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(renamed "Drug War Chronicle" effective issue #300, August 2003) Issue #114, 10/29/99
"Raising Awareness of the Consequences of Drug Prohibition" FIRST NATIONAL STUDENT LEADERS IN DRUG POLICY CONFERENCE NOV. 5-6, WASHINGTON, DC, REGISTER NOW! http://www.ssdp.org TABLE OF CONTENTS
or check out The Week Online archives 1. Protest Mars McCaffrey's London Visit While London's Sunday Times hailed US "Drug Czar" General Barry McCaffrey's visit to Britain this week with a story profiling his military record and winking at the bureaucratic prowess he has evinced in "boosting his department's budget to the size of Luxembourg's gross domestic product," later reports indicated that other Britons were not amused. At a press conference on Monday (10/25) at the University of London, where McCaffrey met with British "Drug Tsar" Keith Hellawell to launch a drug information web site, the General was met with shouts of "hypocrite" and "Go home Nazi scum" by some thirty students and other demonstrators protesting the US-led international drug war. Footage of the protest shown across the UK on the evening news showed McCaffrey turning his back on protesters criticizing "tough" US drug policies and demanding to know about CIA involvement in cocaine trafficking, and ultimately fleeing the scene. Resentment against McCaffrey's visit was likely inflamed by recent proposals by British Prime Minister Tony Blair to adopt a more US-style drug policy. Steve Rolles of the British drug reform group Transform, which helped coordinate Monday's protest, told DRCNet that public and media sentiment against Blair's plans is running strong. "Blair's proposals to drug test all people arrested and deny bail to positives received strong condemnation from all but the most right wing media," he said via e-mail. "Even the traditionally conservative Telegraph ran a leader stating that the proposals amounted to an illegal breach of human rights." Curiously, the web site whose launch gave occasion to the press conference is loaded with precisely the sort of drug information McCaffrey rails against back home. "ResourceNet," a government funded project touted as an "expert panel"-reviewed online catalog of drug education material for professionals, lists several harm reduction guides designed for drug users among its wares. The UK was the first stop on a four-country European tour for McCaffrey, who hopes to elicit more support from European nations in the Latin American drug war. Another key item on his agenda is to promote a US proposal for a new, international drug agency to test athletes that is independent from the International Olympic Committee. Britain has agreed to back that proposal. ResourceNet is online at http://www.resourcenet.org.uk. Visit Transform at http://www.transformuk.freeserve.co.uk.
2. Ten Million March for Peace in Colombia, Activists Decry U.S. Counternarcotics Aid to Military A looming military aid package that would dramatically increase direct U.S. assistance to Colombia's armed forces has become more controversial in the wake of a massive peace demonstration last Monday involving more than ten million Colombians throughout the violence-torn nation. The peace campaign, known as "No Mas!" ("No More"), mobilized two million Colombians in the capital city of Bogota alone, and called on negotiators from the government and the FARC guerrillas to enact a swift resolution to the decades-long civil conflict. US drug warriors, including Republicans like Dan Burton, Ben Gilman and Bob Barr, and administration officials like drug czar Barry McCaffrey, a former Army General who commanded the SOUTHCOM division that operates in Latin America, have called for dramatic, multi-billion dollar aid increases in counternarcotics aid, much of it directly to the Colombian military, arguing that the illicit drug trade is financing the FARC guerrilla forces. At a conference in Washington on October 15, however, sponsored by the US/Colombia Coordinating Office and the Colombia Human Rights Committee, peace activists, legislators and human rights advocates denounced the aid proposal. Carlos Salinas, Advocacy Director for Latin America at Amnesty International USA, warned "This escalation of aid... could well be the final gush of gasoline into the Colombian conflagration to create one of the worst humanitarian catastrophes of this hemisphere." Salinas also pointed out that the left-wing "narco-guerrillas" of which U.S. drug warriors warn have counterparts in the form of right-wing "narco-paramilitaries" with close ties to the armed forces. Yet, entire Congressional drug hearings are often held without the word "paramilitaries" even being spoken. Salinas explained that doing so "would mean the collapse of credibility in proposing aid to the Army," and said the "paramilitaries are responsible for the overwhelming number of civilian deaths, sometimes as in the cases of a few weeks ago in Valle del Cauca, with machetes and chainsaws," and that when you talk about the paramilitaries, "then you talk about the Colombian Army." Peace activists at the conference uniformly opposed the aid package. Agustin Jimenez, President of the Committee in Solidarity with Political Prisoners (CSPP), noted that after 40 years of civil war, ten persons are killed daily on average, 70% civilians uninvolved in the conflict. Jesus Antonio Gonzalez, Director of the Human Rights Division of the Central Union of Workers, said that 3,000 labor leaders from his organization have been killed in the past 13 years, with the killers escaping justice 99.9 percent of the time. Senator Piedad Cordoba Ruiz, the highest-ranking Afro-Colombian congressperson, attended after having recently been released by kidnappers. Cordoba said she was moved around the Medellín area for several days, with the cooperation and involvement of the armed forces. Cordoba explained that armed combatants often forget that civilians have rights, and bomb non-combatants under the pretext of counterinsurgency, and said the drug issue should not be falsely imposed on the peace process. (Read Adam Smith's editorial on the peace process, "No Mas!," below. Read David Borden's editorial on Congress' recent Colombia hearings, "Those Helicopters," http://www.drcnet.org/wol/108.html#editorial. The Colombia Human Rights Committee is online at http://www.igc.org/colhrnet/. Find Amnesty International's Colombia human rights reports online at http://www.amnestyusa.org/countries/colombia/. Last but not least, read about our upcoming PROTEST IN WASHINGTON, next item.)
