Drug War

How To End The US Prison State Quick And Easy

May 27, 2021 Lee Camp, ScheerPost.com. Educate! Drug War, Legal System, Mass Incarceration, Prison Industrial Complex

A few weeks ago I covered the mind-blowing facts about American prisons that should make anyone and everyone rethink/detest/abhor the entire institution. Now, I want to examine the reasons people find themselves locked up in the largest prison state in the world (the Land of the Free) and see if we can’t decrease the number of inmates to something more reasonable …like, zero. Or one. …One guy who’s a real grade-A asshole. I’m well aware that many of you are already yelling, “But what about murderers and rapists?!” We’ll get to them in a minute. Keep your pantaloons fastened. Besides, “What about murderers and rapists?!” is a really abnormal thing to yell at something you’re reading. Come to think of it, maybe you’re not fit for society. Maybe we should lock you up.

The War On Drugs Is Driving The Displacement Crisis

April 6, 2021 Inge Fryklund, Foreign Policy in Focus. Educate! Border, Drug War, Migration, Prohibition

We are torn by images of unaccompanied minors and overcrowded facilities at our southern border, but few in the United States are asking why so many Central American families are so desperate to escape their own countries that they are willing to risk everything — including family separation. These migrants are not fleeing some Act of God — drought or hurricanes or the like — that could not be anticipated or prevented. Rather, they are fleeing cartel violence and governmental corruption. As CNN recently noted, “poverty, crime, and corruption in Latin America have long been drivers of migration.” Indeed, many Central Americans have concluded that the risks of the journey, of the smugglers, and of the possibility of losing their children are outweighed by the near certainty of violence or death at home.

Elections Proved Americans Are Done With The Drug War

November 22, 2020 Lee Camp, Scheer Post. Educate! 2020 Elections, Direct Democracy, Drug War, Legalization

Something seismic happened in this election and it has nothing to do with Joe Biden winning. And yes, Joe Biden did indeed win. I’m sorry for those of you Trump fans who believe the election was rigged against him. It simply wasn’t. Yes, millions of Americans were indeed purged from the voter rolls – but they were mostly people of color. So if MAGA Nation are waiting for those votes to be counted, then Trump will actually do even worse. And I honestly don’t care if you’re thinking, “But I saw a video on Tik-Tok of someone burning a ballot and then smothering it in hot sauce and eating it.”

Oregon Becomes First State To Decriminalize Small Possession Of All Drugs

November 4, 2020 Mike Ludwig, Truthout. Create! Drug War, Election, Legalization, Oregon

Voters in Oregon approved a historic ballot initiative that would decriminalize possession of smaller amounts of all illegal drugs and funnel tax revenue from legal marijuana sales into addiction treatment, potentially providing an early model for combating deep racial disparities in the criminal legal system and significantly slowing the war on drugs. Now that Measure 110 has passed with nearly 59 percent of the vote, racial disparities in drug arrests are expected to drop by an astounding 94 percent, according to an analysis by the Oregon Criminal Justice Commission, a state agency.

RIP Arnold Trebach – Made Opposition To The Drug War Respectable

July 30, 2020 Jacob Sullum, Reason.com. Educate! Arnold Trebach, Drug Policy Foundation, Drug War, Medical Marijuana

Arnold Trebach, who died last week at the age of 92, started the Drug Policy Foundation in the heat of Ronald Reagan's war on drugs. It was the same year that Joe Biden, a Democrat who is running for president this year as a criminal justice reformer, wrote the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, which prescribed new mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses and created the notorious weight-based sentencing distinction that treated crack cocaine as if it were 100 times worse than cocaine powder.

Why And How To Defund The Police

June 20, 2020 Jason Kirkpatrick, Counterpunch. Create! Defund the police, Drug War, Mass Incarceration, Police violence

The vague and easily misinterpreted call to Defund the Police has been spreading quickly across the USA. Some may have a knee-jerk reaction to “just say no” to this call, but polls show a vast majority of Americans are concerned about improving the lives of people of color across the country. Reforms such as teaching police to de-escalate conflicts and enforcement of body camera use have support of about 90% of Americans. So, what could solutions to the current situation look like, how could they be paid for, and should relative costs realistically be coming out of police budgets? My experience sharing oversight of a police budget as a City Councillor and Vice Mayor for four years gave me valuable insights to be able to propose concrete solutions.

