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.

Sharon Hodges added that part of our problem is our proximity to the Mexican border and that the “border war” was now spilling into Southern New Mexico, causing a variety of new problems such as drugs laced with other harmful chemicals. Hodges stated that even marijuana was being spiked and bore no resemblance to the relatively benign drug of the ’60s. She added that the present drug situation is wreaking havoc on affected families.

Ken Larson, who mentors at the Wright House and several other recovery facilities, agreed that drugs were now coming primarily out of Mexico. He noted that although local law enforcement agents have done an excellent job of seeking out and destroying meth labs in the county, meth amphetamine is coming in by the truck load from Mexico. Larson has talked with Border Patrol agents who said that “while one truck was being inspected, twenty other trucks had to be waived through.”

Larson estimated that there are between one thousand and two thousand addicts in Otero County who are not in treatment or incarcerated. Their ages range from 12 to 56 with the majority of addicts between 18 and 24 years of age.

The panel members agreed that we need the full spectrum of treatment options in Alamogordo, including a detoxification center to care for all the drug and alcohol addictions. The hospital is not equipped for this service and would be too expensive for the uninsured and under insured. As it is, most of the funding for detox and treatment services wind up north of I-40.

There is also a great need for comprehensive drug awareness education in the entire community starting with pre-schoolers on up to adults, many of whom are not aware that a problem even exists. The panelists were hopeful that more people would become more active, if they were made aware of the very real problems facing our community.

The Progressive Democrats of America are holding these discussions all over the state and the nation. Their purpose is to read the pulse of each community at the grass-roots level and to present all our elected officials with data unaffected by corporate spin in the hope that this will affect their behavior in office and also give the voting public issues that will incite them to vote.

Water Privatization Overview

A worldwide crisis over water is brewing. According to the United Nations, 31 countries are now facing water scarcity and 1 billion people lack access clean drinking water. Water consumption is doubling every 20 years and yet at the same time, water sources are rapidly being polluted, depleted, diverted and exploited by corporate interests ranging from industrial agriculture and manufacturing to electricity production and mining. The World Bank predicts that by 2025, two-thirds of the world’s population will suffer from lack of clean and safe drinking water.

Rather than taking the dramatic action necessary to protect precious water resources, governments around the world are retreating from their responsibilities. Instead of acting decisively, they are bending to the will of giant transnational corporations that are poised to profit from the shortage of water. Fortune magazine has predicted that “water is the oil of the 21 century” and corporations are rushing to invest in the water business.

Giant water, energy, food, and shipping companies have plans to buy water rights, privatize publicly owned water systems, promote bottled water, and sell “bulk” water by transporting it from water rich areas to markets desperate for more water. At the same time, to ensure maximum profits, these companies are lobbying to weaken water quality standards, and pushing for tradeagreements that hand over the U.S. water resources to foreign corporations.

Right here in the United States, where some regions are already suffering from serious water shortages, corporations from Vivendi to Nestle are poised to make a profit on water. Some corporate interests even want to sell bulk water from the Great Lakes, the world’s largest freshwater system. The Great Lakes have suffered from pollution, lost two-thirds of their extensive wetlands and experienced a catastrophic loss of biological diversity. Only 3% of the shorelines are suitable for swimming.

Water resources in Wisconsin and Michigan have been targeted by giant bottled water companies like Perrier. Selling bottled water is one of the most successful revenue generating schemes for private corporations. As drinking water has been degraded, the bottled water industry is promoting its expensive product as the solution.

Unfortunately, bottled water is not adequately regulated, and tap water is actually subject to more rigorous testing and safety standards. A 1999 study of bottled water found that bottled water is no safer than tap wader, and sometimes is less safe. Meanwhile, companies like Coca-Cola are selling purified tap water as a healthy option, and they believe that in the long run selling water will be more profitable than selling Coke.

• Why oppose privatization of water? Water privatization can foster corruption and result in rate hikes, inadequate customer service and a loss of local control and accountability.
• Who are the major water companies? A handful of global corporations, ranking among Fortune’s Global 500 List and backed by the World Bank, are pushing governments to privatize water services and market water from the global commons.
• The U.S. Water Declaration: The declaration reaffirms that water is a common good that should not be privatized, commodified, or exported for profit. Add your organization!
• Turning Up the Tap: How the Private Water Industry Wants to Boost Profits - At the Expense of Taxpayers (pdf)
• Water Privatization Fiascos: Broken Promises and Social Turmoil (pdf)

NORML One in seven public school districts randomly drug tests their student body, according to survey data published this month in the American Journal of Public Health. The percentage is approximately 50 percent higher the total number of schools that reported performing suspicionless drug testing five years ago.

