In "A New Kind of Jail for the Opiate Age" (Sunday Review, June 18), Sam Quinones argues for in-jail treatment as a solution to rising opioid use. We should certainly improve treatment in jails. But by focusing on building drug treatment infrastructure inside the criminal justice system, we further institutionalize its placement there. This reinforces the belief that people battling addiction deserve punishment -- undoing years of progress to understand addiction as a health issue. Any contact with our justice system affects people beyond their time behind bars. Incarceration or a criminal conviction should not be a prerequisite to treatment. In many states, possession of opioids remains a felony. We should divert these people away from incarceration and into treatment programs instead. The writers are, respectively, director of the Justice Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at the N.Y.U. School of Law and a research associate in the program. [end]
To the Editor: Using jail as a program for drug users is a symptom of another urgent problem: mass incarceration, which increasingly takes the form of an overcrowded rural or small county jail. In 2010, Kenton County, Ky., built a very large jail for a county its size, equivalent to New York City's tripling the size of Rikers Island to 30,000 beds. Kenton's new jail is overcrowded, costs the county more than expected, and is soaking up tax dollars that could be used for innovative, community-based drug treatment that would look much more affordable if the jail weren't so large. [continues 65 words]
The U.S. has the highest incarceration rate in the world, but this hasn't solved our problems. There were a record 33,000 opioid deaths in the U.S. in 2015. Our homicide rate is seven times the average of 21 Western developed nations, plus Japan. Politicians are making jail the answer to addressing issues dealing with drug addiction, mental illness and violent crime. Yet jail doesn't seem to properly address these issues and often worsens the problems associated with them. [continues 54 words]
Drug use in jail is a reality and reducing harm is vital, say Richard Elliott and Rick Lines. Almost one-third of federal prisoners reported using drugs during the past six months. In December 2016, federal Health Minister Jane Philpott committed her government to a new national drug strategy that reinstates harm reduction as a non-negotiable pillar. It was a welcome announcement, signalling a modest shift away from the last decade's emphasis on prohibition and punishment - policies that continue to kill people who use drugs in Canada. [continues 590 words]
Mark Baratta works with drug users on the front lines of Ontario's opioid epidemic. But as deaths mount, Baratta's story illustrates how far society has to go to end the crisis . . . if it so chooses Like most people who might be called heroes, Mark Baratta shies away from the label. A lean and purposeful man, Baratta has saved 17 people, each on separate occasions. He chalks it up, with a shrug of his shoulders, to keeping his head in the presence of death. [continues 3104 words]
KITCHENER - The Crown will be seeking jail sentences for the owners of a Waterloo marijuana store charged after a police raid last summer. Nour Louka, 30, pleaded guilty to possession of marijuana for the purpose of trafficking. Her husband, Shady Louka, 31, pleaded guilty to careless storage of a 9 mm Glock handgun. They both face a string of other charges, including additional counts of possession of marijuana for the purpose of trafficking, after police raided their Waterloo Dispensary store on King Street North in uptown Waterloo last August. [continues 247 words]
'Prince' and 'Princess of Pot' face several drug-related charges after Toronto arrest Marc and Jodie Emery, Vancouver's first couple of cannabis, have been arrested, as police across the country raided seven of the couple's Cannabis Culture marijuana dispensaries, including a shop on West Hastings and a residence in Vancouver. The Emerys were charged Thursday with drug-related offences in Toronto, after raids in Toronto, Hamilton and Vancouver. They are due back in Toronto court this morning. The self-styled "Princess of Pot" were arrested Wednesday as they went to board a plane at Toronto's Pearson International Airport for a cannabis expo in Spain. [continues 665 words]
Dear Editor: I'm a retired paramedic. I did my first ambulance call in 1952 and my last in 1992 in Vancouver. I totally believe that not even five percent of addicts can be rehabilitated so I support the mayor of Coquitlam's suggestion to open up the hospitals at Esondale and get the addicts off the street and away from drugs is a good start. But the only way to stop this disaster and get drugs off the street once and for all is by giving jail time of 15 years for selling drug and 20 years for trafficking. When addicts can't get access to drugs, the problem will go away Ralph Wand Penticton [end]
Former corrections employee sentenced on drug trafficking A Sydney Mines woman was given a two-year federal jail sentence Monday after pleading guilty to drug trafficking at the Cape Breton Correctional Centre. Special federal prosecutor David Iannetti told the court that Nicole Marie Smith, 46, came to the attention of jail officials when a letter was found in which an inmate thanked Smith for bringing marijuana into the facility. Smith worked part time in the kitchen at the provincial jail and had struck up a friendship with a male inmate who also worked in the kitchen. [continues 316 words]
