Monday, September 14, 2009
Marijuana Monday
AM New York (for those of you who take the subway) has a great front page! article about the dramatic marijuana arrest epidemic that has crowned NYC the marijuana arrest capital of the world. DPA's director or media relations, Tony Newman, is quoted within the article.
Fortune Magazine has a comprehensive story about the medical marijuana dispensaries in California. They ask the question: Is the end of marijuana prohibition among us? DPA's executive director, Ethan Nadelmann, is quoted in the article.
New York Magazine's Mark Jacobson has an excellent piece also about marijuana arrests in New York City, splicing in anecdotes and other pieces of marijuana-related culture in the Big Apple.
The Washington Post provides a nice anecdotal story about the younger generation's views on marijuana legalization. It as also invokes Maryland's little known medical marijuana defense known as medical necessity (2nd post down).
Labels: marijuana, medical marijuana, New York
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Digg it.Saturday, September 05, 2009
What Would Prosecutors Do?
Below is a Huffington Post piece that Tony Newman, DPA's Media Relations director, wrote about the NYC Manhattan District Attorney's race. At the debate, two of the candidates made some rather revealing statements about past drug use. Tony has a great commentary about the hypocrisy of it all.
Candidates Drug Use Not A Deal Breaker, But Hypocrisy On Issue Should Be!
At Tuesday's debate in the race for Manhattan District Attorney, two of the three candidates admitted to cocaine use. When the candidates were asked if they used any illegal drugs besides marijuana, both Cy Vance and Richard Aborn admitted to trying cocaine in the past.
We seem to have come a long way from when Douglas Ginsberg was bumped from consideration for a Supreme Court position because he had tried marijuana in the 70's. Now it is almost impossible to find a presidential candidate who has not tried marijuana. It has become so commonplace for elected officials to admit marijuana use that the question has progressed to whether candidates have tried an illegal drug besides marijuana.
President Obama broke ground as a candidate when he wrote openly about not only using marijuana, but trying cocaine when he was in high-school. I can't remember a presidential candidate admitting to using a "hard drug". Obama's drug use clearly had no negative impact with voters. I believe his honesty helped him by humanizing him with both young voters and baby boomers. Voters appreciated some straight talk compared to President George Bush refusing to answer questions about his "youthful indiscretions" and Bill "I never inhaled" Clinton. Ironically, the candidate who suffered the most damage from Obama's past drug use was Hillary Clinton, when Bill Shaheen, Clinton's New Hampshire co-chair, had to step down after going after Obama for his past drug use.
Another high-level elected official who admitted to cocaine use and received a public shrug in response was Governor David Paterson, who admitted to cocaine use days after he became governor following Eliot Spitzer's resignation over having patronized a prostitute. Governor Paterson has recently taken heat for a range of reasons, but his cocaine use is notably not one of them.
Now we have two candidates running for District Attorney of Manhattan, one the of the most powerful law enforcement jobs in the country, admitting to cocaine use. I predict it will not be a major issue and it shouldn't be. The reason past cocaine use by Obama and Paterson and Vance and Aborn use has not been a huge problem for them is that they don't have hugely hypocritical political views on substance abuse. All four of these elected officials/candidates have advocated for alternatives to prison for low-level drug offenders. President Obama has stated he wants drugs to be treated more as a public health than a criminal justice issue. Governor Paterson worked for years to reform New York's draconian Rockefeller Drug Laws. Vance and Aborn both opposed the Rockefeller Drug Laws and Aborn is calling for a debate on decriminalizing marijuana.
The problem for voters is when there is hypocrisy. The reason the Spitzer prostitute scandal was so damaging is because he was actively prosecuting prostitution at the same time he was enjoying the services of prostitutes.
Hypocrisy is what bothers me. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is currently running for reelection. When asked years ago if he had smoked marijuana he said yes, and even added that he enjoyed it. Yet under Mayor Bloomberg, New York has the shameful distinction of being marijuana arrest capital of the world. Last year 40,000 New Yorkers were arrested and jailed on low-level pot possession charges. More people have been arrested on marijuana possession charges under Mayor Bloomberg than any elected official in history!
It is encouraging that past drug use by candidates and elected officials are being discussed more openly and voters are less judgmental. What we need now is for voters to punish elected officials who are willing to ruin other people's lives with arrest and incarceration for doing similar things in their lives.
