Drug WarRant

[DdC]

The War on Drugs' War on Minorities By Arianna Huffington
CN Source: Los Angeles Times March 24, 2007 USA 

There is a subject being forgotten in the 2008 Democratic race for the White House.

While all the major candidates are vying for the black and Latino vote, they are completely ignoring one of the most pressing issues affecting those constituencies: the failed "war on drugs"

— a war that has morphed into a war on people of color.

Consider this: According to a 2006 report by the American Civil Liberties Union, African Americans make up an estimated 15% of drug users, but they account for 37% of those arrested on drug charges, 59% of those convicted and 74% of all drug offenders sentenced to prison. Or consider this: The U.S. has 260,000 people in state prisons on nonviolent drug charges; 183,200 (more than 70%) of them are black or Latino.

Such facts have been bandied about for years. But our politicians have consistently failed to take action on what has become yet another third rail of American politics, a subject to be avoided at all costs by elected officials who fear being incinerated on contact for being soft on crime.

Perhaps you hoped this would change during a spirited Democratic presidential primary? Unfortunately, a quick search of the top Democratic hopefuls' websites reveals that not one of them — not Hillary Clinton, not Barack Obama, not John Edwards, not Joe Biden, not Chris Dodd, not Bill Richardson — even mentions the drug war, let alone offers any solutions.

The silence coming from Clinton and Obama is particularly deafening.

Obama has written eloquently about his own struggle with drugs but has not addressed the tragic effect the war on drugs is having on African American communities.

As for Clinton, she flew into Selma, Ala., to reinforce her image as the wife of the black community's most beloved politician and has made much of her plan to attract female voters, but she has ignored the suffering of poor, black women right in her own backyard.
Snipped: Complete Article

Contact: letters@latimes.com * Website



Tulia: Tip of the Drug War Iceberg
Open Society Policy Center December 8, 2004

"Tulia: Race, Cocaine, and Corruption in a Small Texas Town"
DRCNet Book Review:
In that first story, we relied heavily on the groundbreaking investigative reporting of the Texas Observer's Nate Blakeslee, author of "Tulia: Race, Cocaine, and Corruption in a Small Texas Town." In July 2000, his Austin Chronicle piece chronicled the mass bust, the mass incarceration that followed, and the first successful attack on the credibility of rogue narc Tom Coleman. Since then, Tulia has been Blakeslee's story to own, and with "Tulia" he has taken full journalistic possession.
F U L L S T O R Y: cannabisculture/4586

"Freedom Rides" in Texas against the racist drug war. Of the 43 people arrested, 40 were Black--amounting to 12 percent of Tulia's Black population. Almost every Black person in town had a relative or friend on the indictment list.



The Racist Origins Of Canada’s Marijuana Prohibition
Reported In the National Post.

Race and Imprisonment in the Drug War

The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment

Ganjawarnews

South Africa Today
The Emperor Wears No Clothes by Jack Herer

In 1911, South Africa* began the outlawing of marijuana for the same reasons as New Orleans: to stop insolent blacks! White South Africa, along with Egypt, led the international fight (League of Nations) to have cannabis outlawed worldwide.

* South Africa still allowed its black mine workers to smoke dagga in the mines, though. Why? Because they were more productive!

In fact, in that same year, South Africa influenced southern U.S. legislators to outlaw cannabis (which many black South Africans revered as "dagga", their sacred herb). Many South Africans' American business headquarters were in New Orleans at the time.

This is the whole racial and religious (Medeival Catholic Church) basis out of which our laws against hemp arose. Are you proud?

Fourteen million years so far have been spent in jails, prisons, parole and probation by Americans for this absurd racist and probably economic reasoning. (See Chapter 4, "Last Days of Legal Cannabis.")

Isn't it interesting that in 1985 the U.S. incarcerated a larger percentage of people than any country in the world except South Africa? In 1989, the U.S. surpassed South Africa, and the 1997 incarceration rate is almost four times that of South Africa, is the highest in the world, and is growing.

