Drug War

Catharsis On The Washington, DC Mall

November 22, 2015 Staff, www.PopularResistance.org Resist! Drug Policy, Drug War

By Staff for Popular Resistance. There was an unusual drug war event held on the mall this weekend: Catharsis on the Mall. The event included speakers and panels, opportunities to remember people impacted by the drug war and looking forward to the end of the drug war. The event, we featured information sharing from Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), Students for Sensible Drug Policy, DCMJ, and more. An art installation, The Temple of Essence, stood as a monument to honor the victims of the drug war. It was a peace-building structure focused on the communities impacted by this conflict and the mass incarceration of our citizens. This Temple brought people together and created a space for reflection and healing. For 24 hours, people were invited to share their stories of struggle, honor, remembrance, and hope within the walls of the Temple of Essence. On the evening of Saturday, November 21, 2015, the event culminated in a burning ceremony of the Temple of Essence transforming our individual stories into collective memory. Then, people celebrated until the sun rose, dancing until after 8 AM.

How The DEA Harasses Amtrak Passengers

May 24, 2015 Conor Friedersdorf, www.theatlantic.com Educate! Criminal Justice, Drug War, Human Rights, Police abuse

For decades, law enforcement has tried to intercept drug couriers on Amtrak trains. These efforts have utterly failed to stop the easy availability of marijuana, cocaine, and other narcotics. Meanwhile they’ve violated the rights of countless Americans. Earlier this week, I highlighted the story of Joseph Rivers, a 22-year old black man who left his hometown in hopes of becoming a music-video producer. En route to L.A., the DEA boarded his Amtrak and seized his life savings, $16,000 in cash, even though there was apparently no evidence he’d committed a crime or possessed any drugs. In a country in which police officers shoot and kill many more unarmed people than their analogues overseas, having the DEA hassle you and cost you $60 isn’t the biggest of law-enforcement abuses. It is, nevertheless, worth remembering that these sorts of incidents happen, because unlike misconduct that results in death or serious injury, relatively modest violations of rights like this often go unreported. Heuser didn’t complain to the DEA. “I’ve had my friends complain to the police before,” he explained, “and they basically said, you better watch yourself pal.”

New Drug War Documentary – Ecstasy, Harm Reduction

February 19, 2015 Staff, www.popularresistance.org Educate! Drug Policy, Drug War

When we think of the so-called "war on drugs," we tend to think of cartels, violence and the the prison industrial complex. But there is another, equally disturbing consequence of the drug war. The prohibition of recreational drugs (and hence their deregulation) spawns illicit markets where impurities and adulterants harm the health of people who use them. Levamisole, for example, a toxic de-worming agent, has emerged as a major contaminant in cocaine, and can slowly destroy a user's immune system. Similarly, heroin is often cut with other depressant drugs, such as fentanyl, which can act synergistically with heroin and lead to overdose.

Civil Rights Leaders Declare State Of Emergency In Black Communities

September 4, 2014 Staff, www.ibw21.org Organize! Drug War, Militarized police, Police abuse, Racism

Dr. Ron Daniels, President of IBW, framed the discussion by reiterating that there is a “State of Emergency” in Black America, particularly in marginalized inner-city communities which he called “America’s “dark ghettos.” Dr. Daniels emphasized that the killing of Michael Brown and scores of other young Black men must be seen within the context of massive disinvestment in urban neighborhoods and unconscionable levels of joblessness and economic underdevelopment. He suggested that in the minds of political leaders and much of the White public, Black people live in “dangerous communities with dangerous Black men” who must be heavily policed and incarcerated in order to have peace, safety and stability. These fears and machinations were the genesis of the War on Drugs and other racially biased criminal justice policies and practices targeting the Black community.

Nearly 50,000 Federal Prisoners Could Have Sentences Reduced

July 21, 2014 Anthony Papa, www.huffingtonpost.com Educate! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Drug War

he U.S. Sentencing Commission voted to retroactively apply an amendment approved earlier this year by the U.S. Sentencing Commission that lowers federal guidelines for sentencing persons convicted of drug trafficking offenses. The vote could shorten sentences for tens of thousands of people who are already incarcerated and serving sentences for drug offenses by granting eligible individuals a hearing before a federal judge to evaluate whether their sentence can be reduced to match the reduced guidelines. . . .According to the U.S. Sentencing Commission and a recent report by the Congressional Research Service, mandatory minimums have significantly contributed to overcrowding and racial disparities in the Bureau of Prisons (BOP). The BOP operates at nearly 140 percent capacity -- and is on track to use one-third of the Justice Department's budget. More than half of the prisoners in the BOP are serving time for a drug law violation.

