Category Archives: War On Drugs

Srinagar: War against drugs has entered a decisive phase after anti-narcotics agencies were able to reduce the poppy cultivation by over 75 percent in Kashmir.

For the last few years, the excise department has gone the whole hog against poppy cultivation. Poppy crop over thousands of kanals of land has been destroyed. Vulnerable areas were put under a scanner which has helped in curbing the menace.

Data accessed by The Kashmir Monitor reveal that the illegal cultivation of poppy has reduced from 2206 kanals in 2018 to mere 549 kanals in 2022.

As per the excise department, the poppy crops over 549 kanals of land have been successfully destroyed this year.

Illegal cultivation of poppy has been eliminated from Kupwara. However, Anantnag, Pulwama, Kulgam, and Shopian continue to have poppy fields. Nearly 430 kanals of land are under poppy cultivation.

In Anantnag, poppy cultivation over 206 kanals of land was destroyed. It was followed by Pulwama where crop spread over128 kanals of land was destroyed. Likewise, in Sjoppian, the crop spread over 40 kanals of land was destroyed. Poppy spread over 56 kanals of land was destroyed in Kulgam.

The excisedepartment destroyed the poppy cropover 21 kanals of land in Baramulla. In Bandipora, Srinagar, Budgam,and Ganderbal, the department destroyed poppy crops over 4,3,88 and 3 kanals, of land respectively.

Tahir Ajaz,Deputy Excise Commissioner (Executive) Kashmir told The Kashmir Monitor that the department is conducting a drive every year to eliminate the poppy cultivation in Kashmir.

The cultivation of poppy is banned in Jammu and Kashmir since 1959. Our employees destroy the crop in every district. We have entered a full elimination phase. We have succeeded in reducing the cultivation by 1/8thin the last few years, he said.

Ajaz said there was no more large-scale cultivation of poppy recorded in Kashmir now. Now, we are focusing on destroying the crop on small patches including lawns and kitchen gardens. Our employees survey a particular areaand accordingly destruction activity begins, he said.

Pertinently, the administration this year involved PRIs, village heads, and chowkidars in every tehsil to curb the menace of poppy cultivation. Religious scholars too were roped in to create awareness about the poppy in Kashmir.

See the original post:

War on drugs: Poppy cultivation drops by 75% in Kashmir - The Kashmir Monitor - The Kashmir Monitor

The war on drugs is an everyday battle for those who are directly affected by it.

ALSO READ: Former addict commits to war against drugs

This war propelled a mother Lucille Pienaar to open a recovery centre where families and recovering addicts can receive support and care.

Germiston City Recovery and Care Centre was officially opened in April.

The centre offers stay-in facilities, support, treatment, and specialised aftercare.

Centre manager Elna Latchman says the objective is to address the need in the Ekurhuleni area, which is infested with drug and substance abuse.

There was a dire need for a rehabilitation centre, said Latchman.

The community has been very responsive and supportive of the centre. Many send their loved ones to the centre for help. We reached out to the schools in the area to offer our assistance and support, said Latchman.

ALSO READ: Hawks nab man in possession of drugs worth R600k

The centre offers an accredited programme that includes the 12-Step programme.

Medical assistance and guidance are also part of the package.

They have a full-time doctor, nurse, psychologist and counsellors on standby to assist.

Latchman said the rehabilitation of drug and substance abuse is costly, hence some people dont get the chance to get clean.

The effects of Covid have not made it easy for families to get help for their loved ones because of loss of employment.

Drug addiction affects the family, community and society emotionally, financially and physically, said Latchman.

The addict must have the desire to get clean. The family must be prepared to assist or support the addict through the process of recovery. Dealing with the recovery of an addict has to be done holistically, said Latchman.

ALSO READ: Ekurhuleni committee commits to combat drug abuse

She said that sometimes families get left behind during recovery and when an addict is discharged, they are not sure how to offer support.

Our support groups help the family and friends to understand that they too need help in coping with the emotional journey of living with an addict, said Latchman.

She said they opened their doors because they have seen the demand and need from the Germiston community for help.

The centre established the Real Campaign to raise funds for rehabilitation.

Those who need assistance can contact Elna Latchman at 072 935 0320 or 011 826 6026.

Go here to read the rest:

Germinston centre on war with drugs - Germiston City News

It seems that every large city in America has marked off a neighbourhood where drug addicts are free to die in the streets. San Franciscos Tenderloin district, downtown Portland, Skid Row in Los Angeles, Hunts Point in New York, Kensington in Philadelphia: These are places where, by unspoken agreement between society and its outcasts, the normal rules cease to apply and the bodies are collected.

Where its warm enough, people sleep in tents or on the streets. Drugs and sex are openly sold and laws are enforced erratically. The result, which I observed during a 2019 trip toSkid Row, was a hellish concentration of deprivation and disorder, interspersed with a concentrated complex of non-profit and social service organisations.

What was already hellish was made even worse in recent years by the rapid spread of fentanyl, a synthetic opioid some 50 times more potent than heroin. Driven largely by fentanyl, which is now used to cut virtually every other drug, overdoses set a new record in the US in 2021, killing nearly 108,000 people. Up roughly 15% over 2020s record death toll, overdoses killed more people last year than guns and cars combined. In San Francisco, an average of 53 people died every month from overdoses last year, many of them outdoors and on sidewalks in front of buildings.

Before the fentanyl spike, overdoses had been rising in the US for the past two decades while raising little public alarm. But now, with the scale of deaths being declared an emergency and health epidemic, public officials are embracing supposedly radical new solutions to the problem, the most popular of which is harm reduction.

Harm reduction promises reasonableness. Rather than trying to eradicate drug use, the public-health framework, which has been embraced by the White House and cities across America, works to reduce risks by prioritising the safety of individuals over curing social ills. The point is to meet people where they are, according to advocates, not to change them. Its appeal is that it is humane and takes the opposite approach of the failed war on drugs. But thats only part of the story.

