ITHACA, N.Y. - A bustling economy. Record-low unemployment. A ballooning heroin problem. That's how Mayor Svante Myrick describes Ithaca, where he hopes to open the nation's first safe injection facility - a place where heroin users can shoot their illegal drugs under medical supervision and without fear of arrest. His proposal, part of a plan to address drug abuse in the college town of 31,000 in central New York, is not a novel idea. Safe injection sites, which also connect clients to treatment programs and offer emergency care to reverse overdoses, exist in 27 cities in other parts of the world. Some have been around for decades. [continues 592 words]
To the Editor: The recent increase in heroin use in Boston and throughout the country should come as no surprise to anyone. Following an increase in the prescribing of opioid painkillers, a number of steps were taken to reduce such prescribing markedly, but with no attention whatever paid to the patients who had become dependent, not even offers of detoxification. Many, predictably, turned to the much cheaper and widely available alternative of heroin. The only tangential reference to treatment in your article is the statement that a particular stretch of Massachusetts Avenue is known as Methadone Mile. Would that it were so! Along with all other forms of treatment, methadone maintenance - the gold standard of care - should be readily available to all who want and need help for their dependence, and who with tragic frequency die without it. The writer is a health care consultant. [end]
To the Editor: It's not easy to understand heroin addicts. They eschew replacement drugs like methadone and Suboxone that reduce sickness and cravings so they can shoot up and experience that momentary rush and ephemeral bliss. Many of them know that they are chasing that "first high," that first time that opened the door to heaven and hell. Shooting up is an extraordinary experience, but as much as they try, addicts will not get that first high again. For these people, life holds little meaning or joy outside of getting high. Their addiction gives them a reason to exist, a focus and its rewards. [continues 84 words]
To the Editor: Re "Use of Heroin in Public View Across the U.S." (front page, March 7): Until they are ready for treatment and have access to it, people with an addiction to heroin will find a place to inject, whether it's in a fast-food restaurant bathroom, a church basement, a public bus or an abandoned building. Making restrooms inaccessible will only push the problem elsewhere. Nurse-supervised safe injection sites like Insite in Vancouver, Canada, have been demonstrated to save lives and provide a pathway toward recovery. We need to follow suit. Brookline, Mass. The writer is a doctor of internal medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and on the faculty of Harvard Medical School. [end]
In the first 10 days of March, heroin and other opiates are believed to have claimed as many as 10 lives in Buffalo. But that's only a portion. Since the beginning of the year, city detectives have determined at least 25 individuals died from overdoses. "We are at epidemic levels and there is no end in sight," Buffalo Police Commissioner Daniel Derenda said Thursday. "Sadly, it is probably going to get much worse before it gets better." But the epidemic goes beyond Buffalo. [continues 321 words]
Addicts' Families Form Web of Support Families of heroin and other opiate addicts started meeting last year in Amherst and the Town of Tonawanda to offer each other support. Some 500 people last week packed Buffalo's North Park Theatre for a town hall-style meeting on the deadly epidemic. And as many as 200 people are expected to attend a meeting in a Depew church Wednesday in search of answers. All of this represents a grassroots response to the epidemic killing hundreds of local residents and a belief that government alone cannot solve the problem. [continues 443 words]
After federal prosecutors declined this week to file criminal charges against a white New York City police officer who fatally shot an unarmed black teenager in the Bronx four years ago, the Police Department's long-delayed internal case against him will proceed. The mother of the teenager, Ramarley Graham, stood at City Hall on Thursday and called on Officer Richard Haste, who shot her son, to be fired along with other officers of the Street Narcotics Enforcement Unit involved in the episode. [continues 316 words]
To the Editor: Re "Governors Will Create Plan to Curb Opioid Use" (news article, Feb. 22): The alarming rise in prescription drug abuse, particularly opioid abuse, is attracting increased attention from public officials and dominated discussions at the recent National Governors Association meeting. The epidemic in drug overdose deaths has led to calls for new treatment protocols, limits on prescriptions and expansion of treatment services. Also needed is a significant expansion of prevention efforts. Over 30 years of rigorous scientific research has identified a growing number of prevention approaches that are effective, produce lasting results and can save taxpayers a good deal of money. [continues 132 words]
To the Editor: Re "Governors Join the War Against Opioids" (editorial, Feb. 25): Everyone is talking about opioid prescribing best practices: the National Governors Association, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and dozens of national and state public and private organizations. But I haven't heard any talk about the need for improved security in retail dispensing standards. It has been over 45 years since Washington last took action with the Poison Prevention Packaging Act of 1970, which mandated child-resistant standards for dispensing prescription medication. This is unforgivable. [continues 110 words]
The Feb. 23 editorial, "Revisit medical marijuana," should've held Gov. Andrew Cuomo and federal lawmakers more accountable for perpetuating irrational policies toward cannabis plants. Many advocates who worked so hard to pass the 2014 Compassionate Care Act blame Mr. Cuomo alone for strictly limiting public access to medical cannabis. The governor means well to prohibit marijuana smoking for medical purposes, which is legal in other states. Lighting any dried plant material on fire and inhaling the smoke risks damage to lung tissue, so recommending it would violate an oath taken by medical professionals to do no harm. [continues 185 words]
New York's medicinal cannabis program was drafted and designed primarily to be politically expedient, not to adequately serve the state's patient population ("Revisit medical marijuana," Feb. 23). Specifically, the program fails to acknowledge chronic pain or neuropathy as a qualifying condition, despite the reality that there exist numerous U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved clinical trials finding the plant to be safe and efficacious as an analgesic agent. A review published earlier this year in the Canadian Journal of Anesthesia assessing the clinical use of cannabinoids for pain in more than 1,300 subjects concludes, "The recent literature indicates that currently available cannabinoids are modestly effective analgesics that provide a safe, reasonable therapeutic option for managing chronic non-cancer-related pain." [continues 165 words]
Program's Expansion Targets Opioid Overdoses Over the weekend, three people died in Buffalo from opiate overdoses. On Monday, a woman barely survived an overdose. With the death toll increasing by the day, Buffalo Police on Monday announced that they are co-sponsoring with the Erie County Health Department more free classes throughout the city to train citizens in how to use Narcan, the opiate antidote. "We are concerned about the health and safety of city residents," Deputy Police Commissioner Kimberly L. Beaty said. "Opioids do not discriminate. That is why we are making this extra effort with the classes." [continues 571 words]
The national media, yea, the international media is abuzz about the proposed legal heroin injection facility that is included in the "Ithaca Plan" released by the Municipal Drug Policy Committee (MDPC) put into motion by Mayor Svante Myrick. The focus is on the "shooting gallery" because, as U.S. law stands now, it would be illegal to set up such a place without the declaration of an emergency by the governor or the President. Isn't it just like the national and international media to make a big deal about something that has so much prurient interest and yet is really just a small part of a much broader, more ambitious, more practical campaign? [continues 869 words]
A Four-Pillar Plan The supervised injection facility for heroin users proposed as part of Ithaca's new municipal drug policy garnered lots of media attention, but not much in the way of praise from local law enforcement leaders. Tompkins County Sheriff Kenneth Lansing said his department was not consulted in the development of the drug plan. "We all know that people that are doing things they shouldn't be doing are paranoid, and I'm just not sure how safe they're going to feel going to a facility that's going to allow them to do this," Lansing said about the injection facility. "There are hurdles with the legality to look at. Nothing against the mayor; I think he's doing a hell of a job, no doubt about it, and the plan has some great ideas. I just can't accept [the injection facility], and I can't support it." [continues 581 words]
