

The court heard the property was visited day and night by addicts who would hammer on doors and windows to gain access to the property. The court heard addicts would turn up to shoot-up heroin while prostitutes would use the flat for their own business.

The tenant Gary Steer did not contest the hearing at Plymouth Magistrates Court on Monday 6 March 2017.

Coxside

A city flat which was considered to be a magnet for drug users and antisocial behaviour will remain shut for now after a closure order is extended.

Plymouth City Council applied to District Judge Baker at Plymouth Magistrates Court on Tuesday to extend the closure order on 3E Teats Hill.

The original closure order was granted last November.

The application was heard in the tenant Stephen Edsel Ford's absence, who refused to come to court and was currently at Exeter prison on remand.

The Herald reported later how Edsel Ford faces a minimum three year jail term after pleading guilty to burgling a home in Lipson on December 31.

At that hearing magistrates were told Edsel Ford's flat was a magnet for troublemakers and drug users.

Greenbank

Late last year police and council chiefs shut down a drug house where late-night brawls erupted and dealers plied their trade all just yards from a children's playground and primary school.

Plymouth City Council's anti-social behaviour lawyer Tony Johnson told the bench at Plymouth Magistrates Court how council staff had worked with neighbourhood officers from Plymouth police and landlords Westward Housing Group to gather evidence about a whole host of incidents linked to 50 Hospital Road in Greenbank.

He explained how the occupant Stuart Clark lived in the property following the death of his parents who were the tenants.

The council had sought a closure notice, which was granted and had returned to court with a host of evidence, which included police bodycam footage taken during a drugs raid, to seek a three month closure order.

Mr Johnson noted evidence from police intelligence logs which suggested drugs such as heroin and crack cocaine were being used and sold from the property.

A Misuse of Drugs Act warrant was executed at the property by police and magistrates were shown footage which revealed needles, crack pipes, recently used foil, a home-made bong made to look like an asthma inhaler, an a number of Kinder egg plastic containers.

Devonport

Police and council chiefs shut down a Plymouth flat suspected to be linked to violence and drug use.

Neighbours had long complained about the property 86 Keat Street in Morice Town alleging it was home to considerable antisocial behaviour, violence, drug use and supply.

Officers interviewed locals who highlighted incidents of disorderly behaviour arising from the flat as well as several complaints in respect of drugs and noise over a prolonged period of time.

These were presented at a court hearing in May, when Plymouth City Council successfully applied for a closure order before city magistrates.

Devonport

A suspected drugs flat in Devonport was shut down as part of a double attack by the city's authorities.

Magistrates heard evidence and were shown photographs of 12b Duke Street, where anti-social behaviour and drug use was taking place blamed on Shane Beasley, who lived on the premises.

The property was subject to an eight-week closure order and Beasley was ordered to pay 100 court costs.

Devonport

The second of two properties in Devonport to be targeted at once after reports of criminal behaviour.

The orders were granted after brave neighbours and police gave evidence of criminal behaviour. The council then asked magistrates for the orders.

The magistrates' court heard that Mark Lewis, who lived at 14a Duke Street, had engaged in criminal behaviour and that the use of the premises had resulted in serious nuisance being caused to members of the public, much of which was attributable to groups of people attending the property, shouting, swearing and taking drugs.

The property is subject to a three month closure order and Lewis was ordered to pay 200 court costs.

Stoke

A flat where the body of a young man was found in a suspected drug-related death was 'shut down' last year.

The address 12 Valletort Flats in Valletort Place, Stonehouse was subject of a "temporary closure order" secured by by Plymouth City Council, meaning that only the tenant is allowed inside.

The property was the focus of a number of antisocial behaviour issues which plagued the block of flats. When police were called to the property on June 8, when the body of a 25-year-old man was found, officers discovered hundreds of needles in drawers and across the flat's rooms.

Prosecutors representing Safer Plymouth Partnership, made up of police and council, told magistrates there was a clear indication of drug use linked to antisocial behaviour connected to the premises. .