Look through the harm-reduction telescope and you glimpse the grand project of the therapeutic society that animates modern progressivism. At one end the individual is seen in minimalist terms, powerless to control their own desires, a victim of systemic forces far beyond their ability to resist. Look through the other end, and you find a maximalist view of the state in which a vast apparatus of administrators surveil and treat citizen-patients based on vague definitions of wellness and harm.

Look back in time, and the rise of harm reduction from the work of devoted activists to the official policy of the federal government traces a larger transformation in American politics. It is a project, in short, of the same political forces who want to defund the police, while empowering a surveillance and enforcement regime that punishes people for making sexist Facebook comments.

While harm reduction has been an official policy for decades in a number of European countries, its expansion in the US, where it began as a grassroots movement during the AIDS crisis in the Eighties, is a more recent phenomenon. San Francisco was an early adopter. In 2000, the citys Health Commission unanimously voted to adopt a harm reduction policy for drug offences. The city effectively decriminalised drug use while at the same time shifting public funding away from enforcement and toward providing clean needles, distributing the drug naloxone, which can reverse opioid overdoses, and offering methadone and other drug treatment plans. In 2020, San Francisco led the country in overdose deaths.

Last year, New York City allowed the opening of two safe injection sites, a term for facilities where drug users can consume their wares under the supervision of a mix of medical professionals and former addicts who can intervene and revive them if they overdose. The clinics have intervened in more than 300 potentially fatal overdoses since they opened, according to staffers. Despite the sites being illegal under federal law, city officials have allowed them to operate without interference, setting a precedent for other cities to follow.

New Yorks experiment follows the three-decade harm reduction trial in Canada, which includes the establishment in 2003 of the Insite safe injection facility in Vancouver. While advocates point to the number of overdoses averted and reversed at these facilities, its possible that the policy led to more overall use, potentially contributing to more overdoses outside the clinics than lives saved within it. In British Columbia overdose deaths were up 151% between 2008 and 2020, with much of the increase coming from Vancouver. In Oregon, another place where hard drugs were decriminalised in 2020, overdose deaths were up 41%, in 2021 from 2020, compared to a 16% increase nationwide.

Some harm reduction programs such as needle exchanges, fentanyl testing strips, and free testing kits for HIV, appear to have been broadly beneficial. But in the absence of a commitment to the full recovery of individuals, harm reduction morphs into a permanent method of managing chronic drug addiction by expanding the nonprofit-bureaucratic sector. Administrators count lives saved and ODs reversed without registering the broader increase in addiction they help to accommodate. Success is measured not by freeing individuals from addiction so they can live full lives, but by the growth of the treatment bureaucracy.

General Jeff, a black community activist who has lived in Skid Row for a decade described a similar dynamic in the approach to homelessness when I spoke with him a few years ago. Theres never been a shortage of funding in modern-day Skid Row, Jeff told me, blasting the areas nonprofits as poverty pimps. This isnt really about trying to end homelessness. Thats just a marketing campaign. Just to make people outside of Skid Row feel good.

Bureaucracy, wrote Christopher Lasch in The Culture of Narcissism, transforms collective grievances into personal problems amenable to therapeutic intervention. Lasch does not pretend that individual moral accountability is sufficient to redress collective grievances or systemic injustices, but nor does he attempt to dismiss it as an anachronism. Morality grounds the sense of dignity and self-worth that provide us with our best internal defence against the unavoidable calamities of fortune. It is not a replacement but a precondition for a meaningful politics of collective action. The transformation observed by Lasch has repurposed the minimalist do no harm ethos as a maximalist licence to redesign society.

Harm reduction was never just about the drugs or the deaths or the diseases, wrote Daniel Raymond, a policy and planning leader at the Harm Reduction Coalition, in a March 2020 essay on Harm Reduction in the Time of the Coronavirus. Rather, writes Raymond in the morally inflationary language used by activists staking out a claim to administrative power, harm reduction is heir to the multiple legacies of the communities and struggles we come from the hybrid wisdom that emerges from communal survival in the face of threats of being dispossessed, disenfranchised, displaced, disappeared.

Because harm can be found anywhere, harm reduction now appears everywhere. The framework is applied to criminal justice, diet and exercise, prostitution, curbing adults sexual attraction to minors otherwise known as paedophilia and a range of other seemingly unrelated fields. Harm reduction, as a framework, acknowledges that white supremacy, patriarchy, classism, fatmisia, transmisia, ableism, xenophobia, and myriad other systems of oppression infuse space and structures and are a part of our socialisation, wrote the authors of an academic journal article on Observing Whiteness in Introductory Physics in March.

The essential alchemy of progressivism is performed by converting drug addiction from a vice afflicting individuals, which they have the power to change, into the basis of an identity group with a claim to government services. The collective grievances relating to the social and economic policies that might have pushed hundreds of thousands of people into drug dependency are first privatised through addiction and then bureaucratised so they can be managed by a class of appointed supervisors. In turn, the power of the bureaucracy is redirected from enforcing behavioural norms to overseeing the consequences of their dismantling.

This transformation is consummated with a novel language that marks the new political identity within the lexicon of professional progressivism. Following the lead of those in harm-reduction and drug-users rights groups, I decide to scrub the word addict from my vocabulary, wrote Sarah Resnick in a piece featured in The Best American Essays 2017 anthology. As alternatives to addict, Resnick finds: person with a substance-misuse disorder; person experiencing a drug problem; person who uses drugs habitually; and person committed to drug use.

The stiltedness of the language would be a small price to pay if harm reduction policies reduced drug dependency but since its not clear thats the case, the effort turns on trying to alter language and perception. Dont be ashamed you are using, be empowered that you are using safely, declared a poster by the New York City Health Department that recently appeared in the subway system. Shame is a useless emotion that often keeps ppl from investing in themselves or others. We should be celebrating ppl who are taking the steps in this poster, tweeted Kassandra Frederique, the executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, one of the leading drug policy reform organisations in the US. Frederiques statement was retweeted by a spokesman for the New York City Department of Health.