President Bush, in his great drug policy speech of September 5, 1989, promised to double the federal prison population again, after it had already doubled under Reagan. He succeeded. In 1993, President Bill Clinton planned to redouble the number of prisoners again by 1996. He did.

Remember the outcry in 1979 when former U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young told the world that the U.S. had more political prisoners than any other nation? (Amnesty International, UCLA.)



"Reefer makes darkies think they're as good as white men."
Harry J. Anslinger - America's 1st Drug Czar (FDR - JFK)

"Marijuana leads to homosexuality ... and therefore to AIDS."
Carlton Turner - Former Drug Czar (Reagan)

"Marihuana leads to pacifism and communist brainwashing"
Harry J. Anslinger - America's 1st Drug Czar (FDR - JFK)

"[Marijuana] is highly intoxicating and constitutes an ever recurring problem where there are Mexicans or Spanish-Americans of the lower classes."
New York Times - Newspaper (1933)

"I want a Goddamn strong statement on marijuana, I mean one that just tears the ass out of them. You know, it's a funny thing, every one of the bastards that are out for legalizing marijuana is Jewish."
Richard Nixon - Former President

"In some districts, inhabited by Latin Americans, Filipinos, Spaniards and Negroes, half the violent crimes are attributed to marijuana craze. Dr. Lee Rice of San Antonio reports that eighty per cent of all the murders committed by Mexicans are done while the killers are drugged by marijuana."
The Christian Century (newspaper) - 1938

"Marihuana influences Negroes to to look at white people in the eye, step on white men's shadows and look at a white woman twice."
William Randolph Hearst - Newspaper Tycoon (1936)

"Thank you Miss Rosa"
The Racist Ganjawar
Prejudice: Marijuana and Jim Crow Laws



Since the abolition of slavery, racism and bigotry have generally had to manifest themselves in less blatant forms in America. The cannabis prohibition laws illustrate again this institutional intolerance of racial minorities and show how prejudice is concealed behind rhetoric and laws which seem to have an entirely different purpose.

Prison Rape and the War on Drugs

Stop Prison Rape

Stop Prisoner Rape seeks to end sexual violence committed against men, women, and youth in all forms of detention.

"The horrors experienced by many young inmates, particularly those who are convicted of nonviolent offenses, border on the unimaginable. Prison rape not only threatens the lives of those who fall prey to their aggressors, but it is potentially devastating to the human spirit. Shame, depression, and a shattering loss of self-esteem accompany the perpetual terror the victim thereafter must endure."
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun, Farmer v. Brennan

Juvenile Justice

Relax Your Muscles as Much as Possible

Pot Prisoners Cost Americans $1 Billion a Year By Paul Armentano
CN Source: AlterNet February 10, 2007 USA



Our Justice System Has Gone Mad

Government must create criminals

Journey for Justice Pedaling for Pot

Demonizing Drugs

How free is free? You know it

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. prison population, already the largest in the world, grew by 1.9 percent in 2004, leaving federal jails at 40 percent over capacity, according to Justice Department figures released on Sunday.

Inmates in federal, state, local and other prisons totaled nearly 2.3 million at the end of last year, the government said. The 1.9 percent increase was lower than the average annual growth rate of 3.2 percent during the last decade.

According to the International Center for Prison Studies at King's College in London, there are more people behind bars in the United States than in any other country.

China had the second-largest prison population with 1.5 million prisoners, according to statistics updated in April and cited by King's College. The total U.S. population is about 296 million, while China's is 1.3 billion.

NORML: Marijuana Arrests For Year 2004

Marijuana Arrests For Year 2004: 771,608
CN Source: NORML October 17, 2005 Washington, DC, USA

Pot Smokers Arrested In America At A Rate Of One Every 41 Seconds

Washington, DC: Police arrested an estimated 771,608 persons for marijuana violations in 2004, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's annual Uniform Crime Report, released today.

The total is the highest ever recorded by the FBI, and comprised 44.2 percent of all drug arrests in the United States.