Operation Relentless Pursuit Brings Terror To Seven Cities

January 16, 2020 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, Popular Resistance. Educate! Drug War, Operation Relentless Pursuit, Police abuse, Poverty, Racism

Clearing the FOG co-hosts Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese interviewed Jacqueline Luqman of Coffe, Current Events and Politics in Luqman Nation about the Department of Justice's new Operation Relentless Pursuit. The initial phase of the program, which costs $71 million, targets seven cities, four of them majority black, with more money, police equipment, and federal law enforcement to supposedly combat crime. Luqman explains what the impact of the program will be on poor and black communities and what would be a more effective approach to crime. Listen to the full interview plus recent news and analysis, including what the corporate media isn't telling you about Iran and Iraq, on Clearing the FOG.

New Federal Police Surge Targets Poor And Black Communities

January 13, 2020 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, Clearing the FOG. Podcast Crime, Drug War, Operation Relentless Pursuit, Police abuse

In December, the Department of Justice announced a new $71 million program, Operation Relentless Pursuit, that will increase policing and the involvement of federal agencies such as the Drug Enforcement Agency in seven cities, four of which are majority-black cities. Rather than addressing the root causes of crime, the program will result in greater repression and violence against these communities. We speak with Jacqueline Luqman about the program, what policies would be more effective and what people are doing to fight back. Kevin Zeese, who has worked for decades to end the war on drugs and mass incarceration, describes how similar programs have been tried in the past and have failed. We also provide current news and analysis.

Coalition Pushes To End Criminalization Of Marijuana And Other Drugs

September 8, 2019 By Kyle Jaeger, Marijuana Moment Create! Anti-Racism, Drug War, Marijuana Legalization

A coalition of more than 100 civil rights groups—including ACLU, NAACP, National Education Association and National Organization for Women—released a criminal justice reform platform for the 2020 elections on Thursday that calls for the legalization of marijuana and supports the “dismantling” of the criminalization of other drugs. As part of the document’s plank on ending the war on drugs, the organizations said states should “legalize marijuana through a racial justice framework that focuses on access, equity, and repairing the damage of prohibition” and the federal government should end cannabis prohibition and “implement marijuana reform through a racial justice lens.”

An Apology From Joe Biden For His Drug War Sins Would Be Nice

February 8, 2019 Doug McVay, Freedomleaf.com Educate! Drug War, Electoral Politics

I attended my first US Senate committee hearing about 30 years ago this year. It was the confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee of William Bennett to be the nation’s first Drug Czar. The hearing was chaired by Senator Joseph Biden, the Democrat from Delaware. The post of Drug Czar – Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, to give the job its proper name – as well as the Office of Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) itself was created by Joe Biden and his colleagues in the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988.

Nicaragua And The U.S. Neo-fascist Offensive

November 18, 2018 Fabian Escalante Font, Global Research. Educate! CIA, Drug War, Nicaragua, US Imperialism

In April of the current year, media headlines pointed to a ‘revolution’ breaking out in Nicaragua against the Sandinista Front government headed by Commander Daniel Ortega. Until then, and for 11 years, the government of that country, legitimately chosen in elections supervised by regional organizations, had carried out wide-ranging programs for reducing residual poverty, poor health, and illiteracy and also implemented many social programs that benefited rural and urban populations. Highways, roads, aqueducts, and an expansive electrical system were constructed.

ACLU Sues San Francisco For Targeting African-Americans In Drug Arrests

October 11, 2018 Phil Smith, Drug Reporter Resist! Drug War, Police abuse, Racism

San Francisco's Tenderloin is a heavily populated, racially mixed neighborhood in the heart of one of America's iconic progressive cities. Yet when the San Francisco Police Department and the DEA targeted the neighborhood to crack down on drug dealing between 2013 and 2015 as part of "Operation Safe Schools," the only people they managed to roll up were black. When 37 black defendants—and no defendants of any other race—got hauled away, nobody noticed. That is, until the defendants started showing up looking for federal public defenders. The federal public defenders noticed, and they began making noise about racial disparities and selective enforcement of the drug laws.

Dan Bigg, Revolutionary Of Harm Reduction Movement, Dies

September 14, 2018 Kevin Zeese, Popular Resistance Educate! Drug Policy, Drug War, Harm Reduction

A colleague of mine, Dan Bigg of the Chicago Recovery Alliance, died on August 21 at his home. Bigg was at the forefront of bringing harm reduction into practice in the United States. The Fix called Dan "The Patron Saint of Harm Reduction" in a notable 2014 interview, and the Chicago Tribune described his work as "revolutionary." As a result of Bigg's efforts, friends and colleagues said, thousands of people who would have died from infections or overdoses are still alive - a flesh and blood legacy of the "harm reduction" philosophy Bigg helped to popularize.

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