Instead of fostering the behaviour necessary to give someone a genuine sense of self-worth a project that may well be beyond the power of anyone but the individual and their maker harm reduction converts the bare physicality of safety into the cheap currency of empowerment. The message presumes that addicts would not and should not feel shame for their dependency absent external judgements. It minimises the ravages attendant to drug addiction such as criminality, homelessness, despair and decay by framing them as the consequences of unsafe practices, without any connection to the spiritual poverty of dependency. In the religious and humanistic view, shame is the voice of the individuals conscience. Others may seek to shame us, but true shame arises only when the individual has transgressed against their own innate sense of decency. But the conscience has no place in the maximalist world view of the harm reductionists, except as a relic of the retrograde morality that prevents addicts from experiencing empowerment.

At what end is the policy of harm reduction aimed? The war on drugs promised end point was, obviously, unreachable, but the harm-reduction crusade has no ending at all except the construction of a new system of power, no less punitive than the one it seeks to replace.

Many people seem to have accepted that harm reduction efforts are a temporary life-saving measure a way of buying time for people caught in a cycle of addiction while moving them gently toward recovery. But its by no means clear that people doing harm reduction work all see it this way. Some are explicit about the fact that they see nothing wrong with hard drug use and and view attempts to force people into recovery as puritanical efforts to stamp out pleasure.

Others genuinely want to help drug users and other people in high-risk lifestyles by keeping them alive and guiding them toward lives free from addiction. But even those efforts are bound up in the expansionist project to treat an endless and ever expanding litany of harms by means of a bureaucracy in which being exposed to racism and being addicted to drugs are understood as two expressions of the same oppressive system. Harm reduction is friends; the law is cops, wrote one devoted adherent to the practice in a 2019 essay about sex work.

In 2022, the White House National Drug Control Strategy devoted a full chapter to harm reduction. Which is to say that, whatever its beginnings, harm reduction is now the self-talk of the state bureaucracy, not only the law but its spirit.

Read more:

How harm reduction captured the US - UnHerd

Patients could become the collateral damage of a tug of war that Washington is playing between lowering drug prices and lowering the death rate from cancer. It comes at a moment when the White Houses proposed Cancer Moonshot initiative took center stage at the flagship meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) and as Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) resumes talks with Democratic leadership to revitalize drug price controls. Despite the great intent of the Cancer Moonshot, new evidence tells us the joint implementation of such price controls from Congress will raise cancer mortality substantially and stall out decades of progress to discover treatments for a devastating and personal disease.

Cancer is the second leading cause of deaths in the U.S. today, killing about 600,000 Americans a year. Most of us have been left behind by loved ones who became victims of the dreadful disease. Given its large historical presence, in 1971 theNational Cancer Act was passed in a bipartisan fashion, spurring the War on Cancer through decades of significant public investment in cancer research that continues to this day.Evidence has foundthat theeconomic rates of returns of this war, the gains in cancer longevity relative to investments in research and development (R&D), have been enormous and that cancer patient gains from the war have been five times as large as those of drug companies who made such investments.

Recently the Biden administration aimed to further this ongoing war by reigniting the Cancer Moonshotto substantially cut cancer mortalitythrough its proposed federal budget. Its stated objectives include cutting cancer mortality in half over the next 25 years. Just as for the rest of us, family members of the president were struck with the disease, and this seems to have heightened the relevancy for the president of the Moonshot initiative before his current term in the White House.

In the new budget, the White House proposed a $1.9 billion annual increase in public R&D funding for cancer, mainly through additional funds to the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) and the National Cancer Institute (NCI). This represents about a 3 percent increase to what we estimate is the current level of cancer R&D, public and private, of about $57 billion, where the private share is not directly reported given the proprietary nature of R&D.

This injection of federal funds comes at a time when cancer research is booming due to existing market and policy incentives. Our analysis finds and astonishing 49 percent of the total FDA pipeline today is for new cancer treatments and 27 percent of new drug and biologics approvals are for cancer.

But the Moonshot is not the only Washington proposal affecting cancer R&D and the discoveryof future treatments for cancer patients. In fact, contradictory to the Biden administrations goals on cancer, a separate effort in Congress to institute price controls on prescription drugs would actually dampen the very efforts to fuel the development of new, potentially groundbreaking cancer treatments.

In a new analysis, researchers at the University of Chicago found that proposed drug price controls on cancer treatments will reduce overall annual cancer R&D spending by about $18 billion per year, or 31.9 percent. Despite admirable efforts by the administration to increase funding for cancer research, the reduction in total R&D spending from the proposed price controls is about 9.5 times as large as such an increase from the budgetary expansion.

In short, cancer patients would miss out on 9.5 times as many new drugs due to price controls as they gain from the Cancer Moonshot initiative.

Despitemountains of evidence, some politicians unfamiliar with how markets work argue that future profits do not drive R&D spending so price controls will not impact the development of new drugs. Maybe a Congressional field visit to a venture capital or private equity firm would be useful, to see in action the self-evident fact that future profits drive the funding rounds needed to finance the trials required by FDA. Or just look at howlittle private researchoccurred understanding COVID natural immunity compared to vaccines because natural immunity cannot be sold but vaccines can. Turns out good science relies on good profits.

Politicians also argue that cancer care is more expensive here than abroad, arguing that we need to import foreign price controls. But if the large U.S. market pays less than the actual value of cancer treatments like foreigners do, it will have larger effects worldwideas the U.S. contributes more than 70 percent of the global drug earnings driving worldwide innovation.

Such innovation is making remarkable strides at the moment. At ASCO this June, researchers presented findings from a small clinical trial for colorectal cancer that triggered a remarkable remission in all 14 patients who received the treatment. It is a testament to what is possible for patients who are suffering from a devasting disease and how dedicated R&D spending can change the course of care. It is also a stark reminder of what is at stake for the president and an administration that is focused on both lowering cancer mortality and prices of cancer treatments.

Though the actions of the administration and Congress are well-intended, price control proposals will unintentionally reverse decades of progress to win the ongoing war on cancer that began in 1971 when President Nixon signed the National Cancer Act.

Tomas J. Philipson is the Daniel Levin Chair Emeritus at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy and a former member and acting chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers from 2017 to 2020. He reports research support or consulting income from many industries including biopharmaceutical companies.