On Feb. 23, the night before Mayor Svante Myrick officially announced the city's new drug plan, there was a panel discussion on the history of municipal drug policy. Ithaca resident Herebeorht Howland-Bolton, 26, surprised the audience of about 150 people gathered at Cinemapolis when he spoke up during the question-and-answer period. He told the audience he had overdosed just four hours earlier in his apartment on the Commons. His girlfriend, Janice, 20, who asked that her last name not be printed in this article, found him unresponsive on the floor and called 911. [continues 1717 words]
To the Editor: Re "Why Are White Death Rates Rising?" (Op-Ed, Feb. 22): Andrew J. Cherlin does not answer a central question about the fall in whites' life expectancy that is driven largely by opioid overdose: Why are whites turning to opioids (rather than other things)? Our research demonstrates the development of a two-tier system of drug policy and clinical practice built on racial stereotypes about who is predisposed to abuse opioids that gave whites the dubious "privilege" of unparalleled access to opioids and that ultimately led to higher death rates. [continues 127 words]
State governments are at the front lines of the country's epidemic of drug overdose deaths. That's why it is important that the National Governors Association says it will come up with protocols for dispensing prescription painkillers that are among the biggest sources of addiction and abuse in the country. The protocols, or guidelines, would restrict how and under what circumstances doctors could prescribe a category of pain drugs known as opioids. They might, for example, impose limits on how many pills doctors could prescribe to patients who have had minor surgery or dental procedures. [continues 447 words]
Albany, N.Y. (AP) - The mayor of Ithaca wants his city in upstate New York to host the nation's first supervised injection facility, enabling heroin users to shoot illegal drugs into their bodies under the care of a nurse without getting arrested by police. Canada, Europe and Australia are working to reduce overdose deaths with these facilities, but in the United States, even the idea of creating a supervised injection site faces significant legal and political challenges. That has to change and quickly, said Ithaca Mayor Svante Myrick. [continues 543 words]
Ithaca Mayor Svante Myrick wants the city to be the first in the U.S. to offer a supervised injection facility, where heroin users would be able to shoot up under the care of a nurse. The facility is one piece of a comprehensive new approach he wants Ithaca to take against the scourge of addiction. A comprehensive approach following the four pillars of treatment, harm reduction, public safety and prevention will be announced officially Wednesday, when Myrick and the Municipal Drug Policy Committee unveils "The Ithaca Plan: A Public Health and Safety Approach to Drugs and Drug Policy." [continues 1542 words]
In New Approach, City Plans to Treat Addiction As Public Health Issue. ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) - The mayor of Ithaca wants his city in upstate New York to host the nation's first supervised injection facility, enabling heroin users to shoot illegal drugs into their bodies under the care of a nurse without getting arrested by police. The son of an addict who abandoned his family, Ithaca Mayor Svante Myrick is only 28 years old, but knows intimately how destructive drugs can be. As he worked his way from a homeless shelter into the Ivy League at Cornell University and then became Ithaca's youngest mayor four years ago, Mr. Myrick encountered countless people who never got the help they needed. [continues 452 words]
Should incriminating evidence be used against a defendant if it was discovered in the course of an illegal police stop? That was the question before the Supreme Court on Monday, the first day of oral arguments since the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. The court has been weakening the Fourth Amendment's defense against illegal searches for years. Monday's case gives the justices an opportunity to restore some of its power. The case, Utah v. Strieff, started in 2006, when the Salt Lake City police got an anonymous tip reporting drug activity at a house. An officer monitored the house for several days and became suspicious at the number of people he saw entering and leaving. When one of those people, Edward Strieff, left to walk to a nearby convenience store, the officer stopped him and asked for his identification. [continues 348 words]
Rolling Papers It's not exactly "Spotlight," but it is about journalists. "Rolling Papers," a documentary, chronicles the response of The Denver Post to the legalization of marijuana in Colorado: The news organization appointed a marijuana editor, Ricardo Baca. The film follows him and several of his writers throughout 2014 as they define their new beat. The novelty of watching reporters get high so they can write reviews of the newly legal products gets old quickly, but that's really just a sideshow in this film by Mitch Dickman. Of more interest are the substantive subjects Mr. Baca and his crew look into, like false claims by dealers about potency. Especially compelling is the phenomenon of parents who bring seriously ill children to Colorado in the belief that marijuana is the cure for what ails them. [continues 110 words]
