Category Archives: War On Drugs

Written by Adil Akhzer | Chandigarh | Published:July 16, 2017 3:44 am A few years ago, the use of buprenorphine was restricted to the de-addiction centres in the state. The government banned the sale of the medicine at the chemist shops after reports of its misuse by the drug addicts. (Representational Image)

Buprenorphine, an opioid used to treat the opioid addiction, which is currently restricted to government and private drug de-addiction centres in Punjab, is now being introduced by the state government on the outpatient department (OPD) basis to treat drug addicts.

The treatment model, named as Outpatient Opioid Assisted Treatment (OOAT), was suggested by a renowned American drug therapist and consultant Dr Kanwar Ajit Singh Sidhu. In the treatment plan, Buprenorphine dispensing will be done to Opioid dependent patients on daily basis. In the first phase, government is planning to start the programme in 22 rehabilitation centres and also few centres inside the jails.

Sidhu had given a presentation about his model before Chief Minister Amarinder Singh in May. The chief minister then formed a committee to prepare a comprehensive de-addiction and rehabilitation plan for victims of the drugs menace in the state.

A few years ago, the use of buprenorphine was restricted to the de-addiction centres in the state. The government banned the sale of the medicine at the chemist shops after reports of its misuse by the drug addicts.

A study conducted by All India Institute of Media Sciences and Delhis National Drug Dependence Treatment Centre to study Punjabs drug problem had said last year that there were probably 8.6 lakh opioid users and around 2.3 lakh people were opioid-dependent.

A drug addict, doctors say, has to visit the OAAT centre, register and then undergo urine-screening test for drugs along side clinical assessment. He will be checked to know that if an addict will be really an opioid dependent and then treatment would be started on the basis of diagnosis, said a doctor involved in the project. Dr Ranbir Singh Rana, in-charge of the governments Tarn Taran facility, and one of the doctors involved in the project, said a major and mandatory component of the model is intensive daily-based counselling and peer support.

Sources said the core staff of the OOAT centre would consist one medical officer, one counsellor, one nurse and a lab attendant. The training of the staff would be soon started by Department of Psychiatry, Medical College, Amritsar . We will provide the training in batch wise. This month, the first batch of 35 people will be trained, said Dr P D Garg, head of Department of Psychiatry who is one of the members constituted by the government for the OAAT model. There will be regular batches who will undergo training at the hospital.

In the run-up to Assembly elections held early this year, the Congress had promised to eliminate the drug problem within four weeks of its government in the state. There is, however, no major change in the drug de- addiction centres in the state. Now doctors say the new model is going to bring patients towards the health facilities. This (OAAT) is going to be very helpful for the he treatmentthe programme is planned in such a way that he would be counselled to leave the drugs, said Dr Garg.

Some doctors, however, fear that the sale of buprenorphine could get misused. The government had to restrict it a few years ago because of misuse. If it plans to start the use of buprenorphine so widely, there are more chances of misuse, said a psychiatrist working in a border district of the Punjab. Health officials, however, said strict monitoring at senior levels is being planned. A health department official said the government was also planning to register patients with the UID number and Aadhar card. We are in talks with a company that will provide a software to keep track of patientsbiometric system will be used for the process, said an official.

ADGP Harpreet Singh Sidhu, chief of the anti-drugs Special Task Force (STF), said the STF is working closely with the health department to start the programme sooner in the state. States Health Secretary Anjali Bhawra refused to provide any details about the project. Whenever we start the project, it will be shared with media, Bhawra said.

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Punjab War on drugs: Govt plans to introduce opioid Buprenorphine ... - The Indian Express

Those years spent guarding prisoners, and later kicking down doors, changed Adamss thinking. So many of the drug users he saw had made one bad decision and then became chained to it, Adams realized. Or they had begun on a valid prescription for pain medication, after an injury, and then grew addicted. When refills grew scarce, they turned to alternatives. Many were no longer even using to get high, only to avoid the agony of withdrawal. They were teenaged, middle-aged and elderly; they were students, bankers and grocery clerks. They were businesswomen with six-figure salaries and homeless men with shopping carts. Arresting a person like this did no good, because there was always another to replace him or her and regardless, any jail sentence had limits. Afterward, Adams saw, everyone landed right back where they started.

Were not getting anywhere, he told his chief, Christopher Adams (the two men are not related), and his lieutenant. It turned out that they had already reached a similar conclusion. Until recently, Christopher Adams told me, he couldnt recall ever hearing of a heroin case. Now its every day, he said. Its a majority. Not just in Laconia. Its all over. He and his lieutenant sat down to consider what their department might do. It seemed that there were three conceivable approaches to a drug problem: prevention, enforcement and treatment. To accomplish all three would mean regarding drug users, and misusers, as not only criminals. They were also customers who were being targeted and sold to; they were also victims who needed medical treatment. To coordinate all those approaches would require a particular sort of officer.

In September 2014, Eric Adams became the first person in New England to his knowledge, the only person in the country whose job title is prevention, enforcement and treatment coordinator. I never thought Id be doing something like this, he told me. I learned fast. The department printed him new business cards: The Laconia Police Department recognizes that substance misuse is a disease, they read. We understand you cant fight this alone. On the reverse, Adamss cellphone number and email address were listed. He distributed these to every officer on patrol and answered his phone any time it rang, seven days a week. Strangers called him at 3 a.m., and Adams spoke with them for hours.

The department assigned him an unmarked Crown Victoria, and in it he followed the blips and squawks of a police scanner, driving to the scene of any overdose it reported and introducing himself to the victim, as well as any friends or family he could locate. Residents like these often shrank from the police or stiffened defensively. But when Adams told them that they werent under arrest, that he had only come to help, they seemed to sag in relief.

People who work with addicts generally agree that this moment, immediately after an overdose, offers the greatest chance to sway an addict, when he or she feels most vulnerable. Youre at a crossroads right then and there, a local paramedic told me. If an addict agreed to Adamss help, Adams drove him to a treatment facility, sat beside him in waiting rooms, ferried his parents or siblings to visit him there or at the jail or hospital. He added the names of everyone he encountered to a spreadsheet, and he kept in touch even with those who relapsed. Were they feeling safe? Attending support meetings? Did they have a job? A place to sleep?