Read the rest here:

President Bidens unintended war on cancer patients - The Hill

Deaths by drug overdose in the US and Canada, particularly by recreational use of fentanyl, continue to break records, a UN report says.

Preliminary estimates in the United States point to more than 107,000 drug overdose deaths in 2021, up from nearly 92,000 in 2020, the UN Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said in a report released on Monday.

Increased harmful levels of non-medical pharmaceutical drug use were reported in the coronavirus pandemic period, the report found. Today, more young people are using drugs compared with earlier generations, and women in particular are unable to find treatment.

Women account for over 40 per cent of people using pharmaceutical drugs for non-medical purposes, and nearly one in two people using amphetamine-type stimulants, but only one in five in treatment for amphetamine-type stimulants is a woman, Ghada Waly, executive director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, said.

In April, US President Joe Biden announced a new strategy designed to battle drugs use.

It includes expanding access to antidotes to prevent overdoses, treatment services, new efforts to disrupt transnational criminal organisations' financial networks and supply chains.

Its time we treat addiction like any other disease. And at the same time, we are disrupting drug traffickers financial networks, supply chains, and delivery routes, including on the internet, Mr Biden said at the launch of the strategy.

Amphetamine misuse is not limited to North America. The Middle East is dealing with floods of the amphetamine known as Captagon from Lebanon and Syria, UNODC found.

Saudi Arabia seized the most amphetamines in 2020, at the equivalent of almost 30 tonnes, followed by the United Arab Emirates at roughly 12.5 tonnes.

Traffickers are known to employ unusual methods for smuggling, like placing the drugs inside a shipment of fava beans, or hiding them inside grapes, or tea bags.

Saudi Arabia banned Lebanese produce last year after announcing it had stopped 600 million pills and hundreds of kilograms of hashish from Lebanon from entering the kingdom in the six years before.

The 10-year civil war in Syria created a fertile environment for Captagon production, which, the UN said, has become increasingly important to the illicit economy in the country.

Last month, Jordan's military said it reported a sharp rise in attempts to smuggle drugs worth millions into the country from Syria, particularly Captagon pills.

The Jordanian armed forces are confronting a drugs war on the [Syrian] border, Col Mustafa Hiyari, head of military media, told reporters.

In Africa's Sahel, armed groups associated with Al Qaeda and ISIS are exploiting the drug trade for gain, the UN report said.

The drug commonly trafficked there is cannabis, mainly produced in Morocco for consumption in Europe and the Middle East.

There is mounting evidence that the Sahel route is being used for cannabis resin trafficking, and the Security Councils Panel of Experts on Mali reports several instances in which large cannabis resin shipments transiting from Morocco to Libya have produced deadly clashes between groups in the region, potentially constituting ceasefire violations.

Daily cannabis use, especially among young adults with mental health issues, has become prevalent, the report said.

Cannabis legalisation in North America appears to have increased daily cannabis use, especially potent cannabis products and particularly among young adults.

The Captagon pills were hidden inside plastic lemons. Photo: Dubai Police

Associated increases in people with psychiatric disorders, suicides and hospitalisations have also been reported. Legalisation has also increased tax revenue and generally reduced arrest rates for cannabis possession.

Cocaine manufacture hit a record in 2020 up almost 11 per cent from the year before as gaps continue to appear in the availability of drug treatments for women, the report said.

Cocaine seizures also increased, despite the Covid-19 pandemic, to a record 1,424 tonnes in 2020, the UN found.

While North America and Europe are the main markets for the drug, more cocaine is being trafficked to Africa and Asia.

Updated: June 28, 2022, 2:13 PM

See the rest here:

Drug overdose deaths 'break records' in US and Canada - The National

The US war on drugs that started with the historic address to the nation by then President Richard Nixon on June 17,1971, continues unabated.

.there was a steep decline in illicit drug usage in the earlier years, but it has started picking up again and this time at an accelerated rate. According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, the number of illicit drug users rose to 13% among 12 years or older Americans in 2019, nearly reaching its peak from 40 years ago.

When a leader or a political party says that they will wipe out the drug menace from their territory in six weeks or three months, it sounds like a joke. Before their loaded utterances, they probably failed to look at the United States, one of the most powerful nations, that continues to fight the drug menace even after 51 years of its avowed crusade. The US war on drugs that started with the historic address to the nation by then President Richard Nixon on June 17,1971, continues unabated.

Even after 51 years, the challenge to eradicate various social, economic and health ills directly related to drugs and their abuse continue to haunt American society. All efforts, including promulgation of legislations from time to time, and huge spendings over the years, estimated to be over a trillion dollars, have failed to yield the desired results.

Recent studies show that use of drugs has been on the rise again. Though making comparisons are futile as various factors, including socio-economic issues, terrains and people at helm of affairs differ from place to place, yet the fight against drugs has remained on the forefront of various nations. The war on drugs has universal appeal.

Till date no one has succeeded in its war against drugs.

In the United States, the war on drugs was started from the White House, when Richard Nixon declared that the federal government would treat drug addiction as public enemy No. 1. His declaration was to vanquish substance use once and for all. In order to fight and defeat this enemy, Nixon had said, it is necessary to wage a new all-out offensive, he had announced.

Where does the US stand in its war against drugs?

Those who have been religiously following the war on drugs say that it has not paid off. Researchers, irrespective of their backgrounds or ideologies, at least agree to disagree that the war has failed to deliver.

The Drug Enforcement Administration has been vested with sweeping powers and even after working under multiple administrations, it still finds itself fighting a non-conclusive battle.

The Enforcement Administration has been enjoying an unprecedented level of authority that vests in it powers like mandatory sentencing and no-knock warrants. If Kassandra Frederique, Executive Director of the Drug Policy Alliance, a non-profit organization that is mandated to end the war on drugs, is to be believed, the drug war is a failed policy. Kassandra Frederique says, the things that they said would happen people would stop using drugs, communities would get back together, wed be safe, theyd get drugs off the street those things didnt happen. Agreed, there was a steep decline in illicit drug usage in the earlier years, but it has started picking up again and this time at an accelerated rate. According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, the number of illicit drug users rose to 13% among 12 years or older Americans in 2019, nearly reaching its peak from 40 years ago. Vanda Felbab-Brown, Senior Fellow at the Center for Security, Strategy and Technology at Brookings Institution, says We are still in the midst of the most devastating drug epidemic in U.S. history. There were more than 90,000 deaths in the United State due to overdose of drugs that was far more than 70.630 drug overdose deaths in 2019, a report by Commonwealth Fund said.