"These numbers belie the myth that police do not target and arrest minor marijuana offenders," said NORML Executive Director Allen St. Pierre, who noted that at current rates, a marijuana smoker is arrested every 41 seconds in America. "This effort is a tremendous waste of criminal justice resources that diverts law enforcement personnel away from focusing on serious and violent crime, including the war on terrorism."

Of those charged with marijuana violations, 89 percent - some 684,319 Americans - were charged with possession only. The remaining 87,289 individuals were charged with "sale/manufacture," a category that includes all cultivation offenses - even those where the marijuana was being grown for personal or medical use. In past years, approximately 30 percent of those arrested were age 19 or younger.

"Present policies have done little if anything to decrease marijuana's availability or dissuade youth from trying it," St. Pierre said, noting that a majority of young people in the U.S. now report that they have easier access to pot than alcohol or tobacco.

The total number of marijuana arrests in the U.S. for 2004 far exceeded the total number of arrests in the U.S. for all violent crimes combined, including murder, manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery and aggravated assault.

As if exploiting the labor of prison inmates was not bad enough, it is legal in the United States to use slave labor. The 13th Amendment of the Constitution states that "neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted shall exist within the United States."

There are approximately 2 million people behind bars in the United States -- more than three times the number of prisoners in 1980. The United States now imprisons more people than any other country in the world. In fact, in the last 20 years California has constructed 21 new prisons while in the same amount of time, it has built only one new university. That statistic is even more astounding when we think about the fact that it took California almost 150 years to build its first 12 prisons. Another five new prisons are under construction and plans are in the works to build another 10.

The Real Price of Prisons

U.S. Prison Industry: Big Business or Slavery? By Vicky Pelaez
CN Source: San Francisco Bay View March 10, 2006 USA  
Human rights organizations, as well as political and social ones, are condemning what they are calling a new form of inhumane exploitation in the United States, where they say a prison population of up to 2 million – mostly Black and Hispanic – are working for various industries for a pittance. For the tycoons who have invested in the prison industry, it has been like finding a pot of gold.
Continued...cannabisnews/21654

Malaysian Death Sentence for 2 Kilos of Pot
On February 15th an unemployed man was sentenced to death by the High Court of Malaysia after being found guilty of trafficking in 2,018.04 grams of cannabis six years ago. F U L L S T O R Y

The Lord… hath sent me to bind up the broken hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and the opening of the prison to them that are bound.
(Isaiah 61:1)

The Drug War Refugees

Patient Arrested at Canadian Hospital Released By Gene Johnson

Do Prohibitionists Lie?

Even when their lips aren't moving. In Nevada, where there is an initiative to legalize marijuana, people are getting push poll automated phone calls with the following message:

There is a proposal to legalize marijuana. This proposal will make marijuana available in grocery stores and convenience stores similar to buying a pack of cigarettes. Do you support the proposal to legalize marijuana? Please press 1 for yes, press 2 for no, and if you're undecided, please press 3. So what does the initiative say? Could it perhaps be vague?

Sec. 21. 1. The Department may not issue a license as a retailer or wholesaler to an establishment: (b) That is engaged in business as a gas station, convenience store, grocery store, night club, dance hall or licensed gaming establishment

Nope. An outright, intentional lie.
Despicable. Hope they find out who's behind the calls.

Crime Control vs. Civil Liberties: The Case for Retooling American Law Enforcement
Norm Stamper Las Vegas Nevada USA leap.cc/events
Las Vegas Futurists. * * drugwarrant



The US Gulag Prison System...
No, not the one you think, outrageous as it is. I'm referring to the US prison system that's with no exaggeration about as shockingly abusive as the Abu Gharib or Guantanamo gulags abroad. It qualifies for that label by its size alone - more than 2.1 million as of June 2004 and growing larger by about 900 new inmates every week. Blacks (mostly poor and disadvantaged) especially are affected. While they make up just 12.3% of the population, they account for half the prison population, and their numbers there have grown fivefold in the last 25 years. Hispanics (also poor) account for another 15%. F U L L S T O R Y

The US Gulag Prison System by Stephen Lendman

Global Research Feature Article March 16, 2006

Marc Scott Emery Mar 19 2006

Race and Imprisonment in the Drug War

PREJUDICE: MARIJUANA AND JIM CROW LAWS

The Racist Origins Of Canada’s Marijuana Prohibition
Reported In the National Post.

