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(renamed "Drug War Chronicle" effective issue #300, August 2003) Issue #161, 11/24/00
"Raising Awareness of the Consequences of Drug Prohibition" Phillip S. Smith, Editor
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1. Business As Usual on the Border: More Cops, More Drugs Seized, No Impact on the Street The US Customs Service was busy last week trumpeting a series of press releases about its successes in combating drug smuggling (http://www.customs.ustreas.gov/news/pