Category Archives: War On Drugs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Photograph of a cannabis cultivation facility by Alexander Lekhtman

Excerpt from:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The War on Drugs finally made it home.

It almost didnt happen. Plans for the Fishtown-founded band to play two nights at the Met Philadelphia starting Thursday were in peril this week after a member of the bands touring party tested positive for COVID-19.

Tour dates in Nashville and Atlanta were postponed, and it seemed like Philly fans were going to be denied the long-awaited return of the ever-more-majestic rock band whose last hometown shows came at the close of 2019, before the world turned upside down.

But there the Drugs were, on stage of the sold-out Met on Thursday. Fronted by Adam Granduciel, the band now stands seven strong with the addition of their newest member, West Philly multi-instrumentalist Eliza Hardy Jones.

So happy to be here, Granduciel said at the start, before launching into Old Skin, from 2021s terrific I Dont Live Here Anymore. Its a song about shedding former selves and moving on toward an uncertain future. He then added: We wouldnt miss this one for the world.

The War On Drugs are a Philadelphia band whose members reside all the the country Granduciel is based in Los Angeles and whose music now belongs to the world. Since the Drugs first show at Johnny Brendas in 2006, Granduciel has mastered a meticulous sound that draws on classic rock songwriters Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen, 1980s hitmakers such as Dire Straits and Don Henley and crucially German motorik bands like Kraftwerk and Neu!

The influences are vintage, but Granduciels songs about dislocation, anxiety, and search for meaning feel contemporary. And the Drugs enveloping sound is y their own. Its brought the band acclaim 2017s A Deeper Understanding won a Grammy for best rock album and a global audience with a wide age range.

READ MORE: Adam Granduciel of The War on Drugs on the bands new album, fatherhood, and Philly as a memory of home

At the Met, the mostly masked crowd required to show proof of vaccination or a negative COVID-19 test tended to be younger in the standing room pit, with more oldsters in the seated sections of the 3,400-capacity opera house. After Friday nights also sold-out show, the band is headed to New York to headline Madison Square Garden on Saturday.

In their recordings, the Drugs sound grows out of Granduciels work habits as a studio obsessive. He writes the music and lyrics, plays multiple instruments, and sings in a reedy voice that can bring Dylan strongly to mind, as it did at the Met on highlights like A Deeper Understandings Strangest Thing and IDLHAs Occasional Rain.

But what was thrilling about Thursdays show is how it demonstrated the Drugs growth as a band that may be expressing the singular point of view of an auteur, but has became staggeringly good at bringing a layered, precisely detailed sound vividly to life. (Smartly designed lighting, bathing the stage in red, purple, and black-and-white, added to the effect.)

On Thursday, the septet found its groove early in the career-spanning set, locking in by the third song, An Ocean Between the Waves from Lost in the Dream, the 2014 album on which Granduciels vision first came into high-definition focus.

The Drugs are characterized as a guitar band, and Granduciel did play his share of epic leads, usually bringing a song to its final crescendo. But what really distinguished the bands steady building, locomotive sound on Thursday were the textured layers of keyboards, adding to a rhythmic bed established by drummer Charlie Hall and the undulating bass lines played by Dave Hartley.

Grandicuel stood front and center singing and playing guitar making his instrument sound like some sort of Buck Rogers retro-futurist ray gun on Victim. Most of the other bandmates could be found at a keyboard at one time or another, and sometimes all at once.

That includes Robbie Bennett, whose elegant, repeated keyboard line powered Harmonias Dream, perhaps the evenings most gorgeous song. When not switching to keys, Jon Natchez plays a honking saxophone.

Anthony LaMarca is the bands second guitarist and pianist. Hardy Jones proved to be an invaluable addition, mixing keyboard duties with guitar and adding vocal grace to Living Proof and extra punch to IDLHAs careening title track.

It might stand to reason that with all those people on stage that The War on Drugs sound would grow cluttered and busy. Whats remarkable is that the opposite was true. The constituent parts rarely called attention to the themselves.