Ten years after the war on drugs was initiated, the budget was a billion. It touched $ 34.6 billion in 2020. The increase in budgetary allocation comes to more than 1000% in less than 40 years, say social scientists and researchers questioning the wisdom of increased funding without palpable results.

According to the White House, the national drug control budget has already hit a new level of $ 41 billion with its major chunk going for drug treatment and drug prevention

The Administration has been trying different initiatives. Take mass incarceration for example which has been leaving a heavy burden on both the federal and state governments budgets. The Prison Policy Initiative, a think tank and criminal justice advocacy group, found that 1 in 5 currently incarcerated people in the U.S. are locked up for a drug offense. The same research estimates that it costs an average of about $ 37,500 per annum to house an inmate in federal correctional facilities and that mass incarceration costs the U.S. at least $ 182 billion annually

States found their budgets enormously strapped by having to put funds toward correctional facilities that grew into enormous complexes, explained Felbab-Brown. One unfortunate way that states dealt with it was privatizing correction, something thats a specific feature to the United States. That has been a very problematic and fraught policy, partially driven by the tendency to arrest nonviolent drug offenders.

There is a racial angle to the issue also as there is a massive racial disparity that comes with drug incarcerations.

The Drug Policy Alliance says that nearly 80% of those detained in federal prisons and almost 60 % in state prisons for drug related offences are Black or Latino. Three years ago, when the Black or Latino population was 13.4 % of the countrys total population, the FBI reported that one in four of the drug-related arrests were of Black American adults. Needless to reiterate that Americans attitude toward drugs is changing. New York has become the 15th State to legalize marijuana for recreational use. Oregon, in February, became the first state to decriminalize the possession of any small amounts of drugs.

Paul Larkin, a senior legal research fellow at The Heritage Foundation, a conservative policy think tank, sounds cautious in saying Just as we dont abandon our efforts to prevent violent crime because murders, rapes, and robberies are still committed, we should not abandon our efforts to protect our neighbors and their children from the harms illicit drug use causes. We should pursue our goal with every tool we have, such as education, interdiction, law enforcement and treatment.

The United States may have in its 51-year-long war reversed some of the harshest impacts of the drugs, yet its fight against forbidden substances continues unabated.

(Prabhjot Singh is a veteran journalist with over three decades of experience covering a wide spectrum of subjects and stories. He has covered Punjab and Sikh affairs for more than three decades besides covering seven Olympics and several major sporting events and hosting TV shows. For more in-depth analysis please visit probingeye.com or follow him on Twitter.com/probingeye. He can be reached at [emailprotected])

See the article here:

Should the U.S. end the war on drugs? - The Indian Panorama

'What happened to the clamor against Sara Duterte and her fathers war on drugs that has claimed upwards of 30,000 lives a count that surpasses that of Ferdinand Marcos?'

Its been a month since the 2022 national elections, and at this point, the Philippines is set to have Bongbong Marcos sit as president come July 2022. Despite leading the pre-electoral surveys and subsequently winning the presidency by a landslide, many Filipino citizens clamored against Bongbongs presidency because of his unwillingness to acknowledge any wrongdoings of his family during the Martial Law era. In short, the fact that accountability remained elusive for the Marcoses and Bongbongs run for presidency shows that they would continue to be protected from any form of justice.

Leading up to elections and shortly after, we felt the protest of a Filipino collective against the Marcoses. We saw it all over social media and the news; we heard it in interpersonal conversations and possibly even engaged in such talk:

We cannot allow Bongbong Marcos to sit as president after his fathers regime killed, tortured, and imprisoned tens of thousands of students, activists, civil leaders, and oppositional politicians.

Corruption aside, which is another major issue with the Marcoses, the talk surrounding the Martial Law victims was the major counter-discourse against legitimizing Bongbong as our highest-elected government official.

Personally, I agree with all of these sentiments. I do believe that given the Marcos family history of corruption and human rights violations, having Bongbong sit as president is frightening. In a way, his winning implies a legitimization of historical revisionism and an absolving of their past crimes. In fact, he even stated that one of his major goals as president would be to clear his familys name, which in turn would create an alternative and falsified history of our country. Due to this, continuing to engage in this type of counter-discourse is important so that the atrocities done in Marcos name are not forgotten.

However, a majority of those that oppose the Marcoses seem to have hyper-focused on Bongbongs presidential run and let Sarah Dutertes run for vice president slide. The pair of candidates have an eerie similarity between them they are both children of strongmen presidents with a record of tens of thousands of human rights violations. The collective protest against Bongbongs presidency was strong and anchored on the familys history of corruption and human rights violations, but what happened to the clamor against Sara Duterte and her fathers war on drugs that has claimed upwards of 30,000 lives a count that surpasses that of Ferdinand Marcos?

Prior to the spread of fake news about Martial Law, those victimized by Ferdinand Marcos regime had been positioned as upstanding members of society by the Filipino public. As much as Marcos had used red-tagging as a way of labeling these people as threats to public safety, the Filipino collective was aware that these people were not what these labels were saying. In fact, many of these victims included political opponents, student activists, journalists, religious workers, farmers, and civil leaders. The demographics of these victims made it clear to the Filipino public (and subsequent generations) that Marcos was targeting those who spoke out against him. According to Amnesty International, historians believe that Marcos regime was marked by 3,000+ extrajudicial killings, 35,000+ tortures, 70+ disappearances, and 70,000+ imprisonments. Because majority of the victims of Martial Law were ordinary members of society, it appears that the people remembered, for a time, the bloody regime of Ferdinand Marcos.