3. PROTEST IN WASHINGTON: Oppose Drug War Militarization in Colombia, Rally Outside Drug Czars of the Americas Conference Next Week Thursday, November 4, at the Western Hemisphere Drug Czars Conference, Woodley Park, 5:30pm Help us stop the US from exporting its failed drug war to Latin America! On November 3-5, "Drug Czar" General Barry McCaffrey will host the Western Hemisphere Drug Czars Conference to further this agenda. McCaffrey is currently lobbying Congress to send billions of dollars to Colombia for anti-drug aid to be used by the Colombian military, which has a notorious record for human rights abuses. As part of a larger effort to respond to this conference, on November 4th hundreds of concerned citizens will protest at a park adjacent to the Omni-Shoreham Hotel, where the drug czars conference is taking place. THIS IS A MAJOR EVENT INVOLVING A NUMBER OF DIFFERENT ORGANIZATIONS, SO PLEASE COME OUT IF CAN TO "JUST SAY NO" TO DRUG WAR VIOLENCE. Visit http://www.stopthedrugwar.org for further information, flyers to download and distribute, embarrassing exposes of Drug Czar McCaffrey's disinformational antics and more! Forward this alert to your contacts in the Washington area, or just tell them to go to http://www.stopthedrugwar.org to find out where and when. DETAILS When: November 4, 1999,
5:30 - 7:00 pm
The Protest Includes: -- Speakers in English &
Spanish
Themes: -- Stop the Drug War
Signs will be available to protestors who arrive early. Please feel free to make your own signs. Special Requests: Dress conservatively and
warmly.
What You Can Do: -- ATTEND THE PROTEST
Contact: Chad Thevenot, (202) 312-2015 or David Guard, (202) 682-4776, [email protected]
4. Judge Accused of Heroin Use, Corruption A Pennsylvania District Judge was stripped of her duties last week (10/23) after being charged with using heroin and improperly dismissing charges against her dealer. Judge Gigi Sullivan, 38, allegedly took drugs in exchange for dropping charges against Donald Geraci and others within his illicit operation, as well as tipping them off to arrest warrants and searches. Judge Sullivan's attorney, Patrick Thomassey, told reporters that his client had developed an addiction to prescription medication following an injury. "She managed to keep a handle on that, with help," said Mr. Thomassey, "but apparently something happened and she ended up in this position." Al Robison, retired professor of pharmacology and current president of the Drug Policy Forum of Texas, told The Week Online that the allegations point to the increase in the destructiveness of a particular substance based upon its legal status. "For all intents and purposes," said Dr. Robison, "addiction is addiction is addiction. It is not surprising that this judge was able to 'keep a handle' on her problem when the drugs she was abusing were available through legal or semi-legal channels. Assuming these allegations prove true, it is apparent that once she began using a substance available only in the black market, she became subject to the corrupting influence of prohibition. A medical problem then became a much broader problem with much broader consequences. We see this in the fact that the abuse of prescription medication generally leads to treatment or health-based intervention of some sort, while our prisons are full of people who find themselves addicted to drugs that, while no more dangerous than many prescribed medications, are distributed only illegally."