Each player contributed to a cohesive whole, taking the listener on a ride that typically began with a contemplative intro before building to a jet engine roar that was most impressive on Thursday on Red Eyes and Under the Pressure, two tracks from Lost in the Dream.

The sense of relief that the band were able to pull off a hometown show after two years off the road was palpable. Granduciel introduced the band members by first name only, as if everyone was among friends.

He noted that the tour is forgoing opening acts to minimize interactions that might increase COVID-19 risk, then noted that his father was seen walking around on stage before the show. Hes our opening act.

The 15-song set, which began at 8:30 p.m., was one song shorter than the previous shows on the tour, which began in Texas last week. Before closing with the hopeful Byrds-like folk rocker Occasional Rain, Granduciel said he had been sick, so were gonna take it easy tonight. Were going to do it again and give you some more tomorrow. On Friday afternoon, the band tweeted that they would be starting the second show promptly at 8 p.m., and urged fans to arrive early due to the inclement weather.

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Review: The War on Drugs, triumphant in the first of two hometown shows at The Met - The Philadelphia Inquirer

Letters submitted by BDN readers are verified by BDN Opinion Page staff. Send your letters toletters@bangordailynews.com.

A recent BDN articlewas headlined: Doctors dispute police warning that touching fentanyl can be deadly.

Indeed, anyone whos life touches fentanyl on the black market may find death. The police arent wrong, nor are the doctors. There are different ways to interpret the term touching.

Anyone who gets involved with fentanyl is gambling with the probability that their life will be ruined and then they will die. This drug is that powerful.

Fentanyl is showing up in other counterfeit drugslike valium, Xanax and cocaine. Fentanyl can be found in illegal tobacco products and black-market cannabis. Cannabis or tobacco laced with fentanylis very dangerous as it reaches a broader marketplace, a larger segment of the population, it may even enter the illegal vaping market, there are so many opportunities for intrusion.

I am compelled to write this warning as the adult child of another friend has lost their life due to using fentanyl without being aware of it.

The 50-year drug warhas escalated at warp speed due to the power of fentanyl. The war must come to an end before everyone has a family member as a casualty in the failed American drug war. The American drug war is being used by American adversaries to destroy our country from within, that is apparent.

Doing the same thing over and over with the expectation of a different outcome is the definition of insanity. End the drug war for the good of the country and its people. War is not the answer.

Patrick Quinn

Winterport

More articles from the BDN

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Letter: End the war on drugs - Bangor Daily News

By Express News Service

HYDERABAD:Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao on Friday said that the State government is planning to revive the Telangana Organised Crime Act to curb the use of drugs, ganja and illicit liquor in the State and directed DGP M Mahender Reddy to chalk out a plan to revive the Act.

During a meeting he had with Police and Excise officials to discuss ways to tackle the issue of drugs in the State, the Chief Minister also instructed the police officials to register Preventive Detention cases against habitual drug peddlers, besides establishing a counterintelligence cell to completely eradicate the menace.Rao also announced that the government would give awards, rewards and promotions to police personnel who successfully tackle the drugs problem in the State.

During the meeting, Rao also stressed the need curb the use of ganja, cocaine and LCD, which he said were still in a nascent stage in the State. If you do not nip it in the bud, the use of drugs may increase, which will ultimately damage the development taking place in the State, he said.

Asking officials to adopt innovative methods to curb drug peddling, Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao said Controlling use of drugs should be considered a social responsibility.

"Set up a counterintelligence cell with 1,000 police and excise personnel. The government will provide funds for the cell. Dont spare anyone in controlling the drug menace. Dont entertain any recommendations from any politician while dealing with drug cases, he added.

The Chief Minister also directed the officials to adopt a two-pronged strategy in controlling the drugs and ganja use in the State. First, identify the drug addicts and send them to de-addiction centres, with the help of their family members. Secondly, crush the drug supply network. Use modern weapons and completely eradicate the drug mafia, he said.

