LITTLE ROCK - The Arkansas Supreme Court decision to keep medical marijuana's legalization on the ballot introduces some unpredictability to the November election and shifts attention to an issue that might not be easily defined by party labels. That's no small feat for an Arkansas election dominated by predictability when it comes to national politics and partisan bickering when it comes to the state level. With Republicans aiming to win control of the state Legislature for the first time since Reconstruction, this may be one of the few issues where Arkansas voters won't hew to traditional party lines. [continues 716 words]
WHEN I was a young man, I refused to smoke marijuana when offered the opportunity. I thought that it might interfere with my future career. At that time, I thought I might like to run for Congress and that if you were caught, you were disqualified. Of course, we now know that weed is a rite of passage. Presidents and presidential candidates freely admit to drug use. We also know that white middle class kids and their parents were exempt. It's tough to get caught smoking dope when you are on the 15th floor of a Park Avenue apartment. [continues 573 words]
Let's Devote Our Resources to the Real Drug Problem When I was a young man I refused to smoke marijuana when offered the opportunity. I thought that it might interfere with my future career. At that time I thought I might like to run for Congress and that if you were caught, you were disqualified. Of course, we now know that weed is a rite of passage. Presidents and presidential candidates freely admit to drug use. We also know that white middle class kids and their parents were exempt. [continues 591 words]
Cuomo Is on the Right Track in Trying to Further Decriminalize Marijuana New York State and the rest of the country have tried for a very long time to make marijuana go away. To say that it hasn't worked is to redefine understatement. Pot is, for all intents and purposes, mainstream. That may not be the most desirable turn of events, but it's a fact that Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has decided to confront. It's the right move. [continues 566 words]
"Harm comes from prior harm." As Deandra says this, I am sitting in the back of my classroom, taking notes. My students are sitting in a circle in the middle of the room, talking to each other about the questions on the board: "What is the purpose of prison? Do prisons work?" In front of them are annotated readings, lecture notes, and typed response papers. They seem to have forgotten that I am there. Deandra and Lee are discussing what would happen if there were no prisons. Deandra has just finished telling the story of a boy who, fearful of his abusive father, suffocates a girl rather than get in trouble for having a guest over when he is not supposed to. In this case, who should be punished? The boy who is clearly old enough to know his actions are wrong? The father who has instilled such tremendous fear in his son? [continues 3276 words]
How did America's addiction to prisons and mass incarceration get its start and spread from state to state? Perhaps the best explanation is found in a new book titled "A Plague of Prisons: The Epidemiology of Mass Incarceration in America." According to public health expert and Columbia professor Ernest Drucker, the rapid growth and spread of American prisons follows the classic life cycle of an infectious bacterial or viral epidemic. From 1970 to 2009, the number of federal prisoners increased from 21,094 to 208,118, while state prisons went from 177,737 to 1.4 million. When the 767,620 people in local jails are added in, America's grand total for 2009 was nearly 2.4 million people behind bars- a world record. As for New York, from 1970 to 2009, state inmates increased fourfold, from 12,059 to more than 58,000. [continues 339 words]
LOS ANGELES (FinalCall.com) - Mandatory minimum prison sentences ranked high among issues in prison reform for 2011 and the battle against inhumane prison policies remains critical in 2012, advocates say. A major piece of prison policy reform was the U.S. Sentencing Commission's June vote to apply the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 Amendment to Federal Sentencing Guidelines retroactively. The act reduced the disparate sentencing ratio for crack/powder cocaine, which disproportionately affected Blacks. The difference in sentencing for crack cocaine was 100 to 1 to powder cocaine. Powder cocaine was more often associated with White defendants. The change did not eliminate disparity but reduced it to 18 to 1, which eventually made some 12,000 offenders eligible to seek reduced sentences. [continues 890 words]
Nearly 40 years after tough new drug laws led to an explosive growth in prison rolls, New York State has dramatically reversed course, chalking up a 62 percent drop in people serving time for drug crimes today compared with 2000, according to a Poughkeepsie Journal analysis. The steep decline -- driven, experts said, by shifting attitudes toward drug offenders and lower crime -- means that nearly 17,000 fewer minorities serve state time today than in 2000, groups that were hardest hit by the so-called war on drugs. Overall, the prison population declined 22 percent. [continues 1547 words]
An Increasing Number Of World Leaders Are Concluding That Laws Against Drug Consumption Do More Harm Than Good. Tomorrow marks the 79th anniversary of the beginning of the end of the U.S. prohibition on alcohol. On that day in 1932 John D. Rockefeller Jr., a vociferous advocate of temperance, called for the repeal of the 18th amendment in a letter published in the New York Times. Rockefeller had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars lobbying for the constitutional prohibition on alcohol. But his letter did more than admit the error of his investment. Because of his moral authority on the matter, it effectively ended the conservative taboo against admitting that the whole experiment had failed. [continues 746 words]
Everyone knows that the American drug war is a total failure. Having spent $1 trillion in the last 40 years, we now find that marijuana is cheaper, more potent and readily available to anyone who wants it. During the past 10 years, polls show that public school students consistently say that marijuana is easier to get than cigarettes or alcohol. It is high time to end the insanity. Prohibition didn't work with alcohol and it won't work with drugs either. [continues 879 words]
Marks Devoted His Life to Change NY's Draconian Rockefeller Drug Laws and Helped Secure Clemency for Prisoners Rotting Away in Prison for Their Roles in Minor Drug Crimes. There are heroes and then there are heroes. My good friend Judge Jerry Marks, a former New York Supreme Court Justice, was a hero's hero. On March 9, he died at age 95. Judge Marks had a long and distinguished career as a New York elected official and jurist. [continues 638 words]