5. Corruption Investigation Widens at LAPD Los Angeles police officers maintained an apartment near the Rampart station in which they partied and had sexual relations with prostitutes who were also recruited to sell drugs that the officers had stolen from dealers, according to a report released Friday (10/22) by the LAPD. The allegations come as part of a widening investigation of corruption on the force. Rafael Perez, an ex-officer who is cooperating with the investigation in exchange for leniency on a cocaine theft conviction, is the source of this new information, according to the LA Times. The probe, while ongoing, has already led to the release of one man from prison after the District Attorney determined that he had been framed by corrupt officers. Dr. Joseph McNamara, retired Chief of Police in San Jose, CA and Kansas City, and currently a Fellow at the Hoover Institute at Stanford University, spoke to The Week Online about the problem of corruption and its connection to drug prohibition. "No one knows how deep the corruption in the LAPD goes," said McNamara. "What I can tell you is that the case in LA follows a pattern that I have seen both in my professional experience and in more than six years of research since. The pattern is that you get a small group of predatory criminals with badges, and that they commit armed robbery, they steal drugs, plant evidence, commit homicides and so on. "This is not an LAPD problem, this is a national crisis, and it is directly reflective of the immense profits available under drug prohibition. Typically, these cops can go on committing criminal acts for years as a result of the culture of silence among police officers. In the LA case, there was an LA Times report which indicated that the agency had even received complaints from drug dealers detailing thefts and corruption." McNamara then pointed out that while the number of corrupt cops in any one agency might be small, the problem is nevertheless pervasive. "We cannot blind ourselves to this problem. It will not be solved with the typical band aid solutions that are almost always recommended when one of these cases comes to light -- better recruiting practices, better training, stricter procedures. Obviously, the vast, vast majority of police officers don't engage in these types of practices, but the few who do, do enormous damage." "Another aspect of the pattern is that the complaint that reveals this type of corruption comes from outside the agency. Again, this is because of the culture of police forces. And when it does come to light, generally we hear the mayor or the police chief talking about 'a few rotten apples.' There's a tendency, and enormous pressure, to minimize the damage to the force's reputation. The result of that is that there are generally more officers involved than are ever brought to light."
On Monday (10/25) Pasadena Mayor Johnny Isbell called for a complete review of that city's warrant division in the wake of the recent arrests of two deputy city marshals, one reserve deputy, one police officer and two former police officers. Charges range from theft and burglary to manufacture/delivery of a controlled substance. "We know of no reason to believe that the alleged criminal activity in this case extends to anyone in the city of Pasadena warrant division beyond those charged," said Isbell.
7. Governor Johnson to Participate in New Mexico Drug Policy Forums, November 2nd and 16th Governor Gary E. Johnson has accepted an invitation to participate in the first of many forums in New Mexico on the issue of the nation's drug policy. "I have called for a dialogue on our nation's drug policy in order to find a solution to the drug problem facing our country and state and I am pleased to be participating in the first ones to be scheduled in New Mexico," Governor Johnson said. The New Mexico Drug Policy Foundation, an educational foundation, is sponsoring two forums in November in New Mexico. The first forum is entitled: "The Drug War: Who is Winning?" and is scheduled for November 2, 1999. The topic of the second forum, scheduled for November 16, 1999, is "Drug Legalization: A Bold Alternative to the Drug War." "My mantra is just say know. K-N-O-W," Governor Johnson said. "I welcome any and all discussion on our nation's drug policy and I believe these first two forums should give New Mexicans a lot of good information and a lot to think about. My objective is to find a real solution that will actually reduce drug abuse in our country." The forums, which will featured Ethan Nadelmann, Director of the Lindesmith Center, and Kevin Zeese, President of Common Sense for Drug Policy, among others, are free and open to the public. Governor Johnson will be a featured speaker at both of the forums. Governor Johnson encourages everyone who is interested in knowing more about the war on drugs in New Mexico and in the United States to attend the forums. "I believe all of us in New Mexico are affected by the war on drugs in one way or another. From the taxes we pay for the war, to the information our children receive, to the crime in the streets which results from the failures of the war on drugs," Johnson said. "I believe these forums will give New Mexicans more of the information they need to understand this war, how it is affecting all of our lives and what the solution could be." "At the upcoming forums, like at every opportunity I have, I will tell the public that drugs are a bad choice and don't do drugs," Governor Johnson said. FORUM SCHEDULE: Tuesday, November 2, 1999, 7:00-9:30pm, "The Drug War: Who is Winning?", Crown Plaza Pyramid Hotel, Albuquerque, 5151 San Francisco NE. Tuesday, November 16, 1999, 7:00-9:30pm, "Drug Legalization: A Bold Alternative to the Drug War," Radisson Inn, Albuquerque, I-40 at Carlisle. For info, contact the New Mexico Drug Policy Foundation, P.O. Box 6994, Albuquerque, NM 87197, (505) 344 1932, fax: (505) 344-6716, http://www.newmexicodrugpolicy.org.