Rao also suggested that police officials follow the steps taken by the Scotland Yard police in curbing the drug mafia. If necessary visit Scotland and other countries, where drugs menace was successfully controlled, and study their methods, he told the officials.Asking the State police officials to get training from Punjab police, he said: Whatever you want you do it to curb the drug menace, the government will fully support you.

If ganja is found more than five times in any village, then all the government subsidies would be cancelled to that village. Special funds and incentives would be given to drug-free villages. It is the responsibility of the villagers to see that ganja and drugs were not used in their villages, the CM said.Rao said that if any farmer is found to be cultivating ganja, the government would cancel Rythu Bandhu and other subsidies to him. Bring necessary Acts in this direction, Rao directed Chief Secretary Somesh Kumar.

He also suggested conducting counselling sessions for students. The forensic science lab too should be modernised. Some factories, which were shut down, are being turned into hucca centres and the officials should keep a tab on them, Rao added.

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War on drugs: KCR wants to revive Organised Crime Act - The New Indian Express

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Photo: Atlantic Records

The War on Drugs

The War on Drugs frontman Adam Granduciel must have a thing for 1980s-era Bruce Springsteen. The bands fifth LP I Dont Live Here Anymore, effectively melds the grandiose Heartland Rock of Born in the U.S.A. with the melancholic introspection of Tunnel of Love, yielding the Philly-bred sextets most accessible record yet.

Of course, Granduciel, who relocated to Los Angeles a few years back, has long revelled in the sounds of dreamy, 80s-lacquered Psych Pop. Burning, from the bands breakthrough third record, 2014s Lost in the Dream, recalls an unlikely mix of The Cure and Tom Petty doing a cover of Rod Stewarts Young Turks. 2017s A Deeper Understanding moved into a jammier, more cinematic realm clocking in at 66 minutes, its awash in atmospheric synths, propulsive rhythms and Granduciels trademark searching guitar lines and modest, Dylan-esque vocals.

On the early albums, I definitely wasnt confident as a writer or a singer, Granduciel said in a conversation with Interview Magazine last November.

I saw vocals as an accompaniment to the music I was making with my friends. I just wanted to have fun and make art. This is our fifth record, and Im by no means a master of the craft writing songs and producing music still doesnt come easy but theres more to sing about. Theres actually something to feel, that I can attempt to translate into music. I dont think I went into this record focused on that, but I think thats what drew me to the songs that I ended up choosing.

The War on Drugs plays PromoWest Pavilion at OVATION (101 W. Fourth St., Newport) on Sunday, Feb. 6. Doors open at 7 p.m.

All attendees must show proof of either full vaccination against COVID-19 or a negative COVID test taken within the previous 72 hours.

Tickets and more info: promowestlive.com.

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The War on Drugs Bring 80s-lacquered Psych Pop to PromoWest Pavilion at OVATION - Cincinnati CityBeat

Opinions expressed are solely those of the author and do not reflect the views of Rolling Stone editors or publishers.

In my experience as a drug policy reform advocate and cannabis community member, Ive witnessed time and time again an outdated ethos reign forth: cannabis exceptionalism, or the idea that cannabis is the supreme drug of choice.

Students for Sensible Drug Policy characterizes cannabis exceptionalism as a certain attitude common among some cannabis users including many within the drug policy reform movement that cannabis is inherently and categorically different from other types of drugs.

This dogma justifies the criminalization, prohibition and stigmatization of other drugs and claims cannabis is an unproblematic, all-natural medicine, while other drugs are considered purely recreational street concoctions without any therapeutic value.

This mentality is incorrect and inherently contradictory. Cannabis exceptionalism ultimately reverses social progress made toward ending the drug war. Read on to learn why I believe this mindset is harmful to the larger drug reform movement that is due credit for historically popularizing the push for cannabis legalization.

Cannabis exceptionalism creates a nonexistent delineation between good versus bad drugs. Drug addiction is a serious medical condition that should be further supported by federally funded treatment services. However, its important to remember that not everyone who uses drugs medically and/or recreationally develops an addiction.

