A UCLA Scientist Targeted by Animal Rights Militants Defends Her Research on Addiction and the Brain. For years, I have watched with growing concern as my UCLA colleagues have been subjected to increasing harassment, violence and threats by animal rights extremists. In the last 15 months, these attempts at intimidation have included the placement of a Molotov cocktail-type device at a colleague's home and another under a colleague's car -- thankfully, they didn't ignite -- as well as rocks thrown through windows, phone and e-mail threats, banging on doors in the middle of the night and, on several occasions, direct confrontations with young children. [continues 761 words]
Revised Guidelines Lessen Disparity in Prison Terms for Crack Versus Powder. A change in federal sentencing guidelines has quietly narrowed the huge discrepancy in prison time for convictions involving powder versus crack cocaine, after a 20-year battle over the issue. Since 1988, possession of five grams of crack cocaine - an amount equal to five packets of sugar substitute - landed a person in jail for five years. But people caught with cocaine powder would have to possess 100 times that amount, or 500 grams, to get the same five-year stint behind bars. [continues 837 words]
Back in March 2002, retired New Jersey State Police Lt. Jack Cole made headlines when he and four other former cops teamed up to form the drug policy reform group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. The group's message is simple: The Drug War is a lie that ruins lives and damages the reputation of and respect for police. If you want to control the market for illicit drugs, LEAP asserts, legalize them - it's the only way to regulate their distribution and use. In just five years, LEAP has grown from five founding members to about 10,000 members, including former cops, Drug Enforcement Agency agents, judges, and prosecutors. And in that time, Cole has delivered more than 600 talks to groups around the country, talking to community groups (he's big on the Rotary club circuit), academics, and public officials, and has consistently transformed skeptics into believers. Cole's intensity and passion are palpable, and his argument is unassailably logical: LEAP wants the Drug War to end - now. In town last month to speak at UT, Cole sat down with Reefer Madness to discuss the War on Drugs and the inevitability of legalization. [continues 2381 words]
Anything that keeps ex-offenders from attending college makes it more likely that they will be caught in the revolving door that leads to prison. Tens of thousands of people have been pushed in that direction since the 1990s when Congress passed a law that barred even minor drug offenders from receiving federal education aid. The law applies even to offenses so minor that they are normally punished by probation, a small fine or community service. Congress softened the law last year, eliminating a provision that denied assistance to people with even petty drug offenses more than a decade old. Now it's time to repeal the remaining part of the law, which affects students who commit crimes while actually receiving aid. [continues 140 words]
Crack cocaine offenders will receive shorter prison sentences under more lenient federal sentencing guidelines that went into effect yesterday. The United States Sentencing Commission, a government panel that recommends appropriate federal prison terms, estimated that the new guidelines would reduce the federal prison population by 3,800 in 15 years. The new guidelines will reduce the average sentence for crack cocaine possession to 8 years 10 months from 10 years 1 month. At a sentencing commission hearing in Washington on Nov. 13, members will consider whether to apply the guidelines retroactively to an estimated 19,500 crack cocaine offenders who were sentenced under the earlier, stricter guidelines. [continues 500 words]
The early 1990s were the age of drive-by shootings, drug deals gone bad, crack cocaine, and gangsta rap. Between 1960 and 1990, the annual number of murders in New Haven, Connecticut, rose from 6 to 31, the number of rapes from 4 to 168, the number of robberies from 16 to 1,784--all this while the city's population declined by 14 percent. Crime was concentrated in central cities: In 1990 two-fifths of Pennsylvania's violent crimes were committed in Philadelphia, home to one-seventh of the state's population. The subject of crime dominated American domestic-policy debates. [continues 5143 words]