In the nearly three years since, as overdose rates have climbed across New Hampshire, those in Laconia have fallen. In 2014, the year Adams began, the town had 10 opioid fatalities. In 2016, the number was five. Fifty-one of its residents volunteered for treatment last year, up from 46 a year before and 14 a year before that. The county as a whole, Belknap, had fewer opioid-related emergency-room visits than any other New Hampshire county but one. Of the 204 addicts Adams has crossed paths with, 123 of them, or 60 percent, have agreed to keep in touch with him. Adams calls them at least weekly. Ninety-two have entered clinical treatment. Eighty-four, or just over 40 percent of all those he has met, are in recovery, having kept sober for two months or longer. Zero have died.

On most mornings, Adams arrives at his office well before 9 to answer email. By then, his phone is already chiming. I thought when I got this position: Monday through Friday, day shifts, weekends off. Im going to see my kids and wife more, Adams said, laughing. Thats not the case. Pinned to the walls of his office, a windowless room on the second floor of the department, are pamphlets and resource guides for homelessness, peer-support groups and addiction hotlines, as well as a dry-erase board listing drug-treatment centers statewide. In December, when I visited one morning, the floor was cluttered with toys for local families in preparation for Christmas: doll sets, wireless headphones, a pillow the color of sorbet.

As soon as he began the job, Adams researched what social-service organizations the region had to offer and drove to their offices to introduce himself. A few employees at places like these knew one another from previous referrals, but many didnt, so Adams went about acquainting them. At health conferences, he arrived to the quizzical frowns of social workers and realized that, of some 200 attendees, he was the only police officer. A network gradually sprouted around him. One morning in December, his first call was from Daisy Pierce, the director of a nonprofit organization whose doors opened two weeks earlier; Adams is its chairman. Might Adams help her get a teenager into the Farnum Center, a treatment facility in Manchester, an hour south? Adams dialed a pastor he knew, who phoned a recovery coach. For the first year and a half, I was the only transportation around here, he told me when he hung up. I would drive people down to Farnum all the time.

Next, Adams turned to a matter unresolved from the day before: a woman the county prosecutor had phoned about, asking if Adams could find her housing. Until recently, the woman had been staying at a homeless shelter, but that stay had ended and, because she was on probation, with nowhere else to sleep, Adamss fellow officers had taken her to jail, though they could hold her for only one night. She would be released that day, still with nowhere else to stay. The next 48 hours would be critical, Adams felt. Here was a person who wanted to get sober but for whom the local authorities had little to offer.

From his desk, he dialed a treatment center, then various landlords and nonprofit directors he knew. Hi, this is Eric Adams over at the Laconia Police Department. Im calling to see if you have anything. ... Then he tried calling back the county prosecutor, tapping his fingers impatiently as the phone rang. When no one answered, he pulled a cellphone from his pocket and looked through it for numbers to dial on his office phone, while scribbling notes on two different legal pads. A cup from Dunkin Donuts sat on his desk, but he hadnt had time to sip from it. After a half-dozen calls, he hung up the phone and sighed. This is the biggest problem in the area, he said. Its housing. There are only a handful of landlords that own so many properties. Adams tried to be up front with landlords, and he didnt blame them for sometimes rebuffing him, because they had to look out for their other tenants. But it meant limited options for a woman like the one he was trying to help.

He swiveled toward his computer and began scrolling through notes. Finding nothing, he rubbed his eyes with frustration, propped his elbows onto his desk and rested his chin on his hands to think. Oh! Let me try I havent talked with her in a while. He dialed another number. Hi, this is Eric Adams over at the Laconia Police Department. ... A moment later, he hung up. All right, this is the last one I can think of. He dialed again. I was wondering if you had any rentals available for a female. Oh, really? Thatd be great. He recited his email address. Thank you!

Good news?

Adams shook his head. Not for a couple weeks. He stood, pushing back his chair, and cursed. Out of the office he strode to make a lap around the building to clear his head, then returned and looked at the clock 9:40 a.m. He had a meeting at 10 at the local branch of the Bank of New Hampshire to help Pierce, the nonprofit director, apply for a new line of credit for their organization. Halfway to the door, he backtracked to pluck the Dunkin Donuts cup from his desk and sipped. My coffees cold.

On a glass table in the bank lobby lay that mornings copy of The Laconia Daily Sun. Drug Sweep in Laconia Results in 17 Arrests, its front page read. Headlines like that had become increasingly common, especially as the drugs themselves changed first to opiates, then to opioids. They werent the same thing, Adams had learned. Opiates are derived from nature, and there are only so many, drugs like morphine, heroin and codeine. By contrast, opioids though the word is now often used as an umbrella term for all these substances technically means synthetic drugs like Vicodin, Percocet, fentanyl and OxyContin, all of which were invented in a laboratory. This is why detectives sometimes encountered new opioids that were 20, 50, 100 times as potent as heroin. In a lab, you can do nearly anything. A dealer, even if he or she knows the difference, rarely bothers labeling, so a dose of so-called heroin might include fractions of nearly anything meaning, of course, that the potency might be nearly anything. Overdoses happen not just when a person knowingly ingests a large dose but also when he or she ingests a dose of unknown composition.

After the meeting at the bank, Adamss phone rang, and he vanished briefly. The call was from a woman whose son was arrested on charges of dealing meth. She wanted an intervention and hoped Adams might help. Steering toward the Belknap County jail, past homes spangled with Christmas lights, Adams admitted that he felt wary. He had already met this young man, who wanted nothing to do with him. Still, Adams would try. He never knew when an addict might begin saying yes to him. Sometimes this happened quickly: Adamss phone would ring, and it was someone he met the previous day. Im exhausted, the person would confess. Others waited a year or longer. All that time, they had hung onto his card. I think Im ready now, they said. Occasionally an addict used similar words even in rebuffing him I dont think Im ready yet a phrase that implicitly acknowledged a problem even as he or she denied one. It was the kind of sign Adams kept on the lookout for. Possibly this moment had come for the young man in jail.

When we arrived, Adams hustled through the drably carpeted lobby, hardly slowing before a receptionist and a guard waved him inside. A half-hour later, he returned, his face tight with frustration, and strode past me to the car without speaking. He doesnt have a problem, he told me. Thats what he said. He doesnt have a problem.

Inside, he told me, guards had brought the young man from his cell into a windowed conference room, where he recognized Adams, as Adams predicted. You know why Im here, Adams began gently.

Youre trying to be nosy, the man replied.

If you want to think of it that way, thats fine. Adams glanced at the young mans file and explained that the mans mother had called. So I wanted to talk to you a little bit. This is an opportunity for you to get some help. The young man went silent. I mean, you got arrested, Adams added, gesturing toward the file.

The man told him that he didnt do the stuff, just sold it. He didnt need help.