U.S. To Free Canada’s ‘Prince Of Pot’

July 8, 2014 Tamsyn Burgmann, www.570news.com Resist! Canada, Criminal Justice and Prisons, Drug War, Marijuana

When the poster child for marijuana legalization is released from a U.S. prison later this week, he’ll be re-entering a world where many of his ideas have taken root and in some places have sprouted right up. Marc Emery, Canada’s self-styled “Prince of Pot,” concludes a five-year sentence on Wednesday and will emerge into a lucrative marijuana landscape, where two U.S. states are now issuing recreational pot licences, medical growers are reaping profits and investors aren’t hedging on potential opportunities. The 56-year-old Vancouver resident was extradited to Seattle in May 2010, when he pleaded guilty to selling marijuana seeds from Canada to American customers before serving his time in several U.S. corrections’ facilities. When he was first arrested almost a decade ago, the Drug Enforcement Agency heralded his seizure as a “significant blow” to the legalization movement. On Monday, Washington state distributed for the first time licences to 24 shopkeepers who will hawk legal marijuana, while New York simultaneously became the 23rd U.S. state to authorize pot as medicinal treatment.

The Drug War Is Everybody’s Enemy

July 7, 2014 Stephanie Polito, www.drugpolicy.org Educate! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Documentary, Drug War

Monday afternoon, Eugene Jarecki, filmmaker of the award-winning documentary The House I Live In joined the Drug Policy Alliance’s asha bandele for a discussion of the film’s impact. The film, which won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in 2012, has had a profound impact on the growth of the reform movement to end the war on drugs. The film has been screened all over the nation, making a complicated policy issue accessible and appealing to people of all different ideologies. As Jarecki said during the call, the drug war is an enemy, “whether you're a humanist or just a bottom-line guy.” The film has also inspired my own work in this movement. The first time I saw Jarecki’s film was at an event honoring Nannie Jeter, the film’s focus, in Baltimore, a city where the real-life damage inflicted by the war on drugs was famously fictionalized in David Simon’s acclaimed television series The Wire. I love Baltimore. The four years I spent in the city during college are incredibly important to me, but as a student at a college whose students were overwhelmingly white and from upper-middle class families, my experience of the city was limited. Students used alcohol and other drugs with little to no consequences, while communities nearby were, and continue to be, devastated by failed drug war policies.

The US-Mexico Caravan For Peace Takes On The Drug War

July 3, 2014 Chris Moore-Backman, www.truth-out.org Resist! Children, Drug War, Immigrant Rights, Mexico, Prison

Like many people in the United States, I've had a vague notion that in recent years, things have gone from bad to worse in Mexico. A notion characterized by images of chaos and sporadic violence related to narco-trafficking. I've pictured skirmishing between competing drug cartels, with disorganized and corrupt law enforcement thrown into the mix. And I realize that the image of Ciudad Juarez with its reputation as the world's most murderous city, has somehow worked as a reference point for me as I've thought of Mexico, every now and then. A few months ago, I was talking with an old friend that I had been out of touch with for some time, and I was describing for him the radio documentaries I've been working on which focus on race, criminal justice and the drug war, and on the growing movement to end mass incarceration. He wasted no time in asking me if I was planning to do a show on the international aspects of the Drug War, and more specifically, he was wanting to know if I was going to do anything about what was happening in Mexico. He said that he thought the movement to end mass incarceration in the United States and the movement to end the drug war in Mexico were deeply connected, but that very few people were seeing it yet or talking about it. He told me that a bi-national caravan was about to travel the length of the US calling for an end to the drug war. He said that many of the people with the caravan would be family members of those who had been killed or disappeared in the drug war violence in Mexico.

Sasha Shulgin Rest In Peace

June 3, 2014 Hamilton Morris, Ash Smith, www.vice.com Educate! Drug Policy, Drug use, Drug War, Psychedelic Drugs

I love Alexander Shulgin. I’ve loved him from the first moment I read about him. He is my idol, my hero, my sun, my O2. I love each of the 978 pages of his phenethylamine magnum opus, PiHKAL(Phenethylamines I Have Known and Loved), and every milligram of his 1.13-kilogram tryptamine treatise, TiHKAL (Tryptamines I Have Known and Loved). Above my bed I’ve pinned a large picture of Shulgin cuddling with his wife, Ann. I often sleep with a copy of PiHKAL not under my pillow, butas a pillow. He is the grandfather of Ecstasy, the molecular magician, the atomic conquistador. Over the span of 50 years he has created more new psychedelic drugs than the Amazon jungle ever has. He is more of a mythological creature, a chemical centaur, than he is a real person. But he does exist, as I am about to attest.

