The vast majority of drug users are not addicts. "For too long we've viewed drug addiction through the lens of criminal justice," President Obama said yesterday
at a conference in Atlanta. "The most important thing to do is reduce
demand. And the only way to do that is to provide treatment—to see it as
a public health problem and not a ... MORE
Showing posts with label cocaine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cocaine. Show all posts
Stephanie Slade: 'Drug Users Need Treatment,' Says President Obama. Not So Fast, Says Dr. Carl Hart
The vast majority of drug users are not addicts. "For too long we've viewed drug addiction through the lens of criminal justice," President Obama said yesterday
at a conference in Atlanta. "The most important thing to do is reduce
demand. And the only way to do that is to provide treatment—to see it as
a public health problem and not a ... MOREHeroin And Prohibition Are A Lethal Combination
by Jacob Sullum. After the esteemed actor Philip Seymour Hoffman died in February
2014, press coverage of the "heroin epidemic" exploded. Mentions of that
phrase in the newspaper and wire service articles cataloged by Nexis
rose from 681 in 2013 to 3,222 in 2014, an increase of almost 400
percent. Yet Hoffman—who by his own account used
... MOREJ.D. Tuccille: Business Opportunities For Corrupt Cops
Drug laws and gun controls. Following in the footsteps of so many people before him, Juan Pimentel
saw opportunity in restrictive laws. It's an old story; government
officials tell people they can't have what they want, and that
prohibition creates a lucrative business opportunity for anybody willing
to break the law to keep buyers happy. But ... MOREJacob Sullum: Prohibition Kills
Government bans make drugs more dangerous. Remember the guy who bought 80-proof vodka that turned out to be
190-proof Everclear and died from alcohol poisoning? Probably not,
because that sort of thing almost never happens in a legal drug market,
where merchants or manufacturers who made such a substitution, whether ... MOREJordan Richardson: A Serious Problem In Our Legal System
Justice is a result, not simply a process. A life sentence. For Sharanda Jones, a first-time, nonviolent cocaine offender, it wasn’t sinking in. “I was numb,” she remembers. “I was thinking about my baby. I thought it can’t be real life in prison.” Having grown up in a disadvantaged family, Sharanda started working at the age of 14, later opening ... MORE
The Likely Cause Of Addiction Has Been Discovered
by Johann Hari. And, it is not what you think. It is now one hundred years since drugs were first banned -- and all
through this long century of waging war on drugs, we have been told a
story about addiction by our teachers and by our governments. This story
is so deeply ingrained in our minds that we take it for granted. It
seems obvious. It seems ... MOREChris Ingraham: Portugal Decriminalized Drugs 14 years Ago – And Now Hardly Anyone Dies From Overdosing
The result of ending the drug war are in. Portugal decriminalised the use of all drugs in 2001. Weed, cocaine, heroin, you name it — Portugal decided to treat possession and use of small quantities of these drugs as a public health issue, not a criminal one. The drugs were still illegal, of course. But now getting caught with them meant a small fine ... MOREJacob Sullum: Obama Frees Drug War Prisoners
Credit where credit is due. On October 31, 1996, the Sanilac County Sheriff's Office, which
serves a largely rural area in Michigan's thumb, got a call from a local
resident who said he was concerned about his neighbor, Darrell Hayden.
No one had heard from Hayden for several days, the man said, and his
horses were wandering down Argyle Road. The ... MORESon Of Draconian Drug Warrior Fails Drug Test
by Jesse Walker. Vice President Joe Biden has been one of the most
strident drug warriors of my lifetime. Mandatory minimum sentences,
the crack/powder disparity, federal asset forfeiture, the RAVE
Act—they all have Biden's fingerprints on them. The man may
be responsible for
the very phrase "drug czar." If the Drug War had its own Mount ... MOREAmerica Has A Black-Market Problem, Not A Drug Problem
by Conor Friedersdorf. General John F. Kelly, the head of the U.S. Southern Command,
testified last week before the Senate Armed Services Committee, where he
argued, as generals tend to do, that he has inadequate resources to
fulfill the missions assigned to him. Here's how the Associated Press summed up his statement: The U.S. ... MORERadley Balko: Yes, The Drug War Is Pretty Awful
Myth-busting prohibition propaganda. Last month, I wrote a response
to Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson in which I laid out many
(but by no means all) of the harms caused by the modern-era war on
drugs. Now Charles Lane, a columnist and editorial writer here at the
Post, has responded to my post. You can read Lane’s response ... MOREStanton Peele: Why We Have Drug Scares
Are there greater social problems we can't face? How many drug scares can you identify? Jacob Sullum identified these from 2013: marijuana, Salvia divinorum, cocaine,"bath salts," absinthe, Four Loko. Well, let’s go back a ways. Of course there was crack. There were horse tranquilizers. There was OxyContin. Before Oxy there were ... MOREScott Shackford: Asset Forfeiture Runs Wild
Case of the coked-up cops. Asset forfeiture laws give police officers an incentive to bust people with property to seize. But few have taken this practice as far as the police of Sunrise, Florida, who posed as cocaine suppliers to lure targets into town. According to the Broward County Sun Sentinel, which exposed the strategy in October, ... MOREJacob Sullum: Crack Canards And Meth Myths
Neuroscientist nukes popular misconceptions. Growing familiarity with marijuana has been accompanied
by growing
support for legalization because people discovered through
personal experience that the government was lying to them about the
drug’s hazards. But it is easier to demonize less popular drugs
such as crack cocaine and ... MORE
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