States are finally backing away from the draconian sentencing policies that swept the country at the end of the last century, driving up prison costs and sending too many people to jail for too long, often for nonviolent offenses. Many are now trying to turn around the prison juggernaut by steering drug addicts into treatment instead of jail and retooling parole systems that once sent people back to prison for technical violations. But the most effective way to keep people out of prison once they leave is to give them jobs skills that make them marketable employees. That, in turn, means restarting prison education programs that were shuttered beginning in the 1990s, when federal and state legislators cut funding to show how tough they were on crime. [continues 587 words]
To the Editor: Re "When Addiction Has a White Face" (Op-Ed, Feb. 9): Ekow N. Yankah writes that we should "learn from our meanest moments" in responding to drug addiction as we move forward. But it's not too late to repair some of the damage caused by mistakes of the past. Nearly 6,000 individuals are still serving time in federal prison under mandatory crack penalties, adopted by Congress at the height of the war on drugs, that punished people convicted of crack offenses much more severely than those convicted of powder cocaine. Because of racial disparities in law enforcement, more than 80 percent of these prisoners are African-American. [continues 142 words]
I am writing in response to The News article, "23 dead here from opiates over 11 days." Does it not strike anyone else as outrageous, the fact that a very sick couple from halfway across the state knew where to come, Buffalo, and who to contact, a pusher, to get their poison? And apparently the local drug enforcement agents don't know? Millions are spent in these agencies. For God's sake, get these murderers off our streets. One less pusher could mean 10-plus fewer overdoses. Narcan is not the answer. Virginia Hughes Dunkirk [end]
WHEN crack hit America in the mid-1980s, for African-Americans, to borrow from Ta-Nehisi Coates, civilization fell. Crack embodied instant and fatal addiction; we saw endless images of thin, ravaged bodies, always black, as though from a famined land. And always those desperate, cracked lips. Our hearts broke learning the words "crack baby." But mostly, crack meant shocking violence, terrifying gangs and hollowed-out inner cities. For those living in crack-plagued areas, the devastation was all too real. Children learned which ways home were safe and which gang to join to avoid beatings, or worse. [continues 795 words]
To the Editor: Shame is generally a result of the opinion of other people rather than the failure to "live up to one's own standards." In my work as chairman of a physician health program, we have found that the fear of losing a relationship, professional position and so on is the most powerful motivator to influence one's choice to enter and remain in treatment. Relapse in addiction is common, as high as 60 percent after long-term treatment and much higher after shorter treatment. [continues 128 words]
To the Editor: Sally L. Satel and Scott O. Lilienfeld argue that we should shame people to fight addiction. Unfortunately, while they cite data on shame in non-addicted populations, they ignore far more relevant research, which shows uniformly negative results. In 2007, William R. Miller and William L. White reviewed research on "confrontation" in addiction treatment, a strategy that aims to shame and humiliate, using verbal attacks and even extreme tactics like making people wear diapers or dress as "bums" or prostitutes. [continues 123 words]
To the Editor: Sally L. Satel and Scott O. Lilienfeld criticize American culture for promulgating the idea that shame is "a damaging, useless emotion." They criticize efforts to "eradicate" shame (by likening drug addiction to cancer) for those with addictions, worrying that such people will see their "habits as unalterable." Shame, as a universal social emotion, serves an evolutionarily adaptive function. It is also extremely painful and often dealt with by hiding. Contrary to the writers' assertions, our culture tends to stigmatize people with addictions - to wit, Drs. Satel and Lilienfeld use the pejorative label "addicts." Such people avoid treatment because of shame and destroy themselves in the process. [continues 113 words]