The deceased man was formally identified as David Sutton.

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How the police and council are winning the war on drugs in Plymouth - Plymouth Herald

Are we hearing the last yelps of the dinosaurs of the war on drugs, or the roars of a racist ideology coming back from the verge of extinction? george pfromm

Richard Nixon and Ronald and Nancy Reagan would be watching this White House with a smug sense of satisfaction. Not because of President Donald Trump's coziness with Russia, or his cavalier attitude about sexual assault, but because of the Trump administration's views on drugs and criminal justice. It's hard not to imagine all these old white people in a chorus line together celebrating locking people up for using cannabis.

Trump has not spoken explicitly about cannabis policy since he took office in January, but he told a joint session of Congress last week that "drugs" are "poisoning our youth." His administration has shaken the confidence of the legal weed industry with statements suggesting punitive action toward recreational weed. White House press secretary Sean "Spicy" Spicer told reporters two weeks ago that the Trump administration saw medical marijuana as a "very, very different subject" than recreational marijuana. Subsequently, he said the Department of Justice would start a "greater enforcement" of existing federal cannabis laws. Asked for specifics, Spicer referred reporters to the Department of Justice.

The head of the Department of Justice, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, spent his first two weeks as the nation's top law-enforcement official expressing an interest in restarting the war on drugs. He has reportedly told some senators in private that he won't crack down on legal weed, but his on-the-record statements have been consistently threatening toward states with recreational cannabis. He told attorneys general from around the country last week that he found it "troubling" that from 2010 to 2015, federal drug prosecutions declined by 18 percent. He promised that "under my leadership at the Department of Justice, this trend will end." He also said last week that "experts are telling me that there's more violence around marijuana than one would think" and that he was "definitely not a fan of expanded use of marijuana."

Let's be clear here: "Greater enforcement" of federal drug policy and a resurgent war on drugs means locking people up for drug use, including weed use. While states like Washington have spent the last two decades slowly relaxing weed laws, the Trump administration's views on weed have not advanced passed the Reagan era. Current federal law has a 15-day mandatory minimum jail sentence for someone convicted of their second misdemeanor possession charge. Get convicted of having one gram of cannabis twice, and a federal judge is forced to send you to jail for at least 15 days.

The effects of such policies, which Sessions praises with a small smile and his Southern drawl, are well documented. From 1980 to 2008, the US prison population quadrupledit went from about 500,000 inmates to 2.3 million. Our country's incarceration rate is not only the highest in the world, it's a statistical anomaly. We imprison people at five times the world's average incarceration rate, and African Americans are jailed at nearly six times the rates of whites. A study in 2012 showed that black people in Washington State use less marijuana than white people and yet are arrested for marijuana at 2.9 times the rate of white people.

There are still 226,027 misdemeanor marijuana possession convictions and 10,765 felony cannabis convictions in the Washington State Patrol's database, according to records obtained by The Stranger.

Almost 30 years after Reagan left office, we are only just starting to dismantle the racist drug policy system's legacy. President Barack Obama's administration worked at the federal level to reduce drug chargeshence that drop in drug prosecutions that terrifies Sessionsand Washington State's passage of I-502 legalizing weed in Washington in 2012 certainly helped, eliminating future weed arrests in this state. But it did nothing to address the decades of harm caused by our state's cannabis laws of the past.

Some Washington State lawmakers are trying to change that, and they introduced a bill this year to make it easy for anyone with a misdemeanor marijuana possession conviction to clear their record of that crime. After all, misdemeanor possession is no longer against state law. Oregon passed a similar law two years ago, but Washington's version has an uphill fight in Olympia.

While the federal government appears emboldened by the idea of locking more people up for using cannabis, it's worth wondering: Are we hearing the last yelps of the dinosaurs of the war on drugs, or the roars of a racist ideology coming back from the verge of extinction?

***

Washington State governor Jay Inslee and Attorney General Bob Ferguson have put themselves on the national stage in their opposition to Trump's agenda. Their lawsuit against Trump's ban on immigration from seven majority-Muslim countries effectively knocked out the president's executive order after it prevailed in US District Court and Appeals Court.