8. San Francisco Beats New York at Crime Reduction A new study has found that San Francisco has been more effective at fighting violent crime than New York City. Since 1995, violent crime has dropped faster in San Francisco (33%) than in New York (26%). Meanwhile, San Francisco has reduced the number of individuals it sends to prison from 2,136 in 1993 to 703 in 1998. The study is called "Shattering 'Broken Windows': An Analysis of San Francisco's Liberal Crime Policies," and is the first of its kind in 1999 to compare crime rates in cities and counties nationwide. The study was conducted by the Justice Policy Institute (JPI), a project of the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice (CJCJ). JPI and CJCJ have offices in San Francisco, Washington, DC and Baltimore. Report authors Khaled Taqi-Eddin and associate director, Dan Macallair have been conducting research for the report since March, 1999. "This study debunks the notion that longer and more punitive sentences are the most effective ways to fight crime," said Taqi-Eddin, the report's co-author and CJCJ Policy Analyst. "If you think sending more people to prison for longer sentences is what's behind the drop in crime, how can you explain San Francisco?" Since 1992, San Francisco achieved greater declines in violent crime than ten major cities, including New York. Since 1992, violent crime has dropped 47 percent in San Francisco, 46 percent in Los Angeles, 34 percent in Boston, 25 percent in Chicago, and 46 percent in New York City. The study drew on the latest available data compiled by the FBI, the Census Bureau, the California Criminal Justice Statistics Center, the California Youth Authority and the California Department of Corrections. Ten national comparison cities were chosen based on their designation by the United States Justice Department for having effective crime policies: Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Jacksonville, New Orleans, New York City, Phoenix and Washington, DC. In addition, San Francisco was compared to the three largest California cities, Los Angeles, San Diego and San Jose, and to the eight largest California counties. The study argues against the notion that prison and increased arrests of minor offenses is the most effective way to combat crime. In 1982, conservative theorists James Q. Wilson and George Kelling introduced the "broken windows" theory of crime that argues that stricter enforcement and longer sentences for nonviolent crimes, such as vandalism or drug offenses, prevent more serious, violent offenses. The most famous implementation of this theory has been by New York Mayor Rudolph Guiliani, who has stepped up enforcement of low level offenses including jay walking, vagrancy, and public intoxication. Study authors Taqi-Eddin and Macallair argue that some elements of the "broken windows" approach have worked, such as community policing, while others, such as curfew laws, have not been shown to reduce crime. In terms of reducing juvenile crime in particular, the authors argue that "diversion" programs -- which send youth offenders to job training, drug treatment and counseling -- are more effective than prison. San Francisco has relied less on the California Youth Authority and more on programs like the Detention Diversion Advocacy Project (DDAP), which was singled by out the US Justice Department as a model program for preventing repeat offenses. "Shattering 'Broken Windows'" can be found online at http://www.cjcj.org/jpi/windows.html.
Minnesota Reform Party May Endorse Marijuana Legalization The Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported this week that the state's Reform Party will consider adding a marijuana legalization plank to its platform when it convenes on November 13. Governor Jesse Ventura, who won office on a Reform ticket, will be the keynote speaker at the event. The Minnesota Reform Party is online at http://minnesota.reformparty.org. Justice Department Challenges Pro-Medical Marijuana Ruling This week, the Justice Department asked a federal court in the 9th Circuit to reconsider a recent ruling which had found that the government had offered nothing to contradict "evidence that cannabis is the only effective treatment for a large group of seriously ill individuals." The ruling, if it stands, could permit medical marijuana use in the 9th federal district under certain circumstances. California Attorney General Bill Lockyer had asked US Attorney General Janet Reno not to challenge the ruling (see (http://www.drcnet.org/wol/112.html#lockyerreno). Renee Boje Extradition Hearings Beginning November 1 Hearings begin on November 1 in the case of Renee Boje, an American who fled to Canada fearing federal marijuana charges, and who is requesting political refugee status. Boje and her attorney, John Conroy, contend that the US is acting like an oppressive regime in the war on drugs, and that Boje is being targeted because of her association with Todd McCormick. For further information, read this week's NBC news report at http://www.msnbc.com/news/325980.asp, and issue #111 of the Week Online, http://www.drcnet.org/wol/111.html#reneeboje.