As for Rodrigo Dutertes war on drugs, from the very beginning, he was clear about his directives: Shoot to kill. During his campaign, Duterte publicly stated that he would go on a killing spree against those involved in the business of drugs. By doing this from the start, he was able to garner the consent of the public to carry out the war against drug users and drug lords, a population of Filipino citizens that was already positioned as a menace to society. He didnt need to hide his intent to go to war against these people; he did so loudly and proudly because his public statements legitimized his extrajudicial killings given that his wars victims were those involved in drugs people that society had already turned its back against.

The result? 30,000+ deaths of fellow Filipino citizens, many of whom were poor and small fries in the drug industry, or wrongfully accused for the sake of bolstering drug operations numbers no major dent in the actual system of drugs in the country.

I am in no way blaming the Filipino people for forgetting what had happened in the past six years, but am instead trying to show how the way that collectives and leaders talk about phenomena and the people within them, such as Martial Law, the war on drugs, and their victims, can change the way that things are remembered in history.

As Bongbongs presidency comes closer, human rights groups have urged Bongbong to stop the war on drugs, but Rodrigo Duterte himself requested Bongbong to continue the fight against drugs in his own way. Given the history of Bongbongs and Saras fathers with human rights violations, it is important that we continue to clamor against the possibility of continuing these anti-drug operations set forth by Rodrigo Duterte. As much as the talk about the victims of Martial Law is imperative to fight against the trend of alternative history and fake news, it is just as important that we, as a people, also never forget the blood spilled by Dutertes regime by continuing to engage in talk and protest against the killing of fellow Filipinos. Rappler.com

JR Ilagan is a licensed psychologist that does both psychotherapy and psychological assessment in GrayMatters Psychological & Consultancy, Inc.At the moment, he is finishing up his dissertation for his PhD in Ateneo de Manila, which focuses on disrupting the narrative consent of Dutertes war on drugs through art. He is currently a part-time faculty in the same institution, as well. Most of his recent research focuses on the public discourse of government, citizens, and collectives in line with societal, cultural, and mental health issues.

Follow this link:

[OPINION] What happened to the discourse on the drug war during the elections? - Rappler

The last known experiment at a Department of Veterans Affairs clinic with psychedelic-assisted therapy started in 1963. That was the year President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Surfin U.S.A. topped the music charts, and American troops had not yet deployed to Vietnam.

At the time, the federal government was a hotbed of psychedelics research. The C.I.A. explored using LSD as a mind-control tool against adversaries. The U.S. Army tested the drugs potential to incapacitate enemies on the battlefield. And the V.A. used it in an experimental study to treat alcoholism.

But booming recreational use of drugs, including hallucinogens, sparked a fierce political backlash and helped set in motion the war on drugs, which, among other things, ended an era of research into the therapeutic potential of psychedelics.

Nearly six decades later, a handful of clinicians have brought back psychedelic therapy within the Veterans Affairs health care system. If their studies show promising results, they could mark a major step in the quest to both legalize and legitimize psychedelics and make them broadly available for clinical use.

I spoke to four of the government researchers leading studies into the use of MDMA, often called Ecstasy, and psilocybin, to treat mental illnesses that have been resistant to current therapies for many veterans. The researchers addressed their motivations, misgivings and hope for the future of medicinal psychedelics.

Dr. Shannon Remick, 34, has the military in her blood having been raised by an Army mother, a Marine father and a Navy stepfather. That familiarity with the armed forces is part of what drove her to become a psychiatrist at the V.A., where she found that a significant number of combat veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder were not responding to conventional treatments.

Last October she likely became the first clinician since the 1960s to administer psychedelics as medicine to a patient at a V.A. clinic. The 10 patients in her study at the Veterans Affairs clinic in Loma Linda, Calif., are combat veterans with PTSD who volunteered to undergo three sessions with MDMA in hopes of exploring the underlying roots of their distress.

Dr. Remick said its crucial to build rapport and trust with patients during conventional therapy sessions ahead of the MDMA trips. Before a patient takes the pill, she sets a calming mood by doing a breathing exercise, reading a poem or having a veteran hold a personally meaningful object. The MDMA sessions themselves, she said, are often self-directed, with the therapist doing more listening than talking.

The goal is to put patients in a state where they can examine and reflect on traumatic memories with less fear and aversion than they normally experience. She compared the process of making sense of painful moments of the past to sorting through an archaeological dig, a delicate process of discovery and understanding.

We are alongside and with the patient as they are exploring a kind of excavation site, she said. Ultimately, its not for us to point and say, Hey, look at that, because what Im seeing may not be the same from their angle.

Approaching 60 a couple of years ago, Dr. Rachel Yehuda began contemplating retirement. She had been a prolific researcher and clinician for more than three decades studying, among other things, how intergenerational trauma affects the children of Holocaust survivors.

I was proud of our work, but it wasnt leading to practical solutions for treating trauma survivors, said Dr. Yehuda, a professor of psychiatry and neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and the director of mental health at the V.A. clinic in the Bronx.

But in the past few years, Dr. Yehuda, now 62, became fascinated by the renaissance of psychedelic-assisted therapy and put off retirement. In early 2020 she began seeking permission to treat veterans suffering from PTSD with MDMA.

Her study, which began in January and will include about 60 participants, will look at whether three sessions of MDMA are more effective than two at reducing PTSD symptoms.

Dr. Yehuda said MDMA trips can be powerful catalysts for healing. She underwent one in 2019 as part of a training for therapists an experience she called revelatory.

It made me really understand what it is youre supposed to be doing in psychotherapy, she said. Ive never quite understood what it means to have a breakthrough.

But she cautioned that researchers still have a lot to learn about the types of patients who will benefit from this treatment, the role therapists ought to play and the potential perils.

The process of opening up has to be done with the right therapists, she said.

Over her 23 years treating veterans and studying the strengths and shortcomings of conventional PTSD therapy, Dr. Leslie Morland recognized that standard treatments often failed to address the challenges veterans face at work and at home.

Her pursuit to find more holistic interventions led her to develop a study examining whether MDMA can make couples therapy more effective.