Inslee and Ferguson are also fighting to preserve local laws when it comes to cannabis. They sent the Trump administration a letter in February making the case for our state's legal pot industry. Within hours of Spicer's threat of "greater enforcement" of federal cannabis laws, Ferguson issued a statement vowing to "use every tool at our disposal to ensure that the federal government does not undermine Washington's successful, unified system for regulating recreational and medical marijuana." That's a strong statement from an attorney with a 20 record against the Trump administration, but the only problem is, this time the law is not on Ferguson's side.

If Sessions or Trump wanted to start enforcing federal weed laws today, they could immediately start charging the cannabis industry's growers, retailers, budtenders, bankers, accountants, and casual smokers with federal crimes.

US representative Adam Smith, who represents parts of Seattle, Bellevue, and Tacoma, said that fact is worrying. "In the plain language of the law, if the federal government wants to come in and start busting marijuana shops, we are somewhat at their mercy," he said. "And that is very, very concerning."

Obama's Department of Justice issued the Cole Memo and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) issued a guidance, both aimed at placating nerves in the legal weed industry. The Cole Memo, signed by US deputy attorney general James Cole, told states with legal weed that the federal government would adopt a hands-off approach to federal cannabis laws if states followed a few guiding principles, namely keeping weed out of the hands of kids and profits away from organized crime. The FinCEN guidance, issued by the Department of Treasury, told the banking industry that banks would not be prosecuted for money laundering if they opened accounts with cannabis businesses, as long as those businesses were compliant with the Cole Memo.

But those are guidance memos, not laws. They establish no legal precedent and can be rescinded at any time by the current administration.

Sam Mendez, the former executive director of the University of Washington's Cannabis Law and Policy Project, said it would only take a simple injunction, a legal order to cease activity sent from Sessions to Washington State, to shut down the I-502 industry.

"They could just shut it down by legal means. This is an industry and state regulatory system that at its fundamental level is based on an illegality," Mendez said. "So that's their legal mechanism right there."

There is one law protecting medical cannabis businesses from federal action. The Rohrabacher-Farr amendment to the federal budget bars the Department of Justice from spending any money investigating medical cannabis businesses, but a 2016 federal court ruling narrowed the protections of that amendment to strictly medical transactions. It's unclear whether it would apply to Washington's pot industry, where the medical and recreational systems have been combined into one.

"The Rohrabacher-Farr amendment doesn't offer much help to most 502-licensed businesses because few of those businesses are likely to be limiting their sales to medical purposes," said Alison Holcomb, the former ACLU attorney who wrote the text of the I-502 law. "As long as a business is selling cannabis to a person using it for nonmedical purposes, it is fair game for a DEA investigation."

Trump has the law behind him if he cracks down on legal pot, but there are still daunting challenges standing between Trump and a wholesale attack on our legal weed system. To start, weed has never been more popular in America than it is right now. A recent poll found that 71 percent of Americans think Trump should not go after states that have legalized cannabis, and 93 percent of Americans support medical cannabis laws.

Since Trump is already on the line to deliver an unpopular border wall and repeal an increasingly popular health-care law, most people don't see this as a fight he would want to pick.

"It's hard to predict what Trump does around politics and policies given how inexperienced he is, but we do know that he cares a lot about public image and public opinion. This is not going to be something that is going to look very good," Mendez said.

And weed's popularity has generated a huge industry around it. There are thousands of pot farms and pot retailers operating in the 28 states where weed has been either recreationally or medically legalized, and prosecuting that many individuals and firms would require an immense number of lawyers and law-enforcement personnel. The federal government relies heavily on local law enforcement to carry out drug-enforcement raids, but because cannabis is legal under state law, local cops can't be used to shut down the industry.

"Think of how many hundreds or even thousands of businesses are out there operating. If they were going to go after all of those businesses, that would take thousands of pages of paperwork," Mendez said.

