Peace and Justice of La Luz

The fourth quarterly featured quest speakers at the Otero County NAACP business meeting were  Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE)  Tina Godby-Ware;  Otero County Sexual Assault Coordinator, Sandra Wilder, of the Counseling Center of Alamogordo;  and Detective Lt. Lee Wilder, Response Team Coordinator, of Alamogordo Department of Public Safety.  All are members of the  Sexual Assault Response Team  (SART) in New Mexico’s Twelfth Judicial District.

The coordinated sexual assault response team  is designed to ensure that victims are provided with a broad range of necessary care and services (legal, medical, social services) and to increase the likelihood that an assault can be successfully prosecuted. The SART team includes a nurse examiner, a sexual assault advocate, a prosecutor, and a law enforcement officer. All responding actors follow specific protocols that set out their responsibilities in treating and providing services sensitive to the needs of victims of sexual assault.

You can contact members of the response team at the following numbers:

Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner,  Tina Godby-Ware:  575 430-9485
Otero County Sexual Assault Coordinator, Sandra Wilder:  575 437-7404
Response Team Coordinator,  Detective Lt. Lee Wilder:  575 439-4300

. . . . .

The SART presentation was  followed by a showing of  “V-Day, Until the Violence Stops”. “V-Day” is an international movement to stop violence against women (and men).  An Alamogordo stage presentation of “The Vagina Monologues” is slated for February of 2010.  Men are encouraged to attend.

Source: THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

August 21, 2009

MEXICO CITY (AP) – Mexico enacted a controversial law on Thursday decriminalizing possession of small amounts of marijuana, cocaine, heroin and other drugs while encouraging government-financed treatment for drug dependency free of charge.

The law sets out maximum “personal use” amounts for drugs, also including LSD and methamphetamine. People detained with those quantities will no longer face criminal prosecution; the law goes into effect on Friday.

Anyone caught with drug amounts under the personal-use limit will be encouraged to seek treatment, and for those caught a third time treatment is mandatory – although no penalties for noncompliance are specified.

The maximum amount of marijuana considered to be for “personal use” under the new law is 5 grams – the equivalent of about four marijuana cigarettes. Other limits are half a gram of cocaine, 50 milligrams of heroin, 40 milligrams for methamphetamine and 0.015 milligrams of LSD.

We at Peace & Justice of La Luz are proud to have sponsored Mike Jones at the Otero County Fair. We were able to talk to hundreds of people who were curious about the subject. And if we did not convince them all that prohibition was a failure, we at least started this conversation in our community. Thank you, Mike Jones!

LEAPing to legal drugs

(J.R. Oppenheim/Daily News)

Drug warriors from across the country are banding together to ask people to support the legalization of drugs.

Judges, prosecutors, prison wardens, corrections staff and police officers have organized to educate the public about the damage and cost of the war against illegal drugs.

The premise of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, or LEAP, is the war on drugs cannot be won and the benefit of regulating, taxing and controlling these substances far outweighs the cost in tax dollars and human lives trying to suppress them. Read More…

Drug, alcohol treatment vital in solving problem

In spite of the nationwide prohibition of street drugs, New Mexico and Otero County, as well as the rest of the United States, has a persistently growing drug problem with increasing numbers of younger students using drugs and alcohol.

With that is the typically disastrous results of addiction, incarceration, unintended pregnancies, failing grades and school drop-outs. While education and law enforcement are making strides in stopping the illegal drug trade while educating our youth about the consequences of drug use, drug and alcohol use continues to be a devastating problem, suggesting once again that peer-pressure can be a stronger force than education. Read More…