Fuck Yeah Drug Policy
— Albert Einstein
Tijuana Teen Died at Border After Drinking Liquid Meth
Mexican high school student Cruz Marcelino Velázquez Acevedo, 16, died from drinking highly concentrated liquid methamphetamine at a San Diego border crossing as he tried to persuade inspectors that it was only apple juice, according to an autopsy report released Wednesday.
The teen, described as “an average student” with “no discipline problems” by his principal at Cobach Siglo XXI, had been carrying a shoulder bag with two small bottles of the amber-colored liquid meth as he walked alone into the San Ysidro pedestrian crossing area from Mexico on Nov. 18. The bottles initially went undetected, but when he was asked about them a second time while in custody about visa issues, he took “a big sip” in an attempt to prove the liquid wasn’t meth. Shortly after, he began screaming in pain about “the chemicals,” yelling in Spanish, “My heart! My heart!” He died hours later at a hospital from acute meth intoxication.
Children are caught with meth several times a week at San Diego crossings, an “alarming increase” according to a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement representative. They are typically paid $50 to $200 a trip. To avoid detection, meth is dissolved in water and disguised in juice bottles, windshield wiper fluid containers, and gas tanks. It is later converted back to crystals.
This trend coincides with the increasing supply of Mexican meth in the U.S. San Ysidro, the port of entry Acevedo was passing through, is the nation’s busiest border crossing and has emerged as a major corridor for smuggling meth in the past five years as Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel has increased its presence in the area. The cartel dominates the Asia-Pacific-Mexico-U.S. meth trade, controlling 80% of the market, according to a Mexican security report released in April. Their estimated revenue from meth sales is about $3 billion a year.
5. NYC Comptroller Proposes Marijuana Legalization
New York City Comptroller and mayoral candidate John Liu released a report on Wednesday proposing the legalization and taxation of marijuana. The report commissioned by Liu revealed that the city’s pot users make up a $1.65 billion marijuana market. Liu says legalization would bring in $400 million in tax revenue, saving $31 million annually in the cost of enforcing marijuana policy. He proposed that marijuana tax revenue be used toward cutting CUNY tuition in half for native New Yorkers. “We’d be investing in young people instead of ruining their lives,” he said.
“We have to recognize that the prohibition of marijuana failed and its enforcement has damaged too many lives, especially in minority communities,” said the mayoral candidate, chastising the Bloomberg administration for the disproportionate impact of rising marijuana arrests on black and Hispanic New Yorkers over the past decade. “It is economically and socially just to tax it,” Liu told AP. “We can eliminate some of the criminal nature that surrounds the drug and obtain revenue from it."
Liu’s proposal calls for allowing adults to possess up to one ounce of marijuana for recreational use. The state would oversee private pot-selling businesses, and using marijuana in public or while driving would be prohibited. A law would have to be passed in the state legislature and signed by Governor Andrew Cuomo for marijuana to be legalized in New York, so there is some way to go.
Afghan Opium Production Up for Third Year Running | The Fix
Opium cultivation in Afghanistan is up for the third year in a row and heading towards a record high, according to a new UN report. The Afghanistan Opium Risk Assessment 2013, issued by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, attributes the increase to opium’s rising price, making it an even more attractive crop for farmers. The figure for 2013 is expected to surpass the 154,000 hectares planted in 2012, according to the report. Afghanistan is the world’s largest producer of opium, accounting for about 75% of the global supply last year. “The assumption is it will reach again to 90% this year,” says Jean-Luc Lemahieu, head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime in Afghanistan. “We are looking at a record high cultivation.”
Lemahieu was recently interviewed for The Fix‘s exclusive report on the heroin addiction crisis within Afghanistan, which has an estimated 1 million addicts. Earlier this month, the UN also estimated that 1 million deaths worldwide have been caused by Afghan heroin since the US-led “War on Terror” began in 2001, while opium production has increased 40 times. Over 70% of Afthan opium is produced by just three provinces. US troops have attempted to subdue the Taliban influence and find alternative crops for these regions’ farmers. But after the end of the three-year “surge” in 2012, poppy cultivation has soared. It may be that people are turning to illicit markets in greater numbers in anticipation of the predicted withdrawal of foreign forces—and cash—in 2014. “This country is on its way to becoming the world’s first true narco-state,” says an anonymous international law enforcement official. “The opium trade is a much bigger part of the economy already than narcotics ever were in Bolivia or Colombia.”
“Cannabis is a truly global phenomenon. Reports on cultivation and seizures of cannabis and on sources of cannabis products illustrate that cannabis is not only consumed in all countries in the form of cannabis herb (marijuana), it is also grown in most of them.”
— United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime - World Drug Report 2012 (via The Joint Blog)
A new legal high goes on sale every week, says EU drugs agency | The Guardian
New “legal highs” and other synthetic drugs are appearing on the market at the rate of one a week, the EU’s drug agency has warned.
The Lisbon-based European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) said 49 new “psychoactive” substances were officially notified for the first time in 2011 through an EU early-warning system.
“This represents the largest number of substances ever reported in a single year, up from 41 substances reported in 2010 and 24 reported in 2009,” said the agency.