With more states looking for an economic solution to solve their budgetary problems, more prisoners are being released early from their sentences. Politicians are calling for ways to let individuals out of prison faster because of the economics of doing so. In New York State, which has reduced its prison population significantly because of Rockefeller Drug Law reforms, many prisoners are now returning to their communities. The question I pose is what do we do with them once they get out? How will they survive once ex-offenders return to the real world? Andrew Potash, a retired insurance entrepreneur and CEO, has an answer to this question. He wants to give back to society by creating businesses that employ the formerly incarcerated. He and his small team, Spring Into Action, were set to launch New York City's first mattress recycling business in October of 2010, until they came face-to-face with their greatest business challenge - bed bugs. [continues 533 words]
This year's historic vote in Congress to scale back the harsh and racially disparate mandatory sentences for federal crack cocaine offenses was a watershed event in the long campaign for a more rational approach to drug policy. The Fair Sentencing Act is expected to benefit about 3,000 defendants a year, with an average sentence reduction of twenty-seven months. Defendants convicted of possessing as little as five grams of crack-the weight of two pennies-no longer receive a mandatory five years in prison, and the quantity-based sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine offenses has been significantly reduced. [continues 591 words]
The recent vote defeating California's Proposition 19, legalizing the use of marijuana regrettably prolongs a drug policy that does not work. Low-level users will continue to be targeted rather than the drug cartels and drug lords who run free. Proposition 19 was voted down by a margin of 56 to 44 percent on Nov. 2. The attempt by its supporters to legalize the recreational sale and use of marijuana would have allowed local governments to regulate and tax the commercial production, distribution and sale of marijuana to adults. Sale to minors would have been illegal, as well as use on school premises, in public settings, and in the presence of minors. [continues 551 words]
Stephen Downing commanded one of the largest anti-drug operations in the nation as a member of the Los Angeles Police Department. As a part of the war on drugs, his department spent millions of dollars on equipment and personnel working to stamp out drug activity in Los Angeles. Needless to say, it didn't work. At retirement, Downing was deputy chief of the Los Angeles Police Department. Now he is a member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, a 15,000-member organization made up of police officers, district attorneys and judges who oppose prohibition and the cost in money and human lives. [continues 240 words]
This month legislation was signed into law by Governor Paterson that would bar legislative districts from counting imprisoned individuals in state prisons as part of their population. New York became the second state, following Maryland, to end the practice. For years New York activists called for the dismantling of prison-based gerrymandering (PBG) that allowed mostly rural counties to inflate their population numbers. This resulted in financial rewards for those communities that utilized it. Brent Staples of the NY Times colorfully described PBG when he once said, "There are many ways to hijack political power. One of them is to draw state or city legislative districts around large prisons -- and pretend that the inmates are legitimate constituents." The new change could dramatically change the state's political dynamics. [continues 568 words]
In 1985 I was sentenced to 15 years to life under the Rockefeller Drug Laws of New York State. I struggled to survive in the maximum security hell hole, Sing Sing, and did many things I was not proud of to stay alive. Being in prison for many years had drained me spiritually and emotionally. There were times when the only emotion I was aware of was a quiet, smoldering rage. Because of the barriers I'd built to survive, I'd become desensitized, and I knew it. There was still a part of me that could see myself from the outside in, and what I saw I didn't like: a callous, bitter individual consumed with the injustices of the world. I knew that I needed to heal if I ever wanted to interact normally with people upon release. [continues 683 words]
For many Democrats in Albany, it was a landmark achievement: the long-sought overhaul of New York's strict Rockefeller-era drug laws, repealing mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenders that critics said disproportionately and unfairly fell on blacks and Latinos. But that legislative victory last year has emerged as a litmus test in the increasingly bitter five-way Democratic primary battle for attorney general. One candidate, Kathleen A. Rice, the Nassau County district attorney, who many believe is the favored candidate of Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo, the Democratic candidate for governor, says she has always supported the drug law overhaul. Two other candidates, Assemblyman Richard L. Brodsky of Westchester County and State Senator Eric T. Schneiderman, who represents parts of Manhattan and the Bronx, have assailed her in recent weeks, saying that Ms. Rice had opposed the overhaul last year and had changed her views only recently, after she decided to run for higher office. [continues 1068 words]
First published in print: Saturday, June 5, 2010 I sympathize with Rhonda Swan's sentiments lamenting the Obama administration's failure to extensively change the prevailing policies that drive the drug war ("Obama prolongs failed war," commentary, June 1). I, too, have been disappointed with the Obama administration's failure to match its promising rhetoric with reality. Click here to find out more! However, is it realistic to expect that a 40-year-old war can be completely dismantled by a president 16 months into his term? The war on drugs supports bloated law enforcement agencies, the $68-billion-a-year prison industry, the arms industry and a thriving drug-testing industry -- not to mention drug lords worldwide. [continues 146 words]
The struggle to end America's disastrous war on drugs is a struggle for common sense, for human rights, and of course for racial justice. How could it not be, given the extraordinary and disproportionate extent to which people of color - and especially black people - are arrested, prosecuted and incarcerated for drug offenses? Almost everyone gets it these days. The U.S. Senate recently voted unanimously to reform the racially discriminatory federal crack/powder mandatory minimum drug laws. Last year New York finally approved a major reform of the draconian Rockefeller Drug Laws that have sent hundreds of thousands of people - overwhelmingly black and Latino - to prison for absurd lengths of time. In Connecticut a few years ago, the state legislature passed - and Republican Governor Rell signed - a bill to reform the state's crack/powder laws. And this year New Jersey became the first state to reform its popular but notoriously unjust and counterproductive "drug free school zone" law. [continues 963 words]