The moralistic dichotomy of good and bad drugs suggests the legal status of drugs can and should be based on how harmful drugs can be. For instance, on the Drug Enforcement Agencys list of federally controlled substances, heroin retains Schedule I drug status due to its potential for addiction. Meanwhile, cannabis is also listed in the same category as heroin as a Schedule I drug. While consuming any drug (even prescription pharmaceuticals) involves inherent risk, the legality of drugs appears to me to be inconsistent.

The Rolling Stone Culture Council is an invitation-only community for Influencers, Innovators and Creatives. Do I qualify?

Cannabis exceptionalism falls back on drug-war logic because it keeps certain drugs criminalized, prohibited and stigmatized. However, I see this line of reasoning as faulty and easily fragile. In certain parts of the country, cannabis, psychedelics and other drugs are legalized on a state or municipal level. Meanwhile, alcohol and caffeine are two drugs that are federally legal and socially accepted for regular consumption, despite both having potential health hazards if consumed in excess.

Though the government justifies drug-war logic as a means to discourage drug use, this rarely if ever actually works. Take the failed D.A.R.E. (Drug Abstinence Resistance Education) program, a program borne out of the Just Say No campaign of the 80s. Twenty years ago, Rolling Stone reporter Jason Cohn disputed the programs legitimacy and wrote, despite all the scientific claims to the contrary, drug-prevention education at least the abstinence-based model that reigns in Americas schools is just as likely to have no effect or to make kids curious as it is to persuade them not to use drugs.

From my perspective, the dichotomy of good versus bad drugs hurts other adjacent drug reform movements (e.g., the push for safe consumption sites, medication-assisted treatment (MAT) for opioid use disorder and safe supply for stimulants). When we focus on cannabis reform exclusively, we dont leave enough room for discussion of other potential innovations, such as ketamine for post-traumatic stress (PTSD) treatment and cocaine for anesthesia. Plus, cannabis exceptionalism for the most part rejects all-drug decriminalization, which weve seen implemented in other countries like Portugal. As Time reported, all-drug decriminalization could hold a potential answer to the War on Drugs. Were even seeing this play out in Oregon where voters voted to decriminalize nearly all drugs but are still tackling implementation challenges.

Most importantly, cannabis exceptionalism usually ends up stigmatizing people: particularly street-based drug consumers, who are especially worthy of our support and solidarity. Due to state-based legalization, cannabis consumers are afforded new privileges street-based drug consumers are not. For example, cannabis use is no longer a punishable, jailable offense by law in many state-level jurisdictions while nearly all other drugs remain criminalized. As advocates of social justice and drug reform alike, I believe we have to extend the rights of cannabis consumers to other drug consumers who are routinely criminalized by drug-war-focused policing.

Steps toward ending the drug war as we know it are possible and within our reach. We have much to gain and very little to lose, because ultimately the drug war is harmful. The cannabis community should work to dispel cannabis exceptionalism to avoid perpetuating these harms.

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Why I Believe Cannabis Exceptionalism Hurts the Drug Reform Movement - Rolling Stone

Pablo Escobar was born in Medelln, Colombia, 1949. He was the founder and leader of the Medelln Cartel. Courtesy Colombian National Police

I was a child in Colombia when Pablo Escobar carried out terrorist attacks throughout my hometown, Bogot. I shopped a couple times at a mall where he blew up a car bomb and killed eight people.

Thirty years ago, I began to consider that the legalization of the cocaine business would be the best strategy to reduce bloodshed in my country. I have not changed my mind, but I think people should learn to distinguish between a war on drugs and a war on the mafia because the latter does not end with legalization alone.

Former U.S. President Richard Nixon officially declared a War on Drugs in June 1971. Since this policy took hold in the United States, the Colombian authorities have been fighting drug traffickers for the last 50 years. More than 262,000 people were killed in the Colombia conflict from 1958 to 2018. The main killers in this conflict have been criminal organizations that were initially motivated by political ideals and later became drug cartels.