It would be much easier for Sessions to investigate individual businesses that he believes have violated the parameters of the Cole Memo. Aaron Pickus, a spokesperson for the Washington CannaBusiness Association, said the trade group is advising its members to closely follow the state's laws.

"Right now, we are emphasizing how important it is to make sure you are following the rules as set by Washington State," Pickus said. "Make sure you are dotting all your i's and crossing all your t's and following best practices to make sure that minors aren't getting into your store."

Individual enforcement against certain businesses would be better than wholesale destruction of the industry, but the Department of Justice would still be picking a fight with some well-connected individuals. In this War on Drugs II, the dealers aren't marginalized people operating in the shadowsthey are mostly white, male, wealthy businesspeople. It's probably easier for Sessions to lock up a poor person who doesn't look like him than to lock up a bunch of rich guys with millions in their bank accounts. And Congress, never one to miss out on a wealthy constituency, recently created the nation's first Congressional Cannabis Caucus to stand up for common-sense weed laws.

Plus, if state leaders and industry leaders and weed's powerful allies in Congress can't team up to scare Sessions away from touching our legal pot, our state could push the button on the so-called "nuclear option." As we previously described in The Stranger, we could technically erase any mention of marijuana from our state's laws, effectively legalizing and deregulating pot, and giving Trump a huge nightmare when it comes to keeping drugs away from kids and cartels.

That's all to say, it's unclear what will happen. The path forward for Trump shutting down legal weed is as clear as Spicer's response to a follow-up question on what he meant about "greater enforcement" of cannabis laws. He said, and I quote: "No, no. I know. I know what II thinkthen that's what I said. But I think the Department of Justice is the lead on that."

Got that?

He added, "I believe that they are going to continue to enforce the laws on the books with respect to recreational marijuana."

***

If you ask Holcomb, who is often called the architect of I-502 because she wrote the successful initiative, why we need legal weed, she will point to one issue.

"The point of I-502 was to stop arresting people for using marijuana," Holcomb said. "And I-502 was the right vehicle at that time to move us in that direction, and depending on what happens now, we may have to move in an entirely new direction. But the North Star is the same North Star: Don't arrest people... because they use marijuana or grow it and want to share it with others."

Thanks to Holcomb's initiative, the state has spent the last five years doing exactly that: not arresting people for cannabis crimes. But bad laws take a long time to stop affecting people. Punitive Reagan-era laws still haunt people who were caught in the war on drugs dragnet, and I-502 was a proactive law, meaning it did not address any of the thousands of people who were previously charged with cannabis crimes. As for those 226,027 misdemeanor marijuana possession convictions mentioned earlier, the ones still in the Washington State Patrol's database, each one of those drug convictions continues to haunt the people carrying them, according to Mark Cooke, an attorney with the ACLU of Washington.

"Criminal conviction records allow others to discriminate against that individual in different contexts, including employment, housing, and education," Cooke said.

It may seem like in this modern, weed-friendly world, a misdemeanor possession charge doesn't mean much, but that is not the case. The types of background checks that many employers or landlords use lack specificity. Applications often ask if you have been convicted of any drug charges, according to Prachi Dave, another attorney for ACLU-WA.

"Frequently the question is 'Do you have any drug related activity convictions?' So a prior marijuana conviction could certainly fall into that category, which means a lot of people could be excluded from housing or employment," Dave said.

Someone carrying a misdemeanor possession charge can ask a court to clear their record, but there are a number of different reasons a judge could deny that request. Representative Joe Fitzgibbon, who represents West Seattle and Vashon Island in the state legislature, wants to change that. He introduced a bill in Olympia this year that would require courts to automatically expunge a person's misdemeanor marijuana conviction upon request.

"Currently, there are a bunch of caveats, but even if they meet all of the caveats, the judge can still say no," Fitzgibbon said. "The bill would make it much easier for someone with a misdemeanor marijuana possession to vacate their record."

