Twenty-Five Years After 'Miami Vice' Became Part of the Country'S Cocaine Culture Lore, Miami Is Leading the Nation in the Beginning Of the End of America'S Three-Decade Cocaine Epidemic, Say Experts In these rough economic times, another pricey extravagance appears to be waning in South Florida: cocaine. The city that gave rise to Sonny Crockett and Ricardo Tubbs has seen a decline in people seeking treatment for cocaine addiction or dying from the drug. Twenty five years after Miami Vice became part of the country's cocaine culture lore, Miami is leading the nation in the beginning of the end of America's three-decade cocaine epidemic, say experts. [continues 777 words]
The Fort Worth Star-Telegram Last year, after more than two decades of debate, Congress finally addressed a gross disparity in sentencing for crimes involving different types of cocaine, crack and powder. Now, the U.S. Sentencing Commission has adopted federal sentencing guideline revisions that would allow thousands of convicted drug offenders to petition for reduced prison terms. It's not a universally popular move, but it's a revision that makes sense. The federal sentencing guidelines for crack cocaine were well-intentioned but turned out to be an overreaction to drug-related violence in the mid-1980s. Lawmakers, concluding that crack was far more dangerous than the powered form of the drug, made mandatory minimum sentences for crack 100 times higher than those for powder. [continues 435 words]
Last year, after more than two decades of debate, Congress finally addressed a gross disparity in sentencing for crimes involving different types of cocaine, crack and powder. Now, the U.S. Sentencing Commission has adopted federal sentencing guideline revisions that would allow thousands of convicted drug offenders to petition for reduced prison terms. It's not a universally popular move, but it's a revision that makes sense. The federal sentencing guidelines for crack cocaine were well-intentioned but turned out to be an overreaction to drug-related violence in the mid-1980s. Lawmakers, concluding that crack was far more dangerous than the powered form of the drug, made mandatory minimum sentences for crack 100 times higher than those for powder. [continues 536 words]
The Public Understands How Disastrous It's Been -- Now It's Time for the Politicians and Law Enforcement to Change Course. The "War on Drugs" was launched by President Richard Nixon 40 years ago this week. In 1980, at the end of its first decade, I began a nine-year career as a "captain" in the war on drugs. I was the attorney in the U.S. House of Representatives principally responsible for overseeing DEA and writing anti-drug laws as counsel to the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime. [continues 2280 words]
You hear few if any arguments that the dangers and devastating effects of methamphetamine are overstated. The evidence of meth's toll is everywhere. Jails and prisons are increasingly crowded with meth users and meth makers. The Georgia Meth Project's dramatizations of meth tragedies are as graphic and uncompromising as any public-service spots that have ever appeared on television; yet nobody is saying -- as has been said of other, earlier anti-drug campaigns -- that the approach is hyperbolic to the point of being counterproductive. You don't hear people accuse the anti-meth campaign of crying wolf. [continues 376 words]
Barry McCaffrey, a retired four-star general, was director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy under President Clinton from 1996 to 2001. He was in that role when methamphetamine use began to spread rapidly in the United States. He knows the extent of the problem and the ways the government and law enforcement are combating it. On a recent visit to Columbus, McCaffrey sat down with the Ledger-Enquirer to discuss meth, its use and its growth as a recreational drug. [continues 932 words]
Government Balks at Covering Treatment for Painkiller Dependency BRAINTREE - In the space of a few hours, on bomb-clearing patrol near Balad, Iraq, US Army Corporal Eric Small and his unit were rocked by three separate roadside explosions. He sustained serious injuries to his head, back, neck, and hip. Small's combat days were over. It was the summer of 2008, and Small spent 10 months convalescing in military hospitals. He came home to Massachusetts with two lasting wartime souvenirs: a Purple Heart medal and a painkiller addiction. [continues 1318 words]
Legalizing Marijuana Through Prop. 19 Would Only Add to the State's Problems. Californians will face an important decision in November when they vote on whether to legalize marijuana. Proponents of Proposition 19, the Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010, rely on two main arguments: that legalizing and taxing marijuana would generate much-needed revenue, and that legalization would allow law enforcement to focus on other crimes. As experts in the field of drug policy, policing, prevention, education and treatment, we can report that neither of these claims withstand scrutiny. [continues 752 words]