Ganjawarnews

LOOSE-TONGUED SPEAKER? by Lloyd Grove
Source: New York Daily News (NY) 30 Aug 2004

Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert - having already enraged some New Yorkers with his remarks about local office-holders' "unseemly scramble" for federal money after 9/11 - yesterday opened a second front.

On "Fox News Sunday," the Illinois Republican insinuated that billionaire financier George Soros, who's funding an independent media campaign to dislodge President Bush, is getting his big bucks from shady sources.

"You know, I don't know where George Soros gets his money. I don't know where - if it comes overseas or from drug groups or where it comes from," Hastert mused.

An astonished Chris Wallace asked: "Excuse me?"

The Speaker went on: "Well, that's what he's been for a number years - - George Soros has been for legalizing drugs in this country. So, I mean, he's got a lot of ancillary interests out there."

Wallace: "You think he may be getting money from the drug cartel?"

Hastert: "I'm saying I don't know where groups - could be people who support this type of thing. I'm saying we don't know." [snip] Continues:

Map Inc.Org Note: Excerpt from a longer column.
Bookmark(Dennis Hastert)
Bookmark(Soros, George)
-------
Feel The Hate By Paul Krugman
New York Times September 04, 2004
I don't know where George Soros gets his money," one man said. "I don't know where - if it comes from overseas or from drug groups or where it comes from." George Soros, another declared, "wants to spend $75 million defeating George W. Bush because Soros wants to legalize heroin." After all, a third said, Mr. Soros "is a self-admitted atheist; he was a Jew who figured out a way to survive the Holocaust." They aren't LaRouchies - they're Republicans.
Continued...cannabisnews/19443

Slave Labor Means Big Bucks For U.S. Corporations
UNICORE

Minorities making up most of the prison slave market,
most of the drug bust go down on minorities,
while most of the drugs are consumed by caucasians....

Wallstreet's Spontaneous Abortionists

Minorities in the fields getting poisoned while the drugwar outlaws the safer nontoxic alternative, hemp...

Souder Fungus Déjà Vu!

Minorities getting sprayed by the newest agent orange...

A Lie College Students Might Want To Tell

Minorities needing tuition assistance banned if they admit to getting busted for pot.
The wealthy won't be punished for the same crime...

Perhaps you hoped this would change during a spirited Democratic presidential primary? Unfortunately, a quick search of the top Democratic hopefuls' websites reveals that not one of them — not Hillary Clinton, not Barack Obama, not John Edwards, not Joe Biden, not Chris Dodd, not Bill Richardson — even mentions the drug war, let alone offers any solutions.
==Arianna Huffington

Well maybe one Arianna...

Dennis Kucinich supports legalizing the medical use of marijuana. Granite Staters for Medical Marijuana has graded the candidates' positions and given only Kucinich an A+.

Kucinich: Marijuana Decriminalization

kucinich.us/issues

Medical Marijuana

Hemp



Drug War and Marijuana Decriminalization

Mandatory Minimum Sentencing

Dennis Kucinich on the Drug War

Most Americans believe that medical marijuana should be available to help relieve the suffering of seriously ill patients, and eight states have passed laws to allow it. But the Bush administration has harassed medical marijuana patients in an effort to assert federal authority. This is another aspect of the drug war that should be ended.

The most hemp friendly US Presidental candidate is...

Kucinich

7-5-4 Koo-sin'-itch!

Kucinich For President 2008

Congressman Kucinich is the 2003 recipient of the Gandhi Peace Award. Former recipients include Eleanor Roosevelt, Cesar Chavez, A.J. Muste, Dr. Linus Pauling, Dorothy Day, Sen. Wayne Morse and Marian Wright Edelman. See website:

Huffington Post
CannabisNews Justice Archives

The new Congress, Kucinich and the ONDCP by Pete Guither

Check out this wonderfully fascinating article by Dean Kuipers in the L.A. City Beat: A Change in the Weather. Go and read the whole thing -- it's worth it. No big surprises, but a lot of interesting material -- most of it has to do with the fact that some of the most sympathetic people to drug policy reform in Congress are now in leadership positions, and the ONDCP is no longer going to get a free ride.