[…] “We have rapidly growing numbers of psychoactive drugs on the market, and it’s becoming increasingly difficult for the police to identify the drugs they’re finding… Just adding a drug to the long list already controlled won’t make much difference… The police and forensics are under too much pressure already to be able to offer much deterrent to potential users… We are deluding ourselves if we think that using existing controls like temporary bans will solve the problem," said Roger Howard of the UK drugs policy commission, an independent organisation providing drugs policy analysis.
Mandatory sentencing and nonviolent offenders
In addition to the last post reblogged from occupytheprisonindustrialcomplex, here is an excerpt from the same Human Rights Watch reportwhich provides examples of how mandatory sentencing for individuals convicted of nonviolent offenses - such as drug possession and drug trafficking - has contributed to the aging prison population.
From page 6 of the report:
Prison sentences tend to be longest for persons convicted of violent offenses, and many older prisoners were convicted of such crimes (see subsection below). But mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent offenders can also lead to long prison terms that will increase the aging prison population. For example, Weldon Angelos was sentenced at age 25 to 55 years in federal prison for selling marijuana, money laundering, and possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime.[34] Barbara Scrivner was 29 when she was sentenced to 30 years in prison for her role as a minor participant in a methamphetamine manufacturing and distribution conspiracy.[35]
Sentences which run consecutively can also add up to lengthy prison stays that will carry the individual into his later years. Atiba Parker, for example, was convicted in Mississippi of two counts of sale of cocaine and one count of possession of cocaine when he was 29. He received a total of three sentences that run consecutively for a total of 42 years. Twenty-nine when he was sentenced, his projected release date is 2048, when he will be 71.[36]
“Three strikes” and other habitual offender laws that create lengthy mandatory sentences for repeat offenders convicted of nonviolent as well as violent offenses also contribute to the number of aging men and women behind bars.[37] In California, the average third-strike offender enters prison at age 36, with a minimum of 25 years to serve before the possibility of release.[38] According to an advocacy group seeking reform of California’s three strikes law, there are approximately 4,431 third-strikers who have received at least 25-years-to-life for nonviolent offenses.[39]Leandro Andrade is one. At 37 he was convicted of stealing $150 worth of videotapes from two different stores. These convictions counted as his “third” strike and he received a sentence of two consecutive 25-years-to-life sentences. The earliest he can be released will be when he is 87 years old.[40]
The Fastest Growing Population in Prison? The Elderly
occupytheprisonindustrialcomplex:
A new report by Human Rights Watch found that the elderly are the fastest growing population in our prisons:
Long sentences mean that many current prisoners will not leave prison until they become extremely old, if at all. Human Rights Watch found that almost 1 in 10 state prisoners (9.6 percent) is serving a life sentence. An additional 11.2 percent have sentences longer than 20 years…
While serving time in prison can be hard for anyone, it is particularly challenging for the growing number of older prisoners who are frail, have mobility, hearing, and vision impairments, and are suffering chronic, disabling, and terminal illnesses or diminishing cognitive capacities, Human Rights Watch said.
As Adam Gopnik wrote in his must-read piece for The New Yorker, The Caging of America:
For American prisoners, huge numbers of whom are serving sentences much longer than those given for similar crimes anywhere else in the civilized world—Texas alone has sentenced more than four hundred teen-agers to life imprisonment—time becomes in every sense this thing you serve.
Human Rights Watch reports that medical expenditures for older prisoners are three to nine times as high as for other prisoners. The cost is an important part of the story as it may help to persuade our legislators to rethink so-called tough-on-crime policies, and convince them to support releasing the elderly from prison early. The ACLU reports:
We keep the elderly locked up in the face of undisputed research showing that committing crimes drops dramatically with age. Department of Justice statistics show that prisoners 55 or older recidivate at a rate of just 2 percent. Additional studies have shown that there is virtually no recidivism for individuals age 60 or older. It’s clear that it’s senseless to spend exorbitant amounts of money to imprison elderly people who pose no threat to public safety.
Take a moment to look at the Human Rights Watch slideshow depicting the older population in our prisons. And also, take a moment to think about what that life-without-parole sentence means for the 18-year-old sentenced today.
Indiana state lawmakers, who are analyzing the implications of amending its drug laws to decriminalize marijuana, were told by a panel of experts that the prohibition of marijuana in U.S. is a failed model and Indiana stands a chance to benefit from decriminalizing marijuana.
[…] It was democratic state Senator Karen Tallian of Ogden Dunes who advocated the study to boost marijuana legalization process.
Initial estimates say Indiana could raise $44 million a year in sales taxes alone if it regulated and taxed marijuana. +
Tomorrow California will be voting on Proposition 19 to legalize marijuana. According to recent research, strict regulation of cannabis may offer valuable economic, social, and public health benefits. We encourage Californians, and others, to consider the evidence (see below) before they make up their minds on Prop 19. (via The Vienna Declaration on Facebook)
Pop quiz: Which European country has the most liberal drug laws? (Hint: It’s not the Netherlands.) Although its capital is notorious among stoners and college kids for marijuana haze–filled “coffee shops,” Holland has never actually legalized cannabis — the Dutch simply don’t enforce their laws against the shops. The correct answer is Portugal, which in 2001 became the first European country to officially abolish all criminal penalties for personal possession of drugs, including marijuana, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine. Read more
(via TIME)