Among the schools that employ random drug testing, 93 percent test student athletes, while 65 percent test students who engage in extracurricular activities - a practice that was upheld by the Supreme Court in 2002 in a 5-4 decision.

Twenty-nine percent of school districts that perform drug testing impose it upon the entire student body, a practice that extends “beyond current Supreme Court sanctions.”

Last year the American Academy of Pediatrics Council on School Health resolved, “There is little evidence of the effectiveness of school-based drug testing,” and warned that students subjected to random testing programs may experience “an increase in known risk factors for drug use.” The Academy also warned that school-based drug testing programs could decrease student involvement in extracurricular activities and undermine trust between pupils and educators.

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.

Senator Joe Biden is one of the original creators of these laws and is now trying to fix the problem.³ But some of his colleagues on the Senate Judiciary Committee are standing in the way. Join us in telling them to stand with Joe Biden and undo this disaster once and for all:

At every step in the criminal justice system, Black people are at a disadvantage — we are more likely to be arrested, charged, and convicted, but less likely to have access to good legal representation, and get out of prison on parole.⁴ While there’s no denying that the presence of crack has a hugely negative impact in Black communities across the country, it’s clear that the overly harsh crack sentencing laws have done more to feed the broken system than improve our communities.

You have to be convicted of moving roughly $500,000 worth of cocaine to trigger a 5-year sentence.⁵ For crack? About $500 worth.⁶ These laws punish the lowest-level dealers, while providing a loophole that helps those running the trade escape harsh sentences.

Recently, attention has turned to these ill-conceived policies as prisons burst at the seams with non-violent drug offenders. The U.S. Sentencing Commission, which provides sentencing guidelines for judges, has petitioned Congress numerous times to change the sentencing laws.⁷ Senator Biden was actually one of the original architects of the disparity, but now he’s working to undo the damage with a new bill in Congress (Senate bill 1711). The new law will completely eliminate the sentencing disparity and end the mandatory minimum for crack possession, while increasing funding for drug treatment programs and providing additional resources for investigating and prosecuting major cocaine kingpins.⁸

But of course, there are foes of this plan. Others want to see the disparity reduced to 20-to-1 or 10-to-1, but not eliminated. As Bill Piper of the Drug Policy Alliance recently said, that “would be like amending the Constitution’s three-fifths clause to make African-Americans fourth-fifths citizens or desegregating 60 percent of public establishments instead of all of them.”⁹ Senators on the Judiciary Committee need to hear that there is strong support for a full elimination of the disparity.

We can take this opportunity to join the Sentencing Commission and countless other advocates in calling on Congress to change this unjust law. Please join us!

Thank You and Peace,

– James, Van, Gabriel, Clarissa, Mervyn, Andre, and the rest of the ColorOfChange.org team
March 26th, 2008

References:

1. “1 in 100 U.S. Adults Behind Bars, New Study Says,” New York Times, 02-28-08

2. “Crack/Cocaine Sentencing Disparity,” Drug Policy Alliance

3. “Legislative Proposals for Reform of the Crack/Cocaine Disparity,” Drug Policy Alliance, 09-07-07

4. “Annotated Bibliography: Racial Disparities in the Criminal Justice System,” Sentencing Project

5. “Cocaine Price/Purity Analysis of STRIDE Data,” Drug Enforcement Agency

6. “Cocaine Addiction,” Dual Diagnosis Treatment Center

7. “BIDEN Calls for an End to Crack/Powder Cocaine Sentencing Disparity,” Biden for Senate, 02-13-08

8. See reference 3.

9. “Congress to Hold Historic Hearing Tuesday on Draconian 100-to-1 Crack/Powder Sentencing Disparity,” Drug Policy Alliance, 02-25-08

Additional resources:

“Race and the Drug War,” Drug Policy Alliance

“Federal Crack Cocaine Sentencing,” The Sentencing Project

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.

Their proposed system of classification assesses harm in an “evidence-based fashion”. They use three main factors to determine the potential harm that a substance causes:

(1) Physical harm to the user, (2) Tendency to induce dependence in the user, and (3) The effect of its use on families, communities and society in general. . .  They asked two independent expert panels to score 20 different substances using this new system. . . The two panels found the method easy to use and came up with very similar harm scores for each drug.

In order of overall harm, the 20 drugs were given the following ranking . . .

(1) Heroin (most harmful).
(2) Cocaine.
(3) Barbiturates.
(4) Street Methadone.
(5) Alcohol.
(6) Ketamine.
(7) Benzodiazepines.
(8) Amphetamine.
(9) Tobacco.
(10) Buprenorphine.
(11) Cannabis.
(12) Solvents.
(13) 4-MTA (para-methylthioamphetamine).
(14) LSD.
(15) Methylphenidate (ritalin).
(16) Anabolic steroids.
(17) GHB (gamma hydroxybutyric acid).
(18) Ecstasy.
(19) Alkyl nitrites.
(20) Khat (least harmful).