To the Editor: Re "Can Shame Be Useful?," by Sally L. Satel and Scott O. Lilienfeld (Sunday Review, Jan. 24): Drs. Satel and Lilienfeld disparage what they describe as "a well-intentioned campaign to eradicate feelings of shame in addicted people." They credit "a spasm of self-reproach" with enabling "many" addicts to quit, ignoring the fact that addiction has for decades been recognized as a chronic, notoriously recidivist, treatable but as yet incurable medical condition, and not, in the writers' words, a "destructive habit." [continues 92 words]
Michael J. Kennedy, who as a criminal lawyer championed lost causes and deeply unpopular defendants - including John Gotti Sr., Huey P. Newton and Timothy Leary - and finally won freedom for Jean S. Harris, the convicted killer of Dr. Herman Tarnower, the Scarsdale Diet doctor, died on Monday in Manhattan. He was 78. The cause was complications of pneumonia, which developed while he was being treated for cancer, his wife, Eleanora, said. A steadfast defender of the underdog and the First Amendment, Mr. Kennedy represented radicals including Rennie Davis, Bernardine Dohrn and Mr. Newton, co-founder of the Black Panther Party. His clients also included the Native American protesters at Wounded Knee, S.D., the family of the rogue real estate heir Robert A. Durst; Mr. Leary, the LSD guru; and Mr. Gotti, the mob boss. [continues 742 words]
To the Editor: Re "Drug Deaths Reach White America" (editorial, Jan. 25): While heroin overdose deaths afflict white neighborhoods as never before, in New York City the worst damage is found in communities that have suffered the longest. The highest rate of heroin overdose death is Hunts Point/Mott Haven in the Bronx, where the problem is not new. In contrast, a Staten Island community, once untouched by heroin, is second highest. This epidemic is multifaceted, and so must be the response. [continues 108 words]
To the Editor: Your article says the United States has not seen death rates among young white adults so high "since the end of the AIDS epidemic more than two decades ago." Not only is the AIDS epidemic not over - 50,000 people in the United States are newly infected every year - but the rise in drug abuse is spawning a new generation of H.I.V. infections, most recently in Indiana and Kentucky. We cannot ignore the spike in deaths from overdoses. But neither can we be blind to the direct correlation between drug abuse and H.I.V.-AIDS. [continues 74 words]
To the Editor: The dramatic increase in drug overdose deaths is not new to drug treatment. For several years treatment providers have been racing to save the lives of young Americans addicted to opioids as what started as a surge in prescription drug abuse morphed into a full-blown opioid epidemic. It is also not news that intensive residential and outpatient treatment services are in short supply, and what resources are available in many parts of the country are often prohibitively expensive for the vulnerable populations who need them the most. [continues 119 words]
To the Editor: Your compelling article "Drug Overdoses Propel Rise in Mortality Rates of Whites" (front page, Jan. 17) ends with this quote: "There are people whose lives are so hard they break." But we know that lives don't break overnight. Most people with substance use disorders started using alcohol or other drugs before the age of 18, when the brain is still developing and teenagers are vulnerable. Sadly, we need to consider more "upstream" approaches to address the opiate epidemic. We should focus more effort on those who begin to use in their early teens and engage young people in honest conversations about why they are using alcohol and drugs. Then we can help them deal with issues like stress, anxiety or trauma that contribute to their use. [continues 55 words]
To the Editor: Re "Mexico's New Blood Politics" (Sunday Review, Jan. 17): Ioan Grillo's conclusion that the United States (and American taxpayers) "should use its drug-war aid to push harder" for anti-corruption and judicial reforms is off base. As a political analyst living and working in Mexico for the last three decades, I have watched with horror how the United States-Mexico drug war strategy has led to the explosion of violence and criminal activity here. The deep-rooted complicity between government officials and security forces on the one hand and cartels on the other means that the training, equipment and firepower given in aid and sold to the Mexican government fuel violence on both sides. [continues 95 words]
EARLIER this month, former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida opened up on a subject he had once chided reporters for asking about: his daughter, Noelle, who, he said, "was addicted to drugs." In a video released by the campaign, Mr. Bush speaks plainly about his daughter's struggle, her time in jail and drug court, and her recovery. "I can look in people's eyes and I know that they've gone through the same thing that Columba and I have," he said, referring to his wife. [continues 874 words]