Oregon passed a similar law in 2015, but Fitzgibbon's bill failed to make it out of committee in Olympia this year. He's introduced a version of this bill every year since 2012, when voters legalized adult possession of cannabis here. The current bill won't get another chance until next year.

Fitzgibbon said he will keep fighting for the law. "I think it's about fairness and about second chances. The voters of the state very clearly said that they didn't think possession of marijuana should be a crime," Fitzgibbon said.

Kevin Oliver, executive director of the Washington chapter of NORML, said his organization plans to step up its lobbying for the bill. "We have a lobbyist on the ground full time, our new PAC is raising money and we're going to start throwing it at these legislators, and I think that might make a difference," Oliver said.

If they act quickly, they might be able to clean up the beach before this second war on drugs sweeps in.

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Trump Signals That He Wants to Restart the War on Drugs - TheStranger.com

President Donald Trump described them as Americas forgotten people, the less-educated white, middle-aged Americans. This group of individuals, together with the baby boomers and the so-called Generation X, are among the most vulnerable to heroin and prescription drug abuse. Several studies indicate that the number of drug overdose deaths among baby boomers, Generation X and less-educated white Americans has jumped in recent years.

Data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in late February showed that the age-adjusted rate of drug overdose deaths in the U.S. in 2015 was more than 2.5 times the rate in 1999. The CDC claimed that the spike in the number of drug overdose deaths was tied in to the drop in the price of heroin along with easier access to prescription drugs.

In 1999, the rate of drug overdose was estimated at 6.1 per 100,000. It jumped to 16.3 per 100,000 in 2015 or an increase of 5.5% annually. From 1999 to 2006, the number increased by 10% and then another 3% from 2006 to 2013 before jumping again by 9% per year from 2013 to 2015 as shown in government data.

The pattern of drugs involved in drug overdose deaths also has changed in recent years, according to an official in the CDC report. In 2010, 29% of drug overdose deaths involved natural and semisynthetic opioids and 12% involved methadone. In 2015, the percentage of drug overdose deaths involving these drugs decreased to 24% and 6%. In contrast, drug overdose deaths involving heroin increased from 8% in 2010 to 25% in 2015. Increases were also seen in drug overdose deaths involving synthetic opioids other than methadone, from 8% in 2010 to 18% in 2015.

Brady Granier, president, CEO and director of BioCorRx Inc. (BICX) expressed concern over the growing drug abuse problem in the U.S. He agrees with the governments opinion that drug overdosedeathsis a major public health burden. The CDC reported that the total number of drug overdose deaths totaled 47,055 in 2014.

Granier commented, The best way to combat this problem is through prevention, but this will take a collaborative effort between parents, educators, governments, not for profits, law enforcement agencies and more. Then on the other side, theres treatment and recovery. Treatment options are evolving to address that side of the problem especially in the field of medication-assisted treatment. We are seeing some potentially very effective new tools on the horizon that can help people more efficiently in the areas detox and relapse prevention.

Pain medication now cheaper than other illegal drugs

The drop in the price of pain medications is one of the leading causes why many Americans are misusing the drug and becoming drug addicts, according to the CDC report.

Since 1999, the amount of prescription opioids sold in the U.S. nearly quadrupled yet there has not been an overall change in the amount of pain that Americans report, according to the CDC. They also said that statistically, the number of deaths from prescription opioids has risen more than 400% over the last 15 years. This includes abuse of medications like oxycodone, hydrocodone and methadone.

A similar study by researchers at the Princeton University has confirmed that the so-called forgotten people of America are more susceptible to drug overdose deaths due to drug and alcohol poisonings, suicide and chronic liver diseases and cirrhosis.

The Princeton study concluded, Those with less education saw the most marked increases. Rising midlife mortality rates of white non-Hispanics were paralleled by increases in midlife morbidity.

Americas 'War on Drugs'

The year 2016 was a banner year for the U.S. Coast Guards fight against drug trafficking with a record illegal drug haul.