O.K., Adams told him, crossing his arms and leaning forward. Was the young man on any weight-loss program, then? Because when I saw you before, to now, youve lost a lot of weight. He nodded toward the young man, who was twitching uncomfortably in his chair. And youre all over the place, just sitting there.

When the man told Adams he was innocent, Adams reminded him that he was always available and slid him another one of his cards. Adams wished him well, then he asked guards to briefly fetch the woman they were holding overnight the one for whom Adams was searching for housing to check in and promise that he was trying.

Even as Adams nosed the Crown Vic out of the parking lot, he couldnt get the episode out of his head. Why wont you just say, I need this? he asked aloud, thinking of the young man. Your life is going this way. Youve been arrested. Youre homeless. Its all drug-related. He sighed. The thing I had the hardest time learning was youre not going to save everyone. That was very hard for me to accept. A common sentiment among the police was that officers interacted with just 5 percent or so of the residents they served. In certain communities, that fraction was smaller. Laconia wasnt a large town. You think, mathematically, Adams began, before pausing, why cant I? Why cant I fix this?

For several miles he steered quietly, past muddied snowbanks. It bothers me, but Ive done what I can do right now. I cant force him to want help. He turned into the lot of the department and slowed into a parking spot.

Is there such a thing as an addict you have no sympathy for? I wondered.

Adams considered this, letting the engine idle, and dropped his hands into his lap. Eleven seconds passed in silence. I dont think so, he said finally. There are reasons they are the way they are.

Adams could list, from memory, addicts who had opened their lives to him, had volunteered for treatment, had wept in relief and gratitude. Already I had met two young adults who were newly in recovery and partly credited Adams for the lives they had regained. But those werent the names that tormented him.

Inside his office, he noticed two new voice-mail messages. The first was from a woman who read of Adams in the newspaper. If you could tell me what to do? Im more than willing to do whatever I need. Adams scribbled something on a legal pad, then played the second voice mail. The same voice filled the room again, but now it broke into tears. Could Adams please tell her what to do?

Adams jotted another note, then checked his watch. Just past noon. Because he knew the work schedule of the mother of the young man he visited in jail, he knew she would be off soon and expecting his call. Shes not going to be happy, he said, mostly to himself. Rubbing his forehead, he sat down and dialed.

In so many towns all across the country, it is difficult to talk about an issue like heroin, not only because there is a stigma or because people worry about sounding impolite, but because everyone calibrates differently, based on neighbors and co-workers they see all day, how much of a problem it is or whether it is a problem at all. There were towns near Laconia diplomatically, Adams declined to name them that denied they had any drug crisis, even as the numbers they had showed otherwise. When presented with those numbers, some officials found alternative explanations. Those were residents from other towns who just happened to cross the border, they argued. This reasoning just contributed to the problem, Adams said. Between 2004 and 2013, the number of New Hampshire residents receiving state-funded treatment for heroin addiction climbed by 90 percent. The number receiving treatment for prescription-opiate abuse climbed by 500 percent. But in terms of availability of beds, New Hampshire ranks second to last in New England in access to drug-treatment programs, ahead of only Vermont. The number who still need treatment is probably much higher. In October 2014, New Hampshire became the second-to-last state in the country to begin a prescription-drug-monitoring program, leaving only Missouri without one.

Not everyone saw things Adamss way. In his office in City Hall, I met Laconias mayor, Edward Engler. Engler, who was cautious and businesslike, with slicked hair and a graying goatee, had been mayor for three years, though he had lived in Laconia for almost 17 and owned The Laconia Daily Sun. Over his dress shirt he wore a fleece vest embroidered with the papers logo. Engler referred to what was happening in Laconia as this so-called heroin epidemic, his tone melodramatic, raising his hands defensively above his head. Were the county seat, Engler told me. Were also the home of the regional hospital. Towns in New Hampshire are extremely close together. I think we tend to get credit for more things than are directly attributable to our residents. Though he thought highly of Eric Adams, he also felt skeptical that heroin deserved to be considered an epidemic, regardless of the statistics. When I go to a Rotary Club meeting, I dont hear people sitting around talking about, Woe is us, everybodys dying of heroin.

Might that be because, in a setting like the Rotary Club, heroin was not a topic of polite conversation?

There could be something to that, Engler admitted. Still, an overdose death was an overdose death it would appear in the news that way, and Engler would have heard of it. I dont believe there has been a huge, communitywide reaction to this. Theres not 100 people showing up at City Council meetings saying: You have to do something about this. This is terrible. The papers arent full of letters to the editor. Not at all. And I think theres a reason for that. The reason for that is Engler paused and crossed his arms since we have been in the so-called heroin epidemic in New Hampshire, I dont believe there has been an instance in the Lakes Region, in Belknap County, where we have had a tragic story involving the son or daughter of someone from a prominent family. All it takes is one, usually. Somebody in Londonderry, some girl who was valedictorian of her class, her dad was a doctor or a lawyer or something like that, overdoses and dies, and suddenly its a crisis to everyone in town.

That very week, I told Engler, while tagging along with Adams for a meeting at the high school, Id heard teachers mention a current student, a well-liked senior athlete, a team captain, whose sister had struggled with addiction and who had been open about the experience. Another member of the same graduating class, a girl whose grades ranked her in the top 10, had been walking with a friend in 2012 when a local mother, high while driving to pick up her own child from the middle school, swerved and struck them on the sidewalk. The girl survived. Her friend was killed.

The mayor was unmoved. That was oxycodone, Engler said dismissively. Here, locally, the heroin epidemic, whatever you want to call it, has not crossed over in any obvious way from the underclass to the middle, middle-upper class.

Later that week, another prospective client phoned Adams. Im at wits end, the man said. For the woman who needed housing, Adams helped track down a relative, at whose home she could stay until an apartment opened. On Friday evening, two more residents overdosed. Adams intended to visit them. Whether either one would accept Adamss card, would call him, would enter treatment, would achieve recovery, would some day relapse, Adams couldnt predict. There were no guarantees in this sort of work.

Early in his tenure, Adams made a presentation to some prominent people in the community he didnt want to name anyone and afterward, as much of the room applauded, a man approached to shake Adamss hand. As he reached out, the man said: Its a really good job youre doing. I think its great. But my opinion is, if they stick a needle in their arm, they should die.

Im sorry you feel that way, Adams said, startled. Id hope you would feel differently if it was your own family member.

But the man shook his head. That will never happen.