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's budget proposes cutting Medi-Cal funding for methadone maintenance. The $53 million that would ostensibly be saved would, in fact, cost Californians a lot more. To begin, the state would lose more than $60 million in federal support for methadone treatment programs as a result of the state not making the investments required to qualify for federal funds. This budget cut would also generate enormous socio-economic costs. A National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) study found, for example, that methadone treatment reduced participants' heroin use by 70 percent and their criminal activity by 57 percent, and increased their full-time employment by 24 percent. The annual cost of methadone therapy about $5,000 per patient is a fraction of the cost of jailing a heroin abuser or of the lifetime health costs of treating the illnesses that are frequently caught by injecting drug users. [continues 465 words]
Methamphetamine, an illicit drug that is easily and cheaply produced, remains a deeply entrenched problem in the Southern United States. The 2009 National Drug Intelligence Center's National Drug Threat Survey showed 22.8 percent of state and local agencies in the Southeast "reported meth as their greatest drug threat," second only to cocaine. Former U.S. Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey called meth "one of the worst drug menaces ever to threaten America, associated with paranoia, stroke, heart attack, and permanent brain damage, leaving a trail of crime and death." Despite its dangers, 10.4 million Americans age 12 and older have tried methamphetamine at least once, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health. [continues 526 words]
It is a craving so powerful that addicts will do almost anything to satisfy it. For thousands of people hooked on heroin and other opiates, a daily swallow of methadone tames the demon and opens the door to a normal life. But soon the synthetic narcotic, which for decades has been used as a controversial treatment for addiction, no longer may be an option for thousands of Californians. As part of the effort to dig the state out of its massive budget hole, the Schwarzenegger administration has proposed cutting off Medi-Cal funding for "methadone maintenance" and other treatment programs to most addicts, saving the state $53 million. [continues 792 words]
SACRAMENTO -- Steve Day of Camarillo is a Vietnam War combat veteran, an ex-con and a recovering heroin addict. He's not had an easy life. Yet when Day, 59, stepped before a podium in the state Capitol on Wednesday and looked out at the television crews facing him, he was visibly nervous. "Standing in front of these cameras," he said, "is the most difficult thing I've ever done." Joined by retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey, the former White House drug czar, law enforcement officials and others, Day felt the importance of what he had to say was more powerful than his fear: If the state eliminates Medi-Cal funding for drug treatment, as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed, lives will be lost. [continues 398 words]
Legalizing Pot Could Reduce the Murderous Power of Drug Cartels. In the late '90s, for a national magazine story on the issue of somehow making marijuana legal, I interviewed then-drug czar Gen. Barry McCaffrey. Of course, McCaffrey swatted away any notion that pot should be legal. It was addictive, he said, and it was the "gateway" drug that led to heroin and cocaine use. I told him that my own experience was nothing like that. Of the 10 or so friends I have kept up with from high school, none of us uses marijuana anymore, and most of us had gotten it out of our system by our early 20s. Sure, we experimented with other drugs through the years, but marijuana was not the gateway. The tendency of youth to experiment was the gateway. [continues 651 words]
Rising Lawlessness Echoes State Of '90s-Era Colombia MEXICO CITY - For months, the leaders of Tancitaro had held firm against the drug lords battling for control of this central Mexican town. Then one morning, after months of threats and violence from the traffickers, they finally surrendered. Before dawn, gunmen kidnapped the elderly fathers of the town administrator and the secretary of the City Council. Within hours, both officials resigned along with the mayor, the entire seven-member City Council, two department heads, the police chief and all 60 police officers. Tancitaro had fallen to the enemy. [continues 2172 words]
