 Stop the Drug War (DRCNet) is an international organization working for an end to drug prohibition worldwide and for interim policy reform in US drug laws and criminal justice system. Read more about DRCNet.
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Issue #520 – 1/25/08
subscribe now | make a donation | search- While we take on the drug war's many different currents, it's important to remember our moral and intellectual roots. One of those is the role prohibition plays in fueling poverty. Understanding of this will one day dawn, and legalization will be seen as the wiser course.
- When Congress passed the omnibus appropriations bill a few weeks ago, it slashed funding for the federal grant program that funds local anti-drug task forces. Now the task forces are howling, and they and their allies are plotting a bid to get that money back.
- Jack Cole of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition wrote the following memorial for one of LEAP's most active leaders, Judge Eleanor Schockett. We reprint it from the LEAP web site.
- An outline of DRCNet's plans and recent accomplishments and an appeal for your support to make it all happen.
- "It's Really Easy to Put Innocent People in Jail for Drugs," "Idiot Steals Two Crocodiles and a Monkey, Blames Marijuana," "The Drug Czar's Awesome Plan to Blame Hugo Chavez for Everything," "Our Drug Laws Literally Allow Police to Steal From Innocent People," "Obama Pledges to Continue the Drug War," "Randomly Sad But True."
- Apply for an internship at DRCNet for this fall (or spring), and you could spend the semester fighting the good fight!
- A Chesapeake, Virginia, narcotics officer was killed last week as he attempted to break down a door during a raid on a suspected marijuana grow operation. His alleged killer now faces first degree murder charges.
- Scandal broadens in Brooklyn South, a cop working for a federal drug task force goes bad in California, and a pair of private prison guards in Texas get in trouble.
- In the latest installment of an ongoing snitch scandal in northeast Ohio, a federal judge has freed 15 men sentenced to prison on crack conspiracy charges based on perjured testimony from a DEA informant. Now, the informant is in prison, and the DEA agent is in the crosshairs.
- The California Supreme Court has ruled that employers may fire medical marijuana users. The backlash is just getting underway.
- Leonard French followed New Mexico's medical marijuana law to the letter, but that didn't stop the Pecos Valley Drug Task Force from seizing his plants and grow equipment and giving it to the DEA. Now he's suing.
- New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer (D) has proposed a tax on illegal drugs as part of his budget proposal. $3.50 a gram for marijuana might be -- if it were legal, at least -- but $200 a gram for cocaine!?
- A bill that would decriminalize the possession of up to 1.25 ounces of marijuana got a first hearing in the New Hampshire legislature this week. Two law enforcement officials spoke out in favor of it.
- The city council in Burlington, Vermont, has rejected putting a marijuana decriminalization proposal before the voters. But a council committee will study the idea.
- Last year, the Texas legislature approved a pilot needle exchange program in Bexar County (San Antonio), but a recalcitrant District Attorney has blocked it. Now, after San Antonio police arrested needle exchangers this week, the same DA is trying to hammer them.
- The Mexican army has moved into a number of Rio Grande Valley border towns in Tamaulipas state and taken over from local police, whom it is investigating for links to the drug traffic.
- US drug czar John Walters accused Venezuela of "colluding" in the cocaine traffic, an accusation Venezuela did not take lying down. Meanwhile, Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez says he chews coca, much to the dismay of the Miami Herald.
- Events and quotes of note from this week's drug policy events of years past.
- Do you read Drug War Chronicle? If so, we need your feedback to evaluate our work and make the case for Drug War Chronicle to funders. We need donations too.
- Americans for Safe Access (ASA), a national medical marijuana advocacy group, is currently seeking graduate and undergraduate interns for their Washington DC office.
- Source credit for Virginia salvia ban article.
- Support the cause by featuring automatically-updating Drug War Chronicle and other DRCNet content links on your web site!
- A new way for you to receive DRCNet articles -- Drug War Chronicle and more -- is now available.
- Visit our new web site each day to see a running countdown to the events coming up the soonest, and more.
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Want to stop the drug war? One way to help is to make a generous donation -- member support makes up a critical portion of our budget, and we can't do it without you!
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