This sort of thing happened all the time when Adams began. Today it happened far less frequently. So many others had grown into Adamss approach: fellow officers, downtown business owners, the captain at the Belknap County jail. Police officers from around New England and even farther away had phoned or traveled to Laconia to learn what Adams was doing, and whether the model could be replicated. Other towns, independently, had been pressed by the crisis to conceive approaches of their own. Manchester had turned its firehouses into safe stations. Gloucester, across the border in Massachusetts, had a network of community volunteers. A city as large as Philadelphia or Boston could sensibly implement a PET approach too, Adamss supervisors argued; a community like that would simply need more than one officer, with each assigned to a geographical area. But the shift this required would be profound, asking departments that for so long had thought mainly of enforcement to think differently. In Adamss daily work, it was unavoidable that certain values competed. A client might divulge a crime to him, and he would be forced to interrupt her to give a Miranda warning. If there is a crime, that individual needs to be held accountable, he said. But this is where our prosecutor, our judges, come into play. Some attorneys had expressed discomfort with him and had insisted on being present when he met their clients. Im totally fine with that, he said, because its an opportunity for me to educate the attorney, to let them know what I do, how I do it, what the processes are. In a role so complicated, with so much at stake, clearly it was vital that the right officer held the job.

In an empty conference room on the first floor of the department, I met a young man named Chadwick Boucher, an early client of Adamss. The two men hugged when they saw each other, and then Adams disappeared upstairs to make calls while Boucher and I spoke. He was 27, though he had the calm demeanor of someone two or three times as old. As early as middle school, Boucher began sneaking his parents liquor, partly to fit in with older boys he admired, he told me. Soon he added marijuana. He played hockey then, and played well invitations came from showcases in Boston and scouts from Division I colleges, including the University of New Hampshire, a national power. Instead, Boucher quit. It was too much pressure. He finished high school and moved in with a friend, who introduced him to OxyContin.

What followed was difficult to align into a neat chronology. He bounced from one friends apartment to another, from Oxy to Percocet and finally, when pills grew scarce, to heroin. There was a criminal distribution charge, probation, two treatment programs that he abandoned, feeling as though he didnt belong. There were short-term jobs tending bar or waiting tables, collecting paychecks before inevitably being fired. Suddenly he was high behind the wheel of his fathers Cutlass not in the road, but in a driveway startling awake to the police rapping on his window. Then he was at the Laconia police station, in a room with a plainclothes officer named Eric Adams.

He opened his arms to me, Boucher recalled. It had felt bizarre, sharing the truth with a cop. But things had changed so quickly. Most of his family had stopped returning his calls, and all his friends had vanished. The only people around him now were strangers who shared his addiction, and he didnt like or trust them. The difference in meeting someone like Adams was obvious. He cares about my well-being, Boucher said. I needed that.

Adams wanted him to call every day, so Boucher called every day. Then every week. He entered another treatment program, and this time he graduated. He was now nearing a year sober. He owned a business and was caught up on his bills. He lived up the road in an apartment and had friends again, some of whom were in recovery, too. They made a point to talk openly about it, to keep an eye out for one another. Some he referred to Adams. He knew that recovery demanded his full attention, that it probably always would. If he lost anything else in his life an apartment, a business he lost that one thing only and could do without it. If he lost his recovery, he would lose everything, all at once.

I asked Boucher how he preferred to be named in this article by only Chad? Or would he prefer anonymity? But he shook his head. It was important to him to be honest about who he was. He hoped this would send a message to other addicts and to those who encountered them. Its important that people know theres a way out. Recovery from addiction was an achievable thing and, having discovered this fact, having discovered Eric Adams, Boucher intended to share it. The news might save lives. He knew it was possible that a business client might discover his unflattering past, that he might lose an account or two. Ive come way too far for that, he said.

Benjamin Rachlin is the author of the forthcoming nonfiction book Ghost of the Innocent Man: A True Story of Trial and Redemption. This is his first article for the magazine.

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A version of this article appears in print on July 16, 2017, on Page MM22 of the Sunday Magazine with the headline: You Know Why Im Here.

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A Small-Town Police Officer's War on Drugs - New York Times

CHIANG RAI: Malaysia has expressed its appreciation for Thailand's prompt action in arresting Malaysians suspected of being involved with drug syndicates, as the two neighbouring countries vowed closer cooperation in their war on drugs.

Bukit Aman Narcotics CID director, Datuk Seri Mohd Mokhtar Mohd Shariff said Malaysia too had managed to derail attempts to smuggle 55 tonnes of kratom or ketum (recreational drug derived from the Mitragyna speciosa Korth tree) and 22 kg of cocaine into Thailand in recent years.

"Drugs is a global problem and to wage successful war on drugs, we need to have cooperation and exchange of intelligence information," he told the media after attending the 38th Malaysia-Thailand Meeting on Narcotics Law Enforcement Cooperation, here, today.

The Thai delegation to the meeting was led by the Office of Narcotics Control Board (ONCB) secretary-general, Sirinya Sitdichai.

Mokhtar who is due to retire soon, said the arrest of suspected Malaysian drug traffickers by Thai authorities showed the efficiency, transparency and sincerity of its enforcement agencies.

He said the Malaysian authorities, meanwhile, would not let the country be turned into a place to import, export or produce drugs.

The Thai authorities made two significant arrests last April when it nabbed two Malaysians suspected to be responsible for several successful attempts to bring hundreds of kilogrammes of drugs into Malaysia.

The two men, Johor-born "Mr T" or "Malaysian Iceman" as the Malaysian media referred him and "Mr G" from Penang were arrested at Hatyai Airport and Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi Airport after extensive surveillance by the Thai authorities.

Meanwhile, Sirinya thanked the Malaysian authorities for their effort in foiling attempts to smuggle 55 tonnes of kratom and 22 kg of cocaine into Thailand.

Thailand, according to him, had requested assistance from Malaysia on the latter's expertise in fighting kratom, as it had more experience in dealing with the problem.

He said both countries faced problems related to drug smuggling and needed closer cooperation to ensure the success of their drug-fighting efforts.

This year's meeting was purposely held in Chiang Rai, situated in northern Thailand and which sits on the edge of the "Golden Triangle", a famous drug-producing region. Bernama

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Malaysia, Thailand vow closer cooperation in war on drugs - The Sun Daily

Left: Keith Humphreys, Right:EkowYankah

Opioid addiction and related deaths disproportionately affect both poor, rural white communities and middle class, suburban white communities. Also, many addicts are introduced to opioids through prescription drugs, which seem to be more socially acceptable than say, crack cocain. Despite the similarities between the spread of opioid addiction and that of crack in the 80s and early 90s, public opinion and public policy in response to the two have been profoundlydifferent.