Five myths that caused the failed war next door. Mexico's current government took office on Dec. 1, 2006, but really only assumed power 10 days later, when Felipe Calderon, winner of a close presidential election that his leftist opponent petulantly refused to concede, donned a military jacket, declared an all-out war on organized crime and drug trafficking, and ordered the Mexican army out of its barracks and into the country's streets, highways, and towns. The bold move against odious adversaries (and change of topic) garnered Calderon broad support from the public and the international community, along with raised eyebrows among Mexico's political, business, and intellectual elites. [continues 3001 words]
Policy wonks and deficit hawks weren't the only ones paying attention when President Obama signed the Fiscal Year 2010 Consolidated Appropriations Act last week. HIV activists, public health experts and communities of drug users celebrated--not for what's in the appropriations bill, but for what's not in it: a ban on federal funding for needle exchange programs, which has appeared in the federal budget every year since 1988. After two decades, this change is a historic achievement. Obama had already missed one opportunity to lift the ban, neglecting to pull it out of his budget in May. Still, that same month former Seattle chief of police Gil Kerlikowske was sworn in as the director of national drug control policy, calling for a new common-sense approach to drug addiction. When the drug czar calls for an end to the war on drugs, it's clearly the start of a new era. [continues 2291 words]
Quick: What single plant can you use to build, insulate, and heat a house; help build and run cars; turn into the finest textiles; use to make tortillas, cheese, veggie burgers, perfumes, skin creams, and suntan lotions - and also to get stoned? Gotcha. The answer is none. But if you leave out the stoned part, you're talking about hemp, the non-smokable variety of cannabis sativa, botanical cousin of the cannabis that gets you high. It's currently grown legally in 30 industrial nations, has a history that dates back to the earliest days of man, was touted by George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, was probably used to make the first American flag, and - if given the chance - might help bring Texas farmers out of troubled times. [continues 3983 words]
When It Comes to Treatment, the White House Should Put Its Money Where Its Mouth Is In Baltimore last week, new U.S. drug czar Gil Kerlikowske made the case for expansion of drug courts to treat rather than imprison addicts and called for drugs to be considered a "public health crisis." Why, then, is the Obama administration proposing to spend an even higher percentage of its anti-drug resources on law enforcement than the administration of George W. Bush? Nowhere are these issues more resonant than in Baltimore. Felicia "Snoop" Pearson, a star of HBO's The Wire and a native of the city, said that her mother stole clothes off of her body for drug money and locked her in a closet. Darius Harmon, an 18-year-old learning-disabled boy from Baltimore, was killed in April by the Black Guerrilla Family gang because he was not good at selling drugs. Despite recent progress, the Drug Enforcement Administration in March found that Baltimore still has more drug-related crime than any other city in the nation. [continues 585 words]
How Right-Wing Posses Started the Crack Trade, and Other Tales That Will Blow Your Mind. Vivian Blake's War In the late 1970s, a young Jamaican man named Vivian Blake, a scholarship kid from the Tivoli Gardens ghetto of Kingston, arrived in New York as part of a traveling cricket exhibition, stuck around, and began selling marijuana. One of the last great political proxy fights of the Cold War was then unfolding in Jamaica: Both the left-wing party, friendly to Castro, and its right-wing opponents built violent electioneering posses to persuade friendly voters and attack unfriendly ones--800 Jamaicans died. Blake was affiliated with the right-wing Shower Posse. He helped funnel pot and, later, cocaine to the United States and sent guns back home to help the posses intimidate voters. After the election, the new government tried to drive the posses off the island, and many arrived in New York and Miami, fully formed, violent organizations, deprived of their political purpose and looking for something to do. [continues 1329 words]
Since 1998, the Drug Czar Has Been Mandated to Lie to the American People. So What Would a Fact-Based Drug Policy Look Like? AMONG OUR LEADERS in Washington, who's been the biggest liar? There are all too many contenders, yet one is so floridly surreal that he deserves special attention. Nope, it's not Dick Cheney or Alberto Gonzales or John Yoo. It's a trusted authority figure who's lied for 11 years now, no matter which party held sway. (Nope, it's not Alan Greenspan.) This liar didn't end-run Congress, or bully it, or have its surreptitious blessing at the time only to face its indignation later. No, this liar was ordered by Congress to lie--as a prerequisite for holding the job. [continues 803 words]