10. Dutch Drug Policy Discussions Online The Centre for Drug Research at the University of Amsterdam (CEDRO) has added the following articles to its web site: The International Drug Complex Hans van der Veen is a Dutch political scientist working on his PhD in international relations at the European University Institute in Fiesole, Florence (Italy). In "The International Drug Complex: Understanding the Intertwined Dynamics of International Crime, Law Enforcement and the Flourishing Drug Economy," van der Veen develops a holistic view of the social and political determinants that driving the "drug war," and demonstrates that complex, interrelated institutions are functioning in a sense comparable to what Eisenhower once called the "military-industrial complex." "The International Drug Complex" can be read online at http://www.frw.uva.nl/cedro/library/complex.html. Is Dutch Drug Policy the Devil? In the May/June issue of Foreign Affairs, Larry Collins asserted that Dutch policies had caused an "explosion" of heroin addiction and juvenile crime. He claimed that the Netherlands has become "the narcotics capitol of Europe," a virtual drug dealing state causing havoc in neighboring countries. Many of Collins' arguments are misleading, even false. In this short article, Craig Reinarman and Peter Cohen discuss a few of them. Read their critique online at http://www.frw.uva.nl/cedro/library/devil.html.
Adam J. Smith, Associate Director, [email protected] This week, across the war-torn nation of Colombia, as many as ten million people took to the streets to call for an end to violence in that country's thirty-five year-old civil war. "No mas!" they cried in the streets of Bogota, of Medellin, of Cali. But in Washington, DC, far from the blood-stained streets and decimated jungle villages of Colombia, American drug warriors from both major political parties negotiate the level of new military aid -- financed with American tax dollars -- that will be injected into the conflict. Though American leaders like Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey talk about supporting the democratically elected government of Colombia against Marxist insurgents, the truth is that there are no good guys in this war. The Colombian military, the one on "our" side, has one of the worst human rights records in the hemisphere, and factions of the military are closely aligned with right-wing paramilitaries believed to be responsible for the outright massacres of thousands of innocent civilians. The rebels, for their part, count kidnapping and the protection of drug traffickers among their fundraising strategies. It is the drug trade, to be sure, that is the stated target of American military aid to that nation, but the paramilitaries as well as parts of the national police force and the military itself are known to be profiting from the white gold as well. Try as they might to cloak America's growing involvement in Colombia as an anti-narcotics imperative, our leaders cannot escape the fact that in so doing, we are sinking deeper and deeper into a quagmire that is, at its root, a cultural and economic conflict. Colombia, as large as the US west of the Mississippi, and marked by a terrain of mountains and rain forest, is neither Kuwait nor Iraq. Its problems, including but not limited to the scope of the US-bound drug trade and the pervasive corruption that prohibition has engendered, will not easily be solved by the simple introduction of American firepower, or even American troops. A rational policy -- if that, and not the enrichment of American defense contractors, is truly our goal -- would include reducing, rather than increasing the level of weaponry on the ground. That would be accomplished very efficiently by taking the money out of the nation's chief export, narcotics. This week, an estimated ten million Colombians took to the streets to demand an end to the violence that has defined their nation and their lives for more than a generation. It is a cry that must be heard, and heeded if Latin America's longest-standing democracy is to survive intact. US foreign policy, in misguided if not disingenuous service to our profitable and corrupt drug war, seems at direct odds to the interests of peace. It is immoral for us to destroy a nation and its citizens in a doomed attempt to rectify our own domestic policy failures and our own citizens' demand for prohibited substances. Instead, we ourselves should be out in the streets, echoing the Colombian ten million, calling for peace, telling our leaders, our drug warriors, "no mas!" If you like what you see here and want to get these bulletins by e-mail, please fill out our quick signup form at https://stopthedrugwar.org/WOLSignup.shtml. PERMISSION to reprint or redistribute any or all of the contents of Drug War Chronicle is hereby granted. We ask that any use of these materials include proper credit and, where appropriate, a link to one or more of our web sites. If your publication customarily pays for publication, DRCNet requests checks payable to the organization. If your publication does not pay for materials, you are free to use the materials gratis. In all cases, we request notification for our records, including physical copies where material has appeared in print. Contact: StoptheDrugWar.org: the Drug Reform Coordination Network, P.O. Box 18402, Washington, DC 20036, (202) 293-8340 (voice), (202) 293-8344 (fax), e-mail [email protected]. Thank you. Articles of a purely educational nature in Drug War Chronicle appear courtesy of the DRCNet Foundation, unless otherwise noted.
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