Todays mostly white opioid addicts are considered part of a public health crisis, and maybe rightly so. But black cocaine addicts in urban ghettos were met with an all out War on Drugs, which is still being waged today with huge social consequences. What is at the root of this double standard, and how does it color our own perceptions ofaddiction?

Detroit Today host Stephen Henderson talks with Keith Humphreys, psychiatry professor at Stanford University and former policy advisor at the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. He also speaks withEkow Yankah, law professor at the Cardozo School of Lawat Yeshiva University, who says that how we respond to addiction is based on our perceptions of theaddict.

Our intuitions and our empathy in the drug wars is too often tied up with who we imagine the addicted are and what race we imagine them to be, says Yankah. Time will tell if this kind of rhetoric is combined with more humane and more thoughtful drug policy or if we just tie our drug policy ever finer to punishing those we always want to punishanyway.

By those Yankah means marginalized populations who are often associated with drug crimes and abuse. Humphreys echos thissentiment.

If you look at American history, he says, weve had repeated examples where some group that is the target of prejudice has substance use problems and society really cracks down The cultural narrative when its in those groups is that they deserve these problems because theyre immoral, theyre weak, theyre pleasure seeking, and therefore the response of government should be punitive. And we havent seen that with this much more white epidemicWe wouldve repudiated all of them if they were minorities, but because theyre not, people arecompassionate.

To listen to the full show, click the audio player above.

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Opioid Crisis vs. the War on Drugs: A Double Standard? - WDET

In an era when it seems Democrats and Republicans can agree on hardly anything, many agree on the need for corrections reform. Its expensive to keep people in prison, and prison itself can have corrosive, lasting effects that are disproportionate to a productive post-prison life, the thinking goes.

So for a while now, at the local, state and national levels, policy makers have taken tentative steps toward imprisoning nonviolent and other low-risk offenders for shorter terms in hopes of lowering costs and improving outcomes without compromising public safety. Michigans state population peaked at over 51,000 in 2007; the following year, a report by the Citizens Research Council of Michigan noted that spending on corrections took 20 percent of the states general fund and employed nearly a third of its workforce, and that the inmate population grew through a period when the crime rate fell by more than 42 percent.

Today, the state prison population is around 43,000, and while the debate on how to control corrections spending continues, bipartisan discussion continues to seek consensus on how these expensive institutions can be safely downsized.

That trend is now being challenged, at least in the federal system, by U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions. In a directive to U.S. attorneys in May, Sessions reversed a course laid in 2013 by his predecessor Eric Holder, which directed U.S. attorneys to refine their charging practices, so as not to trigger mandatory minimum sentences for low-level, nonviolent federal drug offenders.

Sessions move restored the previous policy, which required federal prosecutors to charge the most serious, readily provable offense, many of which trigger long sentences.

The U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that roughly half of all federal prisoners are drug offenders, and Sessions move to reverse the Obama-era policy was widely seen as restarting the governments so-called war on drugs. Sessions, in announcing the change, said drugs and crime go hand-in-hand and drug trafficking is an inherently violent business, where debts are collected by the barrel of a gun. The reversion to previous policy was a key part of President Trumps promise to keep America safe.

In his statement, Sessions told U.S. attorneys they deserve to be unhandcuffed and not micro-managed from Washington. ...It is simply the right and moral thing to do.

A return to the war on drugs, if mimicked here in Michigan, could have wide-reaching impact on the state prison system, and on the taxpayers who pay for it.

Roughly 2.3 million people are behind bars in the U.S., spread among local jails, juvenile and immigration detention, and military, state or federal prisons, according to the Prison Policy Initiative, which advocates against mass incarceration.

In Michigan, the most recent available data, from 2015, reports that about one-third of the states 40,000 prison inmates are incarcerated on drug charges. At a per-capita cost of $35,000, that works out to $116 million per year (though its worth noting that most imprisoned on drug charges have at least another conviction, anything from violent assault to a less-serious property crime).

So what is likely to happen as a result of this new wind blowing through Washington? Whats the result if its duplicated in Michigan?

Maybe not much

Think of the war on drugs as a long train speeding down the track. Holders directive had the effect of pulling back on the throttle, but a train takes a long time to slow down, let alone stop, and the new policy was in place for only about three years.

The language he is using was the language that was in place for all U.S. attorneys offices prior to the Holder policy, said Blanche Cook, a Wayne State University Law School professor and former U.S. Attorney. It not as if this is new. Its not a radical notion.

The most serious, readily provable offense is language that U.S. Attorneys have been following for decades, and federal mandatory minimum sentences go with that, Cook said.

Theyre called mandatory for a reason.

However, she said, federal prosecutors have discretion in how they craft and pursue cases. But they also all know they serve at the pleasure of the president, and no one wants to lose a job because they werent carrying out the chief executives judicial policy to the presidents liking.

You have a lot of latitude, but you dont want to get on the presidents radar for the wrong reason, Cook said.

A spokesman for the Department of Justice in Washington declined comment for this story.

A setback for reformers

Kevin Ring, president of Families Against Mandatory Minimums, a national advocacy group, said he was disappointed with the Sessions reversal. He said its clear tough sentencing doesnt reduce crime.

The group was part of the effort to repeal Michigans 650-lifer law, which Ring called one of the worst in the country. The statute, passed in 1973, imposed a mandatory life sentence on individuals arrested with 650 grams or more roughly 1.5 pounds of heroin or cocaine. By the time it was repealed 25 years later, it had snared such high-profile defendants as White Boy Rick Wershe, the focus of clemency efforts for years, and Tim Allen, the actor who today is the voice of the Pure Michigan tourism ad campaign. (Both men cooperated with law enforcement, but Wershe remains behind bars, while Allen served two years in federal prison before being paroled.)

Charging decisions that trigger mandatory minimums are counterproductive to their stated aim, Ring said.

They were (supposed to) reduce crime and drug use. But no study shows it reduces crime; its swiftness and surety of prosecution, not sentences, that does that, Ring said. Michigan and other states, including New York and Rhode Island, have reformed these policies, and crime rates continued to fall.

That question is that rare issue where many on both the left and right are in agreement. None other than the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council has come out against mandatory minimums, along with more traditionally liberal groups like the ACLU.

Which brings up the question of how states are handling the same problem.

Tough on crime, and (probably) running for governor

In Michigan, as divided along partisan lines as any state, corrections reform is a bipartisan issue, or was. In 2015, a bill sponsored by Republican Rep. Kurt Heise of Plymouth sought to institute presumptive parole, where low-risk inmates in the state prison system would be paroled at their first available date.