A lot of our military learn to emotionally disconnect in order to be effective in combat, Dr. Morland, 52, said. And then were bringing them back and saying: Now we need you to open up with our talk therapy.

People with PTSD often struggle to connect with intimate partners. Veterans who see improvements in symptoms often experience setbacks when they return to dysfunctional home environments, Dr. Morland, said. According to the V.A., veterans with PTSD have historically struggled with intimacy and have more marital and parenting problems than veterans without the disorder.

While no one has formally studied the use of MDMA with veterans and their partners, clinical studies with civilians have shown that the drug can alter the dynamics of a relationship, Dr. Morland said.

It allows for increased bonding and increased empathy, she said.

In a clinical study she expects to launch toward the end of the year, Dr. Morland intends to recruit eight veterans in San Diego who have strained marriages and guide them through two sessions with MDMA that will be bracketed by talk therapy. The goal is to give couples the tools they need to understand and meaningfully address the causes of discord.

How do they work together to really sustain the improvements that have been achieved in therapy? she said.

Between 2010 and 2019, drug overdose mortality rates among veterans rose by 53 percent, killing more than 42,000. Deaths from psychostimulants, including methamphetamine, were particularly high, rising by 669 percent.

Reliable treatment options are scarce, which has kept the rate of relapse high.

These high mortality and relapse numbers motivated Dr. Christopher Stauffer, 41, to treat veterans addicted to methamphetamine with psilocybin at a V.A. residential program in Portland, Ore. The study will start recruiting participants in the near future.

Psilocybin the psychoactive ingredient in magic mushrooms has shown significant promise as an experimental treatment for substance abuse.

Dr. Stauffer said his research and clinical practice with civilians has shown him that patients often gain a new understanding of the impulses that are driving their addiction during a psilocybin session. One patient from a previous study compared addiction to feeling trapped in a dense jungle.

The psilocybin was like a machete, Dr. Stauffer said. They were able to kind of carve a path to connecting with the people around them who were important relationships.

Dr. Stauffers upcoming psilocybin study will compare the outcomes of 30 veterans addicted to methamphetamine who have been admitted to a residential rehab program. Half will receive a combination of conventional therapy and two psilocybin sessions while the other half will just have conventional therapy.

In a second study, Dr. Stauffer will test whether MDMA can enhance group therapy for veterans with PTSD by making participants more emotionally open and supportive of each other.

Group dynamics can be potentially really healing in a way that one-on-one therapy cant, he said.

Dr. Stauffer said this new era of psychedelic research feels at once retro and cutting edge.

Its brand-new to a lot of people and yet its been around longer than most of our psychiatric medications have been around, he said. But it feels like were approaching it this time with a lot more knowledge and a lot of more rigorous research practices that didnt really exist back in the 50s and 60s.

See the rest here:

The Researchers Who Are Resurrecting Psychedelic Therapy for Veterans - The New York Times

MANILA, Philippines There is no denying that the rhetoric of President Rodrigo Duterte is one that promoted violence.

Over the past six years, kill and other related words were a staple in his public speeches. And, more often than not, these violent rhetoric did not just stay as words but had become policies that targeted many sectors in society, most especially the most vulnerable.

Its not that Duterte himself did the killings, but his policies made a culture of impunity the norm in the Philippines.

Philippine Human Rights Information Center (PhilRights) executive director Nymia Pimentel-Simbulan said that Dutertes legacy would be the institutionalization of state violence in the country, adding that he has done this not just in his war on drugs but also in other aspects of governance.

As Duterte steps down from office, Rappler takes a look at the number of lives lost in different sectors during his administration.

Duterte waged a war against illegal drugs in the Philippines. But at the end of his six-year term, there is still no strong indication that he really ended or even just dented this problem. He succeeded, however, at smudging roads and alleys across the country red with blood. His drug war campaign targeted the poorest communities, killing alleged drug personalities without them seeing a day in court.

Government data shows that at least 6,252 people were killed in police anti-drug operations from July 1, 2016, to May 31, 2022. This number does not include those killed by unidentified perpetrators also called victims of vigilante-style killings whom human rights groups estimate to be between 27,000 and 30,000.

Rappler, in September 2020, obtained government data showing that at least 7,884 drug suspects had been killed by the police since Duterte assumed office in 2016 until August 31, 2020.

Justice remains elusive for thousands of families left behind by victims, as only one case has led to a conviction so far the killing of17-year-old Kian delos Santosin 2017. Their families continue to face challenges in terms of getting the right documents from police to help their cases. Many also choose not to pursue legal actions, fearing for their safety under a climate of impunity.

Even the Commission of Human Rights, mandated by the 1987 Philippine Constitution to investigate state abuses, was consistently hindered by the Duterte government from doing its job. In a report released in May, the commission said its probes were hampered by the predilection and uncooperativeness of government agencies involved in the war on drugs.

Because of the dire situation regarding domestic mechanisms, families and human rights groups are banking on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to help provide justice for the victims. The ICCs Office of the Prosecutor began itsformal investigationinto drug war killings in September 2021, but has sincetemporarily paused the probeas a matter of procedure. It has, however, asked the Duterte government to prove that it wasgenuinely investigatingthe killings.

Read Rapplers coverage of the war on drugs:

The concept of human rights was heavily demonized under the Duterte administration. Dissent seemed to not have space anymore as those who dared oppose or even just call out problematic policies faced the wrath of the President himself, his allies, and the massive online propaganda network aligned with the state.

The National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) and its supporters, enjoying massive state resources, consistently red-tagged individuals and groups as it continued to blur the lines between activists and actual communist rebels.

Activists and human rights defenders were attacked both online and on the ground. Tarpaulins bearing their photos and accusing them of recruiting the youth to join the communist insurgency became a common sight across the Philippines. On social media, Facebook pages linked to police and other state agents published disinformation targeting those who dissented.

The threats and harassment hardly stay as words. As of December 2021, rights group Karapatan had documented 427 incidents of killings since July 2016. There were also least 537 recorded cases of frustrated killings.

Meanwhile, at least 1,161 activists have been arrested and detained over the past six years.