It is rumored that mafias have been trying to get power over Colombia since 1974 when drug traffickers would have offered to pay the foreign debt. In 1982, Escobar had managed to get a seat in Congress, and he showed intentions to stay in politics to run for president.

Escobar posed as a philanthropist, as a rich man who loves to share his money with the poor. He was fooling everyone until 1983 when some publications of Guillermo Cano in the newspaper El Espectador and direct accusations from the Minister of Justice Rodrigo Lara Bonilla revealed that this rich man was a criminal.

After that, Escobar would leave his comfortable status as a politician to hide for the rest of his life, and he never stopped ordering murders. He paid assassins to kill Lara in 1984 and Cano in 1986.

In 2015, the administration of former Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos claimed that people could suffer cancer when using the pesticide Roundup, and later the Constitutional Court of this country banned the use of it over the coca leaf. Since then, cultivation of this plant has boomed, increasing the production of cocaine in Colombia. It happened during conversations about the peace agreement in Havana, Cuba, between Santos and Farc, a Colombian communist drug cartel. This prohibition seemed like a concession Santos made to Farc because it changed the way Colombian authorities fight against drug cartels.

Santos announced the end of the war in Colombia after signing the agreement with Farc in 2016. The Norwegian Nobel Committee spread this misconception worldwide, giving the Peace Nobel to Santos and announcing that he had brought one of the longest civil wars in modern history to a peaceful solution.

It was a huge lie. Colombians have seen several peace agreements between our government and rebel groups like M19 and Auc, but in the end we have never seen peace because the main driver for this bloodshed, far from a civil war, is the drug trafficking. Farc was the biggest group, but it was just one among many others that committed crimes throughout Colombia. Also there are thousands of Farc members who never put down their weapons, and are still among the main traffickers and killers in the country.

Since the Farc-Santos accord was signed in 2016, the variety of drug cartels that exist in Colombia quickly took over the business Farc left abandoned. Different from peace, the Havana accord brought more confrontation among cartels for the cocaine business. It also increased the migration of peasants who have always been in the middle of the conflict in my country, before and after the Farc-Santos peace agreement.

From 2016 to January 2021, 400 human-rights defenders or social leaders were killed, and counting. It is well-known that the drug traffickers were usually the murderers. The agreement that was meant to bring peace actually increased coca production, and criminals increased their presence all over the territory.

Some traffickers harassed social leaders before killing them because those leaders belong to the program of eradication and substitution of coca crop. In this context, it is obvious that drug cartels interfere in the election of mayors in many towns of the country.

I would not say that the money that the U.S. has provided to fight mafias in Colombia was a mistake. We need resources to fight against these criminal organizations. Those mafias are in many kinds of businesses aside from drug-dealing like kidnapping, extortion, cybercrime, land theft, robbery, human trafficking, smuggling, weapons deals and illegal extraction of minerals. The authorities must confront them in all those illegal activities.

Also, authorities should track how they launder money to get their dollars through the financial system. They need to identify the way mafias invest their money in industry and business. And of course we need to spend money on all this; we need to invest in our security.

If the power of these traffickers keep escalating, my country could become a narco-state totally ruled by criminals like happens in Venezuela where the socialist dictator Nicolas Maduro is one of the leaders of the mafia named Los Soles.

Many people have participated in drug trafficking in Colombia. Drug dealers have bribed or forced entrepreneurs, politicians, judges, and members of the security agencies to do money laundering and to commit a wide variety of crimes.

Criminal groups related to drug trafficking and political ideologies killed five presidential candidates between 1987 and 1995. In 1991 the mafia persuaded politicians to ban extradition in a new constitution. In 1994 the Cartel of Cali financed the campaign of the former president Ernesto Samper. In 2006, during the government of former President Alvaro Uribe, paramilitaries worked many times with corrupt members of security agencies to commit horrible crimes.

Now is the moment when the cocaine business looks stronger than ever thanks to the Farc-Santos accord. Farc leaders took advantage of the political need of Santos to get him reelected, procuring his agreement.