Groups from the Mackinac Center for Public Policy (on the right) and the ACLU (on the left) agreed it was a sensible reform that would ease the burden on corrections by releasing inmates at an earlier date than they might be under the old system.

It died in the Senate, after being opposed by Michigan prosecutors and state Attorney General Bill Schuette, who has made a tough-on-crime stance part of his growing public profile. Lately, Schuette has also focused on opioid-related criminal activity, announcing the formation of a new Opioid Trafficking and Interdiction unit that will focus on illegal traffic in legal opioid painkillers, as well as heroin.

And while affairs at the state level are not connected with Sessions reversal, Heise, now supervisor of Plymouth Township, said they are the same problem in a different place.

Whats happening at the federal level is the disconnect we have in Michigan: A tough-on-crime attorney general against a legislature trying to pay the bills, and finding out that increased incarceration doesnt pay off, Heise told Bridge.

Look at the cost of corrections, (and ask) what are we really getting out of increased incarceration? The feds will come to the same conclusion we came to in Michigan, Heise said. Within the party, we will see the same debate and discussion in the Trump Administration.

A Michigan House Fiscal Agency analysis of the bill stated it would save the state money, eventually, by slowing prison population growth over a number of years, roughly 1,300 prison beds, a savings of roughly $30 million annually.

Legalized pot up in smoke?

Marijuana remains illegal under federal law. Under the Obama administration, a 2009 guidance memo allowed states where voters or legislators chose to legalize it to do so without federal interference. That was one factor enabling marijuana laws to spread to 29 states, either as medicine or a strictly recreational drug.

Sessions memo said nothing about marijuana, but hes said plenty about it in other settings, most notably that good people dont smoke marijuana, and that allowing people to use it in a medical context in lieu of opiates, for example, amounts to trading one life-wrecking dependency for another.

And a letter released in mid-June reveals Sessions is gunning for weed, too, asking Congress to overturn the Rohrabacher-Farr amendment, a 2014 law that officially keeps the federal government out of state affairs on this issue.

Sessions argues that the Justice Department needs the authority to combat an historic drug epidemic and potentially long-term uptick in violent crime.

In Michigan, a drive to fully legalize recreational marijuana is in its early stages, aiming for a ballot initiative in November 2018. (An earlier effort failed to reach the ballot due to a dispute over the age of some signatures on petitions.)

Josh Hovey, spokesman for the Coalition to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol, formed to help pass the Michigan ballot measure, said he isnt worried.

The bottom line is, were paying close attention (to the issue), and think theres strong momentum across the country for more responsible marijuana laws, Hovey said. Were hopeful the momentum will carry through to the Administration, and they will think twice before they overturn (state laws).

Polling suggest strong support for fully taxed, legal marijuana in the state, with 58 percent of likely voters saying theyd approve it in one recent poll.

Fuller prisons

Todd Perkins is a criminal defense attorney in Detroit who has seen many clients go through the federal courts both under the old system and after the Holder memo. He sees the change by Sessions as hostile to people of color.

The war on drugs has not been successful, Perkins said. It was predicated on race, and has punished, unfairly, various sectors of society, predominantly African Americans and other minorities.

Besides studies showing sharp racial disparities in drug prosecution, and differences in sentences (since mitigated) for those possessing or selling crack or powder cocaine, Perkins contention is backed up by at least one key admission.

John Ehrlichman was President Nixons domestic policy adviser and a key player in launching the presidents war on drugs, declared in 1971 when Nixon called drug abuse Americas public enemy number one.

In an interview given in the early 90s, but not published until 2016, 17 years after his death, Ehrlichman is quoted as saying the war on drugs was intended to demonize the antiwar left and black people.

After the Holder-led policy change in 2013, Perkins said, his clients in the federal courts who were lower-level, nonviolent offenders still got prison time, but less of it, he said.

Some punishment has to occur, Perkins said. But at the end of the day, we dont need to lock people up for long stretches if they dont deserve it.

The rest is here:

Reviving war on drugs could carry big costs in Michigan - Petoskey News-Review

Drug dealers remain go-to bad guys in TV and movies. Dating back to David Simon's landmark HBO drama "The Wire" and miniseries "The Corner," though, television has drilled into the hopelessness of law enforcement's efforts -- depicting what amounts to a giant game of Whac-a-Mole, where cutting off from one spigot simply opens another.

The condemnation of the policy, moreover, is often conveyed more poignantly through dramas like "The Wire," which can personalize character arcs and put faces -- even if they're fictional -- on the statistics.

Another series set in that period, Netflix's "Narcos," spent two seasons tracking down Pablo Escobar, only to see new players fill the void once Colombian authorities gunned down the drug kingpin in 1993.

Skepticism about the drug war's efficacy reflects as much of a shift in the playing field for TV drama as politics. Most of the programs cited air on networks that pride themselves on offering more ambitious and nuanced storytelling than, say, standard network crime shows that slap handcuffs on a perpetrator by the hour's end.

A recurring message from such dramas is that as long as demand persists -- and with it, big money peddling contraband -- someone will always be tempted to feed it.

The drug war, of course, goes back further than the Reagan era's "Just say No" campaign. "America's War on Drugs" features President Nixon declaring drug abuse "public enemy No. 1" in the early 1970s. As DEA agent Celerino Castillo explains in the documentary, purging drugs remains an uphill battle because "America is more addicted to drug money than they are addicted to drugs."

Television remains pretty addicted to drug dealing's dramatic possibilities, creating an enticing backdrop for stories filled with money, violence and power. This month brings another in Netflix's "Ozark," starring Jason Bateman as a money manager drawn into laundering cash for a cartel.

Viewed collectively, though, these bold, nuanced dramas have reinforced questions about whether a "drug war" can ever really be won, especially when each new skirmish and declaration feels, in TV terms, like a rerun.

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Drug war fights losing battle in TV dramas - CNN.com - CNN

Americas War on Drugs is an immersive trip through the last five decades, uncovering how the CIA, obsessed with keeping America safe in the fight against communism, allied itself with the mafia and foreign drug traffickers. In exchange for support against foreign enemies, the groups were allowed to grow their drug trade in the United States. The series explores the unintended consequences of when gangsters, war lords, spies, outlaw entrepreneurs, street gangs and politicians vie for power and control of the global black market for narcotics all told through the firsthand accounts of former CIA and DEA officers, major drug traffickers, gang members, noted experts and insiders.