Mexico City - ON the morning of Jan. 2, a team of hired killers set off for the home of 33-year-old Gisela Mota, who only hours before had been sworn in as the first female mayor of Temixco, a sleepy spa town an hour from Mexico City. Ms. Mota was still in her pajamas as the men approached her parents' breezeblock house. She was in the bedroom, but most of her family was in the front room, cooing over a newborn baby. As the family prepared a milk bottle, the assassins smashed the door open. Amid the commotion, Ms. Mota came out of her bedroom and said firmly, "I am Gisela." In front of her terrified family, the men beat Ms. Mota and shot her several times, killing her. [continues 1708 words]
Defendant's Lawyer Argues Punishment Was Excessive Given Efforts to Legalize Pot A Canadian man has been handed a mandatory life sentence for his role in a multi-million-dollar drug-trafficking operation that smuggled thousands of kilograms of marijuana into the United States, authorities said. Michael (Mickey) Woods, 45, of Cornwall, Ont., who had been convicted following a six-day jury trial last summer, was sentenced in federal court in Syracuse, N.Y. despite objections that the punishment was cruel and unusual. The court also ordered a $45-million (U.S.) judgment against him. Woods and co-accused Gaetan (Gates) Dinelle, 42, also of Cornwall, were found guilty of membership in three separate but related conspiracies, each involving a tonne or more of marijuana destined for the United States. [continues 500 words]
ALBANY - New York joined the ranks of nearly half the states on Thursday in allowing the use of medical marijuana with the opening of eight dispensaries statewide, serving a variety of tinctures, concentrates, vapors and other forms of the drug. How many patients actually received medicine from those dispensaries, however, was uncertain; several locations around the state had customers who entered, but it was not clear if any actually bought the drug, or were qualified to do so under the state's strict guidelines. On Thursday, officials at the state's Department of Health said that only 51 patients had been certified for the program thus far, though that process only began on Dec. 23 and requires the approval of a physician who has registered with the state. [continues 905 words]
ALBANY, N.Y. - New York joined the ranks of nearly half the states Thursday in allowing the use of medical marijuana with the opening of eight dispensaries statewide, serving a variety of syrups, concentrates, and other nonsmokable forms of the drug. How many patients will initially visit those dispensaries is uncertain. Officials at the state's Department of Health said that by Wednesday only 51 patients had qualified for the drug. Such certification, however, began only Dec. 23 and requires the approval of a physician who has registered with the state. [continues 186 words]
ALBANY (AP) - New Yorkers with cancer, AIDS, Parkinson's disease, or other qualifying conditions will be able to obtain medical marijuana as early as Thursday, 18 months after lawmakers passed what is considered one of the strictest medical cannabis programs in the nation. The program is off to a slow start: Only 150 physicians have completed the required registration with the state, and only eight of 20 dispensaries expect to open on Thursday. The remaining 12 are expected to open by month's end. [continues 121 words]
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) - A New York company says it will soon offer the first certified kosher medical pot. Vireo Health says its nonsmokable medical cannabis products have been certified as conforming to the Jewish dietary law by the Orthodox Union. Vireo says it's the first time a medical cannabis product has been deemed kosher. The Orthodox Union says it awarded certification after inspecting Vireo's facilities to ensure the marijuana was grown and processed according to kosher standards. Those include, for example, insect-free plants. Vireo says the certification will help the company serve patients among New York's Jewish population, the nation's largest. Its program is slated to start next month and will serve patients in New York state with certain qualifying conditions. [end]
America has been awash in Prohibition-era nostalgia of late, with speakeasy-style bars, artisanal moonshine and "bootlegger balls" proliferating from New York to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to Los Angeles, where revelers in period dress will pack that city's 1930s Union Station to ring in the New Year. But in her new book, "The War on Alcohol: Prohibition and the Rise of the American State" (W. W. Norton), the historian Lisa McGirr tells anything but a nostalgic story. The 18th Amendment, she argues, didn't just give rise to vibrant night life and colorful, Hollywood-ready characters, like Isidor Einstein, New York's celebrated "Prohibition Agent No. 1." More enduringly, and tragically, it also radically expanded the federal government's role in law enforcement, with consequences that can be seen in the crowded prisons of today. [continues 983 words]