In their conclusions they comment on what they see as its most glaring deficiencies:

“The fact that the two most widely used legal drugs lie in the upper half of the ranking of harm is surely important information that should be taken into account in public debate on illegal drug use. Discussions based on a formal assessment of harm rather than on prejudice and assumptions might help society to engage in a more rational debate about the relative risks and harms of drugs.”

“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.

“This lawsuit seeks to make sure that youth in our juvenile justice system get a fair shot at redirecting their lives and overcoming mistakes they made in their past,” said ACLU of New Mexico Executive Director Peter Simonson. “New Mexico puts its most troubled kids in prison because we don’t have adequate mental health services. Kids are unnecessarily incarcerated and our juvenile detention facilities become training grounds for lifelong criminals instead of centers of genuine rehabilitation.”

Filed in Santa Fe District Court, the ACLU’s lawsuit seeks two basic reforms:

The establishment of minimally adequate community mental health services for the 3,000 children and youth on probation or parole due to delinquent acts, in order to avoid the unnecessary incarceration of youth due to their mental illness; and

A Fundamental improvement of the safety, medical care and mental health care provided to the approximately 300 children and youth held in delinquency facilities.

The lawsuit cites several instances of guard-on-youth violence, including a March 2007 incident in which staff at the Santa Fe County Juvenile Detention Center assaulted a 17-year old resident who is developmentally delayed and suffers from auditory hallucinations. Guards picked the youth up by his armpits and repeatedly slammed his head into a metal classroom door. CYFD rejected a complaint that the ACLU filed on the resident’s behalf, except to criticize staff for failing to videotape the “take down.”

Simonson said, “Hopefully your children don’t wind up in one of these facilities. But if they do, you want to know that the staff is going to protect them, not brutalize them. You want to know that they’re going to get the tools they need to address emotional problems and make productive behavioral adjustments.”

Representing the ACLU are attorneys Daniel Yohalem and Lee Hunt of Santa Fe, ACLU Co-Legal Director Phil Davis of Albuquerque, and Alice Bussiere and Maria Ramiu of the Youth Law Center of San Francisco. Yohalem is former Legal Director for the Children’s Defense Fund.

A copy of the complaint can be found online at:
www.aclu-nm.org/PDF/Complaint11_20_07

By Linda Henderson
Published March 18, 2007
in The Peace Alliance

Linda is Michigan State Coordinator for the Department of Peace Campaign. She wrote this column for the Lansing State Journal.

The World Health Organization says we spend $300 billion a year due to interpersonal violence in this country alone. More than $400 billion is spent on the Pentagon each year, with an additional $500 billion spent on the present conflagration we have pre-empted our way into internationally.

It is time for a level of maturity in ourselves and our government that reflects a deeper, more responsible wisdom. We need to quit reacting to our fears and become proactive in our desire to effectuate a safe and secure environment.

That does not come from the military or police, which, by definition, are reactionary forces. It comes from a mutual respect for the social contract human beings enter into in order to live in peace with each other, regardless of our differences.

Sadly, violence prevention is the least emphasized and least taught principle in our schools and throughout society. We do have some ad hoc programs, as long as the grant money does not run out. But we continue to put our tax money on the wrong end of the equation.

We complain about taxes, cut programming and then complain that government did not respond properly to the tragedies that ensue from the abandonment of those very programs. This is nothing less than insane.

We grieve the loss of our dear friend Bob. The knowledge that Robert Busby was killed by a homeless person with substance abuse problems shot a flare in the night sky of this violence. Why was Robert in the position of trying to address this issue when it ought to be the business of the entire community to address the desperation of those lost among us?

This is not to excuse the violence, but to attempt to address it in a meaningful and effectual way - on the front end.

While our governor is right to look to address the present budget crisis by early release of non-violent prisoners, and at the same time attempting to turn our state into a knowledge-based economy through addressing educational needs, we need to go further.

We would be wise to pay whatever taxes, volunteer whatever time, and create and support whatever government programs that begin with addressing poverty, mental and physical health issues (including substance abuse), raising the bar on educational equity and institutionalizing the systematic learning of nonviolent conflict resolution throughout the public education system.

Do not tell me violence and war are the inevitable results of human nature. Humans are a species of free will. It is time to evolve, not because it’s a “feel-good” idea, but because we can no longer afford not to and survive.

I know a wise woman who has so aptly put the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you … because they will.” It is not charity, it is self-preservation.