Night one of Americas War on Drugs divulges covert Cold War operations that empowered a generation of drug traffickers and reveals the peculiar details of secret CIA LSD experiments which helped fuel the counter-culture movement, leading to President Nixons crackdown and declaration of a war on drugs. The documentary series then delves into the rise of the cocaine cowboys, a secret island cocaine base, the CIAs connection to the crack epidemic, the history of the cartels and their murderous tactics, the era of Just Say No, the negative effect of NAFTA, and the unlikely career of an almost famous Midwest meth queen.

The final chapter of the series examines how the attacks on September 11th intertwined the War on Drugs and the War on Terror, transforming Afghanistan into a narco-state teeming with corruption. It also explores how American intervention in Mexico helped give rise to El Chapo and the Super Cartels, bringing unprecedented levels of violence and sending even more drugs across Americas borders. Five decades into the War on Drugs, a move to legalize marijuana gains momentum, mega-corporations have become richer and more powerful than any nations drug cartel, and continuing to rise is the demand for heroin and other illegal drugs.

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America's War on Drugs Full Episodes, Video & More | HISTORY

Worthy winner? the National Horseracing Museum. Photograph: Marc Atkins/Marc Atkins / Art Fund 2017

Earlier this year, Tristram Hunt swapped life as an MP for the cushier gig of director of the V&A. Wed speculate that hes rarely regretted his choice; tonight he presents coverage of the 2017 museum of the year ceremony. The finalists are Londons Tate Modern and Sir John Soanes Museum, the Newmarket Heritage Centre for Horseracing and Sporting Art, Birminghams Lapworth Museum of Geology and the Hepworth Gallery in Wakefield. Phil Harrison

While Only Connect fans might turn up their noses at it, this revived gameshow is shamelessly traditional and infectiously watchable. Stephen Mulhern hosts as ever, bidding three contestants to guess the familiar phrases concealed in brightly animated clues. The fun is in the sheer frenzy the players work themselves into as the answers dance on the tips of their tongues and 50,000 is up for grabs in the Super Catchphrase round. David Stubbs

What a world it is when pop goddess Kelis and over-enthusiastic music teacher type Gareth Malone coexist on a Saturday night TV show, critiquing the vocal tones of various bouncy choirs. Its like Glee has graduated, found its questionable aunties stash of speed and necked the lot. Now its the fourth heat, where choirs including the Bristol Suspensions, Over the Water and the Savannahs riff for their lives. Guest Seal joins the judges. Hannah Verdier

The blind audition rounds may now be a distant memory, but the under-15s fight for a 30,000 musical bursary (plus a trip to Disneyland Paris) intensifies as the remaining competitors approach a harmonic Hunger Games in the first battle round. The contenders are split into groups of three, each facing further forays on to the stage. Only one singer from each trio can triumph; which young Voicettes will break first? The round concludes on Sunday. Mark Gibbings-Jones

Like live-action Tinder, but with the added humiliation of doing it all in front of a baying studio audience, Paul OGrady invites a new crop of singletons on to the telly for some public matchmaking. Looking for some conscious coupling this week are Manchester-based recruitment consultant Antoni, and Alice, who is seeking a girlfriend who might be willing to look past her obsessive Cline Dion super-fandom in the pursuit of potential romance. Its a big ask, love. Ben Arnold

Hes the Palme dOr winner whos been banned from Cannes; a cackling, self-mythologising put-on merchant, whose divisive films have been accused of misogyny or perhaps should be regarded more, as Nymphomaniac actor Stacy Martin breezily says in this mini-profile, as a premise to conversation. However, collaborator Jean-Marc Barr sums the trickster-provocateur up best when he describes Von Trier as simply a showman. Ali Catterall

Debut of a new series chronicling arguably the most counter-productive conflict of all time the war on drugs, which has cost billions, immiserated millions, and does not appear to have stopped anybody taking drugs. This episode reflects on various shabby attempts by the US government to co-opt the drugs trade for its own purposes. Interesting enough, but the usual US documentary caveats, about annoying soundtrack and pompous voiceover, apply. Andrew Mueller

West (Christian Schwochow, 2014), Saturday, 1.30am, BBC2 This subtly gripping, atmospheric cold war drama about refugees from East Germany has a very contemporary resonance. Based on Julia Francks novel Lagerfeuer, its the story of young mother Nelli (Jrdis Triebel) who, after a humiliating interrogation, is allowed to leave with her son for West Berlin. They are detained in a holding camp, where Nelli finds herself dealing with suspicious officials not so different from the Stasi she left behind. Its an engrossing tale, reminiscent of Florian Henckel von Donnersmarcks more celebrated The Lives of Others. Paul Howlett

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, (Chris Columbus, 2002), 10.20am, ITV

The second entry in the Potter archive is like the first, but darker, with Daniel Radcliffe and pals encountering massive spiders, a flying Ford Anglia, a little comic hero in Dobby the house elf and Kenneth Branagh as dark arts master Gilderoy Lockhart. Plus theres the poignant farewell of Richard Harris as Dumbledore. Paul Howlett

Mea Culpa, (Fred Cavay, 2014), 9pm, BBC4 A fast and furious French policier with stubbly cops in leather jackets, from the director of Point Blank. The stars of those two films are reunited here: when ex-detective Vincent Lindons son is menaced by a gang of violent Serbian drug dealers, he teams up with old partner Gilles Lellouche to deal with them like in the old days. Traditional mayhem ensues on the atmospherically lit streets of Toulon. Paul Howlett

2001: A Space Odyssey, (Stanley Kubrick, 1968), 11.15pm, BBC2 Kubricks coruscating space saga boosted science fiction into a new orbit, the special effects setting the standard for the Star Wars generation. The enigmatic story has an alien monolith overseeing humanitys evolution from ape to star-child, with Keir Dullea the astronaut taking another great leap for mankind. Hal the calculating computer gives the most memorable performance, with menace in its smooth, ever-so-reasonable voice. Paul Howlett

Rugby Union: New Zealand v British & Irish Lions The third and final game from Auckland, with the three-match series tied at one-all. 7.30am, Sky Sports 1

Test Cricket: England v South Africa Day three of the opening game of the series from Lords. 10am, Sky Sports 2

Tennis: Wimbledon The latest mens and womens singles third-round matches. 2017 11am, BBC2

Continued here:

Saturday's best TV: Museum of the Year; Secret War on Drugs - The Guardian

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Class A drugs and cash have been seized by police in Totnes as part of a new operation to tackle the growing problem surrounding drug supply.

As part of 'Operation Applerose', one man was issued with a notice banning him from the town centre for a period of time after an incident on Friday night.

Totnes Police also executed a warrant under the Misuse of Drugs Act and a quantity of class A drugs and cash were seized.