Activists, human rights defenders, and grassroot organizers definitely bore the brunt of the Duterte administrations war on dissent. And with the anti-terror law in effect, they now continue to face a dangerous future.

Read Rapplers coverage of the fight of activists and human rights defenders under Duterte:

The Philippines is one of the most mega-biodiverse countries in the world, but it has its share of challenges.

Not much has changed six years after President Duterte came into power, despite him initially promising to protect the environment. In fact, it has become more dangerous for environmental defenders as they continue to fight development projects that threaten the countrys rich biodiversity.

In 2021, for the eighth straight year, environmental monitor Global Witness named the Philippines as the deadliest country for land and environmental defenders in Asia. The country ranked third globally, just below Colombia and Mexico.

At least 166 killings of land and environmental defenders were recorded in the Philippines from 2016 to 2020, according to Global Witness. This sector is vulnerable to attacks because of lack of resources, powers, and support.

Read Rapplers coverage of the environment and the challenges faced by defenders:

Duterte did little to nothing to show he valued press freedom.

The Philippines ranked 138th out of 180 nations in the World Press Freedom Index for 2021, citing the Duterte governments continued attacks against the media. The President himself was named by the Reporters Without Borders as one of the worlds press freedom predators.

Journalists and media outlets were also red-tagged by the NTF-ELCAC, while also on the receiving end of threats and harassment online.

But, in many cases, these online attacks did not stay as empty threats.

At least 23 journalists and media workers were killed under Duterte, based on a tally by the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines. There were also at least 32 recorded incidents of media workers red-tagged or accused of having communist links.

Aside from the killings and red-tagging, journalists and media workers were at the risk of losing their livelihood in the face of continued threats and harassment under Duterte. Many lost their jobs as the Duterte administration rejected a new franchise for ABS-CBN, forcing the largest broadcasting network in the Philippines to shut down.

Read Rapplers coverage of pressing media issues in 2021:

Lawyers and other members of the judiciary were not spared from the culture of impunity and violence that permeated daily life in the Philippines under Duterte. The hostility they often faced as part of their work translated into physical threats that took so many lives in the past six years.

At least 66 lawyers, prosecutors, and judges were killed from July 2016 to June 21, 2022. At least 14 of the total killed were former or current prosecutors, while nine were retired or former judges or justices.

The total death toll is collated by Rappler based on monitoring by various sources, including the Supreme Court, the Department of Justice, the National Union of Peoples Lawyers, and the Free Legal Assistance Group. Their tally differ since there are victims excluded in the counting of some groups as preliminary investigation showed their deaths were allegedly not work-related.

Still, the total number of people who were part of the legal profession killed during the Duterte administration surpassed the numbers of victims under previous presidents. In fact, 49 lawyers killed from the administration of the dictator Ferdinand Marcos to Benigno Aquino III, spanning 44 years, compared to 66 during Dutertes six years.

The heightened violence has prompted urgent calls from legal groups including the Integrated Bar of the Philippines for a nationwide effort to protect our lawyers and judges. The Supreme Court in March 2021 released a statement, condemning the killings, and vowed to push for institutional changes.

Read Rapplers coverage of attacks against lawyers and members of the judiciary in 2021:

Violence consistently permeated the Philippines, as reflected also in the high number of local chief executives killed since Duterte took office in 2016.

Based on monitoring by Rappler, at least 18 mayors and 10 vice mayors have been slain since July 2016.

It can be remembered that local government officials were also targeted by Dutertes war on drugs. During the first few months of his administration, the President publicly accused several mayors of being involved in the illegal drug trade. In January 2017, he threatened them to either resign or face death.

Aside from vice mayors and mayors, several other local government officials were also slain in the past six years. In December 2018, families of slain politicians in Pangasinan published an open letter to Duterte, urging him to help bring justice to their loved ones.

Read Rapplers coverage of attacks against local officials:

with reports from Jairo Bolledo, Lian Buan, and Jee Geronimo / Rappler.com

See the original post here:

Six years of blood and violence: People we lost under Duterte - Rappler

FORMER Presidential Anti-Corruption Commission (PACC) chairman Greco Antonious Belgica said he is ready to help President-elect Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. in his administration's fight against the illegal drugs and corruption in the country.

Belgica, who is pushing for the reimposition of the death penalty for heinous crimes, said he has already been in talks with the incoming administration.

Marcos, who is set to assume the presidency on June 30, earlier vowed to continue the drug war and sought to go after the big-time drug dealers.

The incoming president even offered a Cabinet post to President Rodrigo Duterte as a drug czar.

Marcos said he and Duterte have met more than once, with at least one of those meetings happening before the May 9 elections.

Get the latest news delivered to your inbox

Sign up for The Manila Times daily newsletters

"One thing that he was very assertive about was 'continue the anti-drug syndicate that I started. Do it your own way.' He (Duterte) really said that," Marcos said.

But Duterte, the father of Marcos' running mate Vice President-elect Sara Duterte-Carpio, has declined the offer.

Duterte won the 2016 presidential race due to his hardline stance against illegal drugs and criminality.

Meanwhile, Belgica reiterated his warning that there may be a resurgence in drugs in the country now that Duterte's term is ending.

He claimed that there are still government officials and law enforcers who are involved in the illegal drug trade.

"Drugs and crime are still proliferating on the streets. This is the biggest obstacle to our development. The fight started by PRRD (President Duterte) must be continued and strengthened, because if not, the people, our families, and the youth will suffer," Belgica said.

The former PACC official also cited the need to support the Philippine National Police and the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency to boost the government's fight against drugs and corruption.

"The Office of the President must be involved in this task and the full trust and confidence of the President is needed for it to succeed," Belgica added.

As PACC chairman, Belgica oversaw the dismissal of around 800 erring government workers and the imprisonment of 24 government officials.

Around 154 cases were filed against high-ranking corrupt government workers before the Office of the Ombudsman and the Department of Justice by the PACC.

The agency also acted upon around 13,000 cases and complaints regarding graft and corruption in the government.

See the rest here:

Belgica vows to help BBM in drug, corruption war - The Manila Times