Even Mexican drug cartels went to Colombia to participate in the boom of the coca bush, while former leaders of the Farc went unpunished after ordering human crimes like murders, slavery, kidnapping, sexual crimes against minors, and practiced abortions to minors. After they signed the agreement. they just took up seats as lawmakers in Colombias Congress without paying for their crimes.

Mafias, the far right and communists have been trying to take power in Colombia, but fortunately my country has remained as the longest-running democracy in South America. Unlike Venezuela, Nicaragua or Cuba, every four years we freely elect our president. Unfortunately, Colombia is not a perfect democracy because as I said, it has some territories ruled by traffickers.

Now, many people consider the most likely next president, Gustavo Petro, as the biggest risk for our freedom in Colombia. He seems to have the same authoritarian profile other socialist leaders have in Latin America, and according to his economic proposals he is like those who have the tendency to kick off foreign investment and ruin the economies.

Petro belonged to the M-19, a communist guerrilla group, which received amnesty from the Colombian government in 1990. I watched the TV news when this criminal group invaded the Palace of Justice in Bogot and took hostages in 1985. Some people say that Escobar financed this assault to destroy some files about his crimes that were inside the building. In the middle of the confrontation between the military and M19, the courthouse burned down, leaving 94 dead including 11 court magistrates, some of the wisest people in Colombia.

For some people Petro is a messiah capable of ending corruption and poverty. But Petro has not given any credible explanation about a video where he appears receiving many bundles of bills, something that looks like money laundering, theft or bribery.

Petro also has demonstrated that he is a terrible leader. He was mayor of Bogot, and he ruined the public finances of the city. It looks like Petro is fooling his followers like Escobar did when he took a seat in the Congress in 1983. I wonder if Petro finally would be the best way mafias could take power in Colombia.

On Oct. 25, 2021, the White House announced its new strategy to treat the war against drugs with Colombia and said nothing about legalization of cocaine, or the use of Roundup. This herbicide was forbidden to be used on coca crops, despite it being allowed in many Colombian agricultural products. Maybe Americans are confused about this prohibition as long as it clearly benefits drug cartels, and as long as Roundup is being used as well in approximately 90% of American food.

While the debate about worldwide hard-drugs legalization comes to an end, a strategy to reduce the revenues of drug cartels in Colombia would be returning to spreading Roundup on coca cropsat least on those where criminal organizations sometimes kill human-rights defenders or social leaders who work in the program to manually eradicate the plant of coca.

I am concerned about what will happen in Colombia with the current cocaine boom in the hands of criminals who increasingly increase their power in the country by sending cocaine mainly to the U.S and Europe. What will become of the legacy of those who I used to see on the news get killed when I was a child because they were facing down drug killers and taking care of my freedom? They rejected the mafias bribes and sacrificed themselves fighting against them, using free speech about democracy as their weaponlike Guillermo Cano, Rodrigo Lara, the five presidential candidates and the 11 judges burned to death in 1985.

Allowing drug cartels to produce more cocaine as Santos did is not a good way to reduce the violence in Colombia. One real way is to allow businessmen or governments from around the world to enter the production of hard drugs to satisfy the demand of their countries, leaving the Colombian mafias out of that business. That is now happening to the Mexican mafias with marijuana since some states in the U.S. produce this weed.

Nixons War on Drugs could be lost as many say lately due to unstoppable demand. Worldwide legalization of hard drugs would not bring peace, but it would help to reduce violence. It would be the least worst option. However, authorities should keep fighting mafias.

Even if the legalization comes to pass, we need to keep fighting against these criminals in Colombia because they wont be willing to kindly leave the drug or their other businesses. Probably, the mafias will decide to cover their lost money by committing more of the other crimes such as kidnapping and extortion.

This MFP Voices essay does not necessarily represent the views of the Mississippi Free Press, its staff or board members. To submit an essay for the MFP Voices section, send up to 1,200 words and factcheck information to azia@mississippifreepress.org. We welcome a wide variety of viewpoints.

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Cocaine Legalization is the Least Worst Option for my Native Colombia - Mississippi Free Press