The Coast Guard seized more than 416,000 pounds of cocaine with a street value estimated at $5.6 billion by the end of October 2016. The catch was the largest made by the Coast Guard in a single year of its history, covering 263 operations spanning the Caribbean, the Gulf of Mexico and the eastern Pacific Ocean.

That year, the Coast Guard also arrested 585 suspected drug smugglers, 465 of whom were repatriated to the U.S. mainland to face charges.

However, Americas War on Drugs netted an estimated 1.25 million individuals arrested in the U.S. in 2015 for possession of illegal drugs. The war on drugs also resulted in unparalleled hostility and instability in drug-producing nations including Mexico, Colombia, etc. Sadly, illegal drugs still proliferate the streets despite the billions of dollars spent by the federal government in the fight against illegal drugs.

Miracle cures?

The stigma associated with drug addiction is preventing most from seeking treatment. A study by the National Survey on Drug Use and Health has found that only 14% of drug dependents will seek treatment. A majority of drug addicts find it difficult to accept that they are addicted to an illegal substance which is typically the first step in the treatment process.

Researchers said that the stigma attached to being labeled a drug addict has a profound impact in the fight against addiction as it prevents treatment resources from reaching many people who need them, and it discourages drug dependent individuals from seeking treatment at all.

However, Granier said there are several programs available to rehabilitate those suffering from addiction while preventing them from relapsing. BioCoRrx offers its BioCorRx Recovery Program, a non-addictive, medication-assisted treatment (MAT) program used to treat both alcohol and opioid addictions to independent treatment providers across the U.S..

The program uses naltrexone in an implantable form that can block cravings and prevent relapse for several months while the patient goes through the proprietary counseling program that was written by addiction experts specifically for those receiving long term naltrexone treatment. Naltrexone is an opioid antagonist that blocks some of the effects of alcohol and opioids and has been FDA approved in the oral and injectable form for many years. The program also includes 12 months of peer recovery support to add another layer of support for the patient and family while also tracking results using an algorithmic software program.

Big pharmaceutical companies Insys Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ:INSY), Pfizer Inc. (NYSE:PFE), Amphastar Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ:AMPH), Mylan NV (NASDAQ:MYL), Opiant Technologies Inc. (OPNT), Adapt Pharma Ltd., Kaleo Pharmaceuticals andAlkermes (NASDAQ:ALKS) are also offering their own solutions to the drug menace.

One of the first-line treatments for opioid abuse includes Reckitt Benckiser Groups (MEX:RB N) buprenorphine, which is being marketed under the Suboxone brand name. But Suboxone is facing controversies over alleged illegal trade practice and the drug itself is suspected of causing addiction amongst its patients.

Another first-line treatment is naloxone, sold under the brand name Narcan. Narcan is said to be an effective treatment to reverse opioid overdose if treatment is administered in time. However, the price of Narcan has spiked tremendously over the past month making the drug very expensive.

A third option is naltrexone, a nonaddictive medication that is found to be an effective medication in the fight against opioid abuse, as well as alcoholism. Alkermes, a $8.39 billion pharmaceutical company, is currently selling naltrexone under its Vivitrol brand.

Granier added that BioCoRrx is in the preclinical stage of developing its own injectable naltrexone. He said, BICX101 is being developed to provide another option to patients and doctors in the fight against addiction. Our goal is to deliver a product in a much smaller volume, with a smaller needle, and therefore presumably, less discomfort. He added that the product should not require refrigeration and may also be able to be given subcutaneously instead of in the buttocks.

Number of drug overdose deaths to decline

While the statistics on the drug overdose deaths is a cause for alarm, health authorities and researchers are predicting that the volume of drug overdoses will decline soon. They cited better law enforcement practices and more effective monitoring of prescription drugs should help reduce the drug overdose cases and eventually the number of deaths associated with it.

Scientists at Columbia Universitys Mailman School of Public Health estimated that the number of deaths from drug overdose will peak at 50,000 this year declining to a nonepidemic state of 6,000 deaths by 2035.

Disclosure: I have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours. I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.

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America's War on Drugs - GuruFocus.com - GuruFocus.com