It comes just days after the police in the town intercepted a woman who had a large quantity of drugs that were bound for the streets of Totnes.

The woman was searched by local officers in Westonfields, and a quantity of heroin, cannabis resin and other illicit pills were found.

Police say that these drugs were bound for the streets of the town and a woman from Totnes is now assisting them with their enquiries.

The police are also warning people that any person behaving in a manner that has caused harassment, alarm and distress in Totnes town centre this weekend will be directed to leave and not return within (a maximum of) 48 hours.

Should that individual return to the area, he/she is liable to be arrested .

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Man banned from town centre as police war on drugs continues across south Devon - Devon Live

Philando Castile (Facebook)

Before Malcolm Shabazz, 28, the grandson of El-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz (Malcolm X) was assassinated in 2013 in Mexico City, he, like his entire familyand like too many black people in the United States of Americahad been hunted and harassed by law-enforcement officials.

It had gotten so bad that Shabazz spoke about the recipe for public assassinations two months before his death:

The formula for a public assassination is: the character assassination before the physical assassination; so one has to be made killable before the eyes of the public in order for their eventual murder to then be deemed justifiable. And when the time arrives for these hits to be carried out youre not going to see a C.I.A. agent with a suit and tie, and a badge that says C.I.A. walk up to someone, and pull the trigger. What they will do is to out-source to local police departments in the region of their target, and to employ those that look like the target of interest to infiltrate the workings in order to set up the environment for the eventual assassination (character, physical/incarceration, exile) to take place.

I immediately thought of young Malcolms words when, on July 6, 2016, Philando Castile was killed in broad daylight by St. Anthony, Minn., Police Officer Jeronimo Yanez. I thought of his words not because I believe that Castile was specifically the target of a CIA plot, but because the public assassination of black humanityand the character of black peoplehas been an ongoing project in this white-settler colonial project that flag wavers call the greatest country on earth.

The way we look, the way we talk, the way we attempt to live free in a country founded on our violent oppression, have all been reasons successfully used to render us killable in the eyes of society and to justify our state-sanctioned lynchings.

Black people are born into this world with targets on our backs and often leave this world the same way. Castile had already been pulled over an estimated 46 times before Yanez claimed that the 32-year-old mans wide-set nose made him look like a criminal suspect. Further, he was a legal gun owner in a nation that weaponizes blackness and steals black lives but loves steel weapons.

In Toni Morrisons 1987 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Beloved, the character Baby Suggs has

When Castile calmly and respectfully explained that he had a gun in the car, the trigger-happy Yanez feared for his life because a black man with a gun has always been viewed as a clear and present danger. This nation assigns us to that category so that state-sanctioned executions will be deemed necessary. And for those scarce times when blackness alone does not give officers a license to kill, marijuana smoke conjures up the rest.

The Washington Post reports:

I thought, I was gonna die, Officer Jeronimo Yanez told investigators from the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension fifteen hours after the shooting. And I thought if hes, if he has the, the guts and the audacity to smoke marijuana in front of the five year old girl and risk her lungs and risk her life by giving her secondhand smoke and the front seat passenger doing the same thing then what, what care does he give about me. And, I let off the rounds and then after the rounds were off, the little girl was screaming.

A wide-nosed black man in a car that allegedly smelled of marijuana had the audacity to carry a legal gun; that made him an enemy of the state.

Killable.

The war on drugs has been used to escalate a general sense that black people are beasts and that our communities are urban jungles, asha bandele, senior director of Drug Policy Alliance, told The Root.

Throughout so many of these horrific police shootings, drugs have been used to justify the slaughter of innocents, bandele continued. We saw it with Michael Brown, we saw it with Trayvon Martin, we saw it with shootings throughout the country, including that of Philando Castile. All you have to do is raise the specter of drugs, and supposedly no other question is supposed to be asked.

Sometimes when drugs are not the issue itself, the criminalization, the use of drugs, drug selling and drug usea criminalized feature in our nationis used to justify killing, bandele continued.

Killable.

Bandele points out that the war on drugs is a living, breathing manifestation of the hatred this country holds for black people, and a cover for police hypermilitization and the occupation of black and brown communities.

Once you declare something a war, you got to declare someone an enemy, bandele told The Root. The drug war has been used as a justification for police killings of 92-year-old grandmothers in their homes, where all they had to say was, Oops, wrong house. Its been used to justify the killings of 7-year-old Aiyana Stanley-Jones.

This declaration of war and the continuous war crimes that shape this war directly led to the lynching of Philando Castile, bandele said.

Bandele, like Malcolm Shabazz, was also clear that sometimes skinfolk are used to weed out members of the black community that some people find disposable.

We need to understand how we contribute to deaths like Philando Castiles when we contribute to stigmatizing people, or determining whos a decent black person and whos not a decent black person, bandele said. We may have, in progressive communities, a broader idea of who matters and who doesnt, but until we accept that every life has value and we see that in our communities, then were almost participating in who they say they can kill, and who they cant.

Killable.

This is why, bandele says, ending the war on drugs, dismantling white supremacy brick by brick and eradicating stigma is the necessary foundational work we need to engage in if we are ever to be free.

If we want to begin to roll back police militarization significantly, we have to work to end the drug war, bandele said. If we want to disrupt a major tool that they can wield against us, in not only killing us, but them not being held accountable for killing us, we have to end the drug war. If we want to begin to disrupt extraordinary levels of black poverty, then we have to begin to end the drug war.

In doing that, bandele continued, we will say, Were not going to spend money on over-incarceration or over-surveillance, or any of the other facets that make up mass criminalization. Were not going to have one more Philando Castile. Not on our watch.

Bandele gets to the root of the matter.

Black people have been shamed for financial poverty in a nation that is morally bankrupt; still, reparations for theft of our land, our labor and our lives is considered too much to ask for.

We are told that our lives come with white supremacist conditions. Young black men, women and gender-nonconforming people are corralled into deep pockets of destitution, then shot to death for trying to hustle their way out to some semblance of security and safety.

The so-called gentler war on drugsa necessary shift from draconian drug policies to something focused on health and humanityis not for us.

We are still under fire from heavy enemy artillary. We are still living in occupied territory. We are still considered warm bodies to fill cold prisons and balance bloated budgets. We are still lynched in broad daylight in front of our children, and the allegation of marijuana smoke is more than enough for killers with badges to walk free.

Because in the United States of America, to lynch a black person, state-sanctioned killers dont need a reason; all they need is an excuse.

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Philando Castile, the War on Drugs and the Lynching of Black Humanity - The Root