It's not all great --

Sources close to the appointment, who asked not to be named, say that Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other members of the Democratic leadership have effectively embargoed major crime or drug policy legislation for the next two years, to avoid looking soft on crime in the 2008 election.

Boy, if that doesn't describe Democrats... For once, I'd like them to understand that the policy of avoiding looking weak, makes them look... weak.

But Kucinich promises to have some fun.

"We want to explore the federal government's policies and the Department of Justice's policies on medical marijuana, for example. We need to also look at the drug laws that have brought about mandatory minimum sentences that have put people in jail for long periods of time. [...]

"No, this committee does not have control of the budgets, but it does have control of the policy, and it can ask questions and get documents that others couldn't get."

[DdC]

Priorities and energies
DWR Thursday, April 12, 2007

Radley Balko has it right:

I don't deny for a minute that racism still exists in this country... Nor would I deny that it still does real harm to real people, fairly regularly. I guess my point is that it'd be nice if all the energy spent the last two weeks expressing self-righteous outrage over a mistaken comment from a harmless old fool were instead spent on, say, the racial sentencing disparities in the criminal justice system, or the fact that a substantially higher percentage of black men are in prison in America than were imprisoned in South Africa during apartheid.

African-American Mothers More Likely To Be Tested For Drugs, Study Says
April 12, 2007 - New York, NY, USA

African-American women and their newborns are more likely to be drug tested than are other women, even after controlling for sociodemographic and clinical factors, according to a study published in the current issue of the Journal of Women's Health.

Investigators at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City analyzed factors associated with the decision to drug test women with live births over a one-year period in a single hospital. Of the 8,487 mothers, 244 mother-newborn pairs (three percent) were tested for illegal drugs. Researchers reported that "black women and their newborns were 1.5 times more likely to be tested for illicit drugs as non-black women," after controlling for obstetrical conditions and sociodemographic factors, such as single marital status or a lack of health insurance.

"There was no association between race and a positive toxicology result," investigators determined.

In many states, mothers who test positive for cannabis during or prior to childbirth can lose custody of their child and/or face criminal charges.

A 1990 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine reported that African-American mothers who tested positive for illicit drugs were ten times more likely to be reported to child protective services than white and Hispanic counterparts.

For more information, please contact Paul Armentano, NORML Senior Policy Analyst, at paul@norml.org
Full text of the study, "The effect of race on provider decisions to test for illicit drug use in the peripartum setting," appears in the Journal of Women's Health.

Thank you Miss Rosa

Human Rights and the WoD
Human Rights Watch

"The propagandist's purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human."
- Aldous Huxley

Just What The Jewish Doctor Ordered?

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.
-- C.S. Lewis, in "The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment,"
an essay from "God In The Dock

Conservative Addiction Good, Liberal Addiction Bad!

Flush Rush

[DdC]

BLACKS, HISPANICS MORE LIKELY TO BE SEARCHED AT TRAFFIC STOPS
BUT THAT IS NOT PROOF OF RACIAL PROFILING, JUSTICE DEPARTMENT CLAIMS
The Bureau of Justice Statistics has released a report showing black and Hispanic drivers are more likely to be subjected to vehicle searches than whites, but it says it can't conclude racial profiling is to blame. It also lacks some key numbers that could make the case.



GUILTY PLEAS ONLY THE BEGINNING
IN AFTERMATH OF ATLANTA "DRUG RAID" KILLING OF 92-YEAR OLD
Two Atlanta narcotics officers have pleaded guilty in the November drug raid death of 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston, but it looks like that's just the beginning of problems for the Atlanta narcotics squad.

THIS WEEK'S CORRUPT COPS STORIES
It's a real motley crew this week: a small-town police chief gone bad, cops escorting drug shipments, and, of course, more crooked prison guards.

The Reefer Madness Collection