My great-grandfather Vincenzo negotiated Prohibition by fermenting two barrels of wine a year. It was perfectly legal, he insisted. Vincenzo was lucky to be a New Yorker. In her fine history of Prohibition, "The War on Alcohol," Lisa McGirr, a professor of history at Harvard, shows us that a poor Italian in Illinois or a black man in Virginia might very well have been jailed, shot or sentenced to a chain gang. Chain gangs are a far cry from Prohibition's lore, which imagines puritans winning a ban on liquor that America flatly rejected. Magazines gleefully published "bartender's guides," directing the thirsty to the nearest whiskey. The law spawned crime, shootouts and a kind of gangster romance embodied by Jay Gatsby. Worse, drinking became hip. Young people -sported flasks and haunted speakeasies. Eventually, inevitably, the whole mess -collapsed. [continues 513 words]
It wafts down the pavement, an unmistakable odor more Haight-Ashbury than New York - the tang of marijuana smoke in the city's streets. If the smell (and the lightheadedness a passer-by may feel) is anything to judge by, lighting up and strolling around seems increasingly common in pockets of Brooklyn, on side streets in Manhattan and in other public spaces. Street smokers say they are emboldened by laws that have legalized the recreational use of marijuana in other parts of the country and by the relatively low-key comments by New York's leaders, including the police commissioner, about the drug. [continues 1032 words]
To the Editor: Re "Cut Sentences for Nonviolent Felons" (editorial, Nov. 23): Like you, I wish that the sentencing reform legislation pending in Congress went further. But the reality is that more ambitious reform proposals do not have enough support to pass in this Congress. That's why I negotiated the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act with Senator Chuck Grassley. Our bill has strong support from the civil rights community and passed the Senate Judiciary Committee on a strong bipartisan vote. Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, has pledged to bring it before the full Senate next year. [continues 118 words]
A recent letter stated: "Legalizing drugs would eliminate a lot of crime." It was spot on. Let me expand. When Prohibition ended, criminals lost their monopoly in supplying alcohol to the public. Without the monopoly, their income dried up. Their (sometimes poisonous) product couldn't compete with the good stuff put out by the newly back in business, old line brewers and distillers. Unfortunately, the prohibition on alcohol was switched to heroin, cocaine and marijuana. Even more unfortunately, the results have been even worse. Prohibition had corrupted whole police departments. We now have whole countries, Mexico for one, devastated by the international criminal drug gangs. Our own law enforcement and criminal justice system is overwhelmed by a war on drugs that can't be won. [continues 52 words]
To the Editor: Regarding your thoughtful Nov. 23 editorial "Cut Sentences for Nonviolent Felons," mass incarceration is self-perpetuating. Nonviolent drug offenders are eventually released back into society with dismal job prospects and the equivalent of an advanced degree in criminality. Children of inmates are at increased risk of educational failure, joblessness, addiction and delinquency. Turning nonviolent drug offenders into unemployable ex-cons is a senseless waste of tax dollars. If we can reduce highly addictive tobacco use without arresting smokers and imprisoning tobacco retailers, we can do the same for less addictive albeit illegal drugs. Destroying the futures and families of citizens who make unhealthy choices doesn't benefit anyone. Washington The writer is a policy analyst for Common Sense for Drug Policy. [end]
In the last few years, America's out-of-control incarceration boom has finally started to get the sustained public scrutiny, and condemnation, that it deserves. But one key element of the story still receives too little attention: the number of women in the nation's prisons and jails. Men account for more than 90 percent of those behind bars. But the number of female inmates, most of whom are mothers, has been growing at an even faster rate than the overall prison population. In 1980 there were just over 15,000 women in state prisons. By 2010 there were nearly 113,000. When jail inmates are added in, there are about 206,000 women currently serving time - nearly one-third of all female prisoners in the world. [continues 406 words]
Inside New York