Is Destructive Drug War Being Brought To An End?

June 3, 2014 Kevin Zeese, www.huffingtonpost.com Organize! Drug Policy, Drug War, Marijuana, Medical Marijuana

Majorities now support the outright legalization of marijuana and oppose the war on drugs. The public has overcome decades of misinformation to justify the drug war. The transformation struck me a few years ago when I was in a medical marijuana dispensary in California. In 1996, California became the first state to legalize medical marijuana. At the dispensary, people lined up -- as if they were waiting for a bank teller -- in a safe place to get medical-quality marijuana. The slogan of the Harborside Health Center was "out of the darkness and into the light." Now, the light is shining on former drug war assertions, and claims like the one that marijuana causes crime are being proven false. Since the legalization of marijuana in Colorado, violent crime has fallen by 6.9 percent and property crime by 11.1 percent. A 2012 study, "California Youth Crime Plunges to All-Time Low," credits a state marijuana decriminalization for plummeting arrests for all crimes. Meanwhile, anApril 2014 study shows that legalization does not lead to increased adolescent use.

Just Say Yes: Amber Lyon on Psychedelics

May 30, 2014 Dennis Trainor Jr, www.PopularResistance.org Resistance Report Acronym TV, Amber Lyon, Ayahuasca, Ayahuasca as a Cure for Amber Lyon’s PTSD, Dennis Trainor Jr, Depression, Dimethyltryptamine, DMT, Drug use, Drug War, Just Say No, Just Say Yes, LSD, Marijuana, Medical Marijuana, pineal gland, Psychedelic use, Psychedelics, PTSD, Reset button, Reset.me

Amber Lyon, a 3 time Emmy Award winning journalist joins me to discuss her radical life and career shift; one she found through the life altering experience using and researching Ayahuasca and otherPsychedelics. Lyon states too many of us are carrying around bottled up trauma that manifests itself as anxiety, depression, unhappiness, anger, fear, corruption, greed, or violence. Psychedelic medicines are some of the most profound substances on earth for enabling one to process and purge trauma. Lyon says if we can each heal our wounds at the individual level, we will witness dramatic positive transformations as a whole.

Take Action: End The Drug War

May 20, 2014 Eugene Jarecki, www.PopularResistance.org Organize! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Drug Policy, Drug War

The video, JUST SAY NO ...to the War on Drugs, links to how people can take action to tell Congress to pass the bipartisan SMARTER SENTENCING ACT. The letter to Members of Congress says "This bill will save taxpayer dollars, improve public safety, reduce dangerous overcrowding in federal prisons, and rethink unproductive mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug offenders. Mandatory minimums help drive America’s unsustainably large prison population of over 2.3 million people. The U.S. has only 5% of the world’s population yet holds 25% of its prisoners, many of them nonviolent, often serving longer sentences than those convicted of rape and murder. This is not only senseless and unjust; it wastes valuable resources that could be better spent by law enforcement to prevent violent crime." Help end the drug war, share this article and video. Take action today.

DeBlasio & Bratton Increasing Marijuana Arrests In NYC

May 11, 2014 Erik Altieri, www.norml.org Educate! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Drug War, Marijuana, Police abuse

A new report released this week by the Marijuana Arrest Research Project reveals that marijuana arrests have actually increased in New York City under the new leadership of Mayor De Blasio and Police Commissioner Bratton. In March 2014, the NYPD performed more marijuana possession arrests than in any month in the last six months under the Bloomberg administration. In fact, March 2014 saw more arrests than in 10 of the 12 months in 2013 under the previous administration. The total number of arrests for first quarter of 2014 are higher than both the third and fourth quarters of 2013. These arrests also continue the disturbing trend of disproportionately falling on individuals of color. In Brooklyn, in predominately white Park Slope, police made just 7 marijuana possession arrests in the first three months of 2014. In Carroll Gardens and Red Hook they made 12 marijuana arrests in that same time frame. More affluent neighborhoods saw even fewer arrests. In Manhattan, Police only made two marijuana possession arrests.

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