Peace And Justice Of La Luz

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The following are my notes from the Forum on Substance Abuse held by the Otero County Chapter of PDA June 25th – Ken Nicholson

The Otero County chapter of Progressive Democrats of America hosted a panel discussion on the substance abuse situation in the county. Panel members Dr. Gil Heredia, physician and chair of the Otero Libertarian Party, Sharon Hodges of the New Mexico Department of Health, and Ken Larson, Certified Peer Specialist and Recovery Mentor presented a comprehensive survey of the drug problems we are facing in Otero County to an interested audience of local activists. Al Kissling of PDA NM was the moderator.

Dr. Heredia said that the so called “War on Drugs” was having a more devastating effect on our community than the actual use of drugs. He cited the emphasis of the drug war being on law enforcement and leading to incarceration rather than treatment and rehabilitation. When those caught in the system have finished their time, they are released back into the community, still addicted, without the root of their situation being addressed. Heredia noted the high cost of incarceration versus treatment. Also, drug crimes are crimes against oneself and not directly against the community. He said that if drugs were legal, market forces would pressure dealer profits, and the supply of drugs would dwindle. One community activist added that the prison industry has lobbied for mandatory minimum sentences to the benefit of the private prison industry while removing judges’ discretion. (more…)

Submitted to the site administrator by Color of Change.org

The so-called “war on drugs” has created a national disaster: 1 in 9 young Black men in America are now behind bars.¹ It’s not because they commit more crime but largely because of unfair sentencing rules that treat 5 grams of crack cocaine, the kind found in poor Black communities, the same as 500 grams of powder cocaine², the kind found in White and wealthier communities.

These sentencing laws are destroying communities across the country and have done almost nothing to reduce the level of drug use and crime. (more…)

Creators of The Wire: “We’d Nullify”

Radley Balko | March 6, 2008, 7:27am

A pretty bold statement in Time magazine from the show’s head writers, Ed Burns, Dennis Lehane, George Pelecanos, Richard Price, David Simon.

If asked to serve on a jury deliberating a violation of state or federal drug laws, we will vote to acquit, regardless of the evidence presented. Save for a prosecution in which acts of violence or intended violence are alleged, we will — to borrow Justice Harry Blackmun’s manifesto against the death penalty — no longer tinker with the machinery of the drug war. No longer can we collaborate with a government that uses nonviolent drug offenses to fill prisons with its poorest, most damaged and most desperate citizens.

Jury nullification is American dissent, as old and as heralded as the 1735 trial of John Peter Zenger, who was acquitted of seditious libel against the royal governor of New York, and absent a government capable of repairing injustices, it is legitimate protest. If some few episodes of a television entertainment have caused others to reflect on the war zones we have created in our cities and the human beings stranded there, we ask that those people might also consider their conscience. And when the lawyers or the judge or your fellow jurors seek explanation, think for a moment on Bubbles or Bodie or Wallace. And remember that the lives being held in the balance aren’t fictional.

NORML – Police arrested a record 829,625 persons for marijuana violations in 2006, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s annual Uniform Crime Report. This is the largest total number of annual arrests for pot ever recorded by the FBI. Marijuana arrests now comprise nearly 44 percent of all drug arrests in the United States.

“These numbers belie the myth that police do not target and arrest minor marijuana offenders,” said NORML Executive Director Allen St. Pierre, who noted that at current rates, a marijuana smoker is arrested every 38 seconds in America. . .

Of those charged with marijuana violations, approximately 89 percent, 738,915 Americans were charged with possession only. The total number of marijuana arrests in the U.S. for 2006 far exceeded the total number of arrests in the U.S. for all violent crimes combined, including murder, manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery and aggravated assault. Annual marijuana arrests have nearly tripled since the early 1990s.