Labels: marijuana, New York, Rockefeller Drug Law
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Going to Jail for Justice?
Andrew Carroll's a smart young man!
He's lucky, too, that he's white; and lucky that he possesses enough class privilege to move across the country as part of the Free State Project, and engage in civil disobedience, calling attention to the travesty that is our country's drug policy. Not that white guys of some means don't get targeted by the drug war, too ... it's just that, well ... their odds of faring in our racist criminal justice system are significantly better.
On January 11, he (amidst friends, fellow protesters, and video cameras) carried out a carefully planned and advertised act of civil disobedience on a train platform in Keene, NH: he possessed a small amount of marijuana. You can watch his arrest on YouTube:
(part 1)
(part 2)
He was charged with a misdemeanor and called to appear before the court again on March 3. I'll keep my eyes out for ways we can support this fellow ... but in the meantime I can't think of any better way to honor his passion and courage than to take action of our own.
Labels: Andrew Carroll, civil disobedience, marijuana
Wednesday, September 03, 2008
New Orleans solidarity
Late last Friday morning, I stood with a group of displaced New Orleans residents, Washington, DC community organizers, day laborer union members and other folks in solidarity with the survivors of Katrina outside what was termed the Failed Emergency Management Agency building at 5th and C St SW near L'Enfant Plaza.She spoke about the rates of incarceration in Louisiana - the highest in the country, and disproportionately black. I later picked up an ACLU report on the Orleans Parish Prison, which completely confirmed her figures. It boggles the mind:
"With a pre-Katrina incarceration rate of 1480 prisoners per 100,000 residents, New Orleans had the highest incarceration rate of any large city in the United States - the incarceration rate was double that of the United States as a whole, a country with the highest national incarceration rate in the world."
As the local population decreased, the capacity of jail increased. OPP held waiting space for those prisoners meant for state and federal facilities (which were garnering the wrong kind of attention for their overcrowded conditions, while it would take the Katrina disaster to broadcast the human rights abuses occurring at OPP). Why take in all these extra prisoners? It probably didn't hurt that they were getting paid $25 per person per day.
The conditions were terrible, and the racial make-up chilling. Orleans Parish was only 67 percent black prior to Hurricane Katrina, but almost 90 percent of the OPP population was black. Byrd shared more about the juvenile justice system: while 16 percent of that population is African American, 58 percent of the juveniles diverted to adult prisons are African American.
And for what? How is it - why is it - that New Orleans leads the country in locking people up, especially folks of color? Does anyone else think it's crazy that you can get more than five years in prison for a having joint of marijuana there? Orleans Parish District Attorney Keva Landrum-Johnson, in her efforts to appear "tough on crime," has decided to charge marijuana users with felonies. While she's only held the office since last fall, the history of this kind of approach dates back decades. Well over half the felony convictions in her parish are drug cases.
The drug war is racist by design, and nowhere is that clearer than in New Orleans. Work to end the drug war, and listen and learn from communities struggling in New Orleans for justice. It's been three years since Katrina, and we still need to hold our elected officials - at every level - accountable to the demands of survivors and folks displaced. Check out these awesome organizations doing important work advocating for young folks and communities of color impacted by the drug war:
www.fflic.org
Labels: incarceration, marijuana, new orleans, racism
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Actually Sensible Pot Policies
In Italy, the Court of Cassation (think Supreme Court) overturned a local ruling that sentenced a reggae musician to 16 months in prison for possessing enough cannabis to roll 70 joints. They recognized the plant as a Rastafarian sacrament, and given the great quantity of weed smoked by members of this religion ... well, it seemed a plausible stash for personal consumption.
Austria does even better. There, 22 pounds can be understood as an amount for personal use - a public prosecutor recently dismissed a case against a man who'd harvested that much, in light of a new law decriminalizing cannabis for personal use, regardless of quantity.
The Swiss are voting on a similar initiative in late November.
So when Massachusettians (well, why not? It's better than calling them Massholes, a moniker I heard more than a few times living in Vermont last year) get to vote on a marijuana penalty reduction initiative on their ballots this November, let's hope they take their cues from our neighbors to the west and south, and not from the drug warmongers.
Labels: international drug policy comparison, marijuana, Massholes