When Ottawa recently announced a multi-pronged strategy to fight the deadly fentanyl crisis - a strategy that includes supervised drug consumption sites - Health Minister Jane Philpott boasted of "our renewed, evidence-based approach to Canada's drug strategy." If Ottawa is so keen on an evidence-based approach to drugs, why did it walk away from mediation aimed at settling a lawsuit calling on the government to provide needle exchanges in prisons? Mediation sessions were scheduled this week but Ottawa's lawyers backed out at the last minute. The lawsuit, brought in part by a former inmate who acquired hepatitis C behind bars, is going forward. [continues 348 words]
WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama on Thursday commuted the 20-year prison sentenced imposed on Richard Ruiz Montes, convicted in 2008 for his role in the Modesto's pot-dealing California Healthcare Collective. In one of his final presidential acts, Obama used his executive authority to cut Montes' sentence by more than half. Now held at a federal facility in Atwater, according to the Bureau of Prisons' inmate locator, the 36-year-old Montes will be released May 19. He is identified as Richard by the White House and Bureau of Prisons, but has also been known as Ricardo. The White House listed his hometown as Escalon. [continues 184 words]
President Barack Obama on Thursday commuted the 20-year prison sentenced imposed on Richard Ruiz Montes, convicted in 2008 for his role in the Modesto's pot-dealing California Healthcare Collective. In one of his final presidential acts, Obama used his executive authority to cut Montes' sentence by more than half. Now held at a federal facility in Atwater, according to the Bureau of Prisons' inmate locator, the 36-year-old Montes will be released May 19. He is identified as Richard by the White House and Bureau of Prisons, but has also been known as Ricardo. The White House listed his hometown as Escalon. [continues 184 words]
[photo] A cell at El Reno Federal Correctional Institution in Oklahoma. President Obama toured the prison last week. (Saul Loeb / AFP-Getty Images) A bipartisan push to reduce the number of low-level drug offenders in prison is gaining momentum in Congress, but proposals may disappoint advocates hoping to slash the mandatory minimum sentences that are seen as chiefly responsible for overcrowding in the nation's detention facilities. House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) surprised advocates Thursday by saying he strongly supported holding a vote on a prison reform bill similar to one sponsored by Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, a moderate Republican from Wisconsin. The measure has been languishing in the House Judiciary Committee. [continues 694 words]
Arguing a Saskatchewan judge fumbled when he used potential pot legalization to justify giving a break to a former university football player caught with 21 pounds of marijuana, the Crown wants jail. "The new (pending) legislation does not mean all things marijuana are now legal," federal prosecutor Wade McBride said Thursday before the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal. The lawyer representing Seamus John Neary not only defended his client's sentence of probation, but took a second kick at a charter of rights argument. He contends a law prohibiting a conditional sentence for such a crime is cruel and unusual punishment - especially given the current government's stance regarding pot. [continues 419 words]
A leader of a ring that conspired to smuggle methamphetamine from San Diego to Hawaii has been sentenced in federal court to 28 years in prison, the U.S. Attorney's office in Honolulu said today. Jesse Wade Pelkey, 38, of Imperial Beach, Calif., was sentenced Thursday by Senior District Judge Helen Gillmor. In September, Pelkey pled guilty to conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute methamphetamine, according to a news release from Florence T. Nakakuni, U.S. Attorney for the District of Hawaii. [continues 84 words]
An Arlington police officer is popular on social media Thursday because of a video that shows he gave a teenager caught smoking marijuana in a movie theater parking lot an unorthodox alternative to being arrested: pushups. Officer Eric Ball was working off-duty Monday night at the theater in Arlington when someone told him that a teenager was smoking marijuana outside, WFAA-TV reported. Ball went outside to find the teen finishing a cigarette and discarding it, and Ball smelled marijuana when he approached him. [continues 175 words]
As Victor Emilio Cazares Gastellum stood in a San Diego courtroom for sentencing Tuesday, the judge acknowledged the defendant was unlike the vast majority of drug offenders he sees day in and day out. Cazares was not your typical drug mule caught crossing the border, nor was he a low-level distributor. Cazares, 53, was a kingpin, the head of a large Mexican drug-trafficking organization aligned with the powerful Sinaloa cartel. He was in the business of shipping tons of cocaine from producers in Colombia and Venezuela to Mexico and distributing the drug throughout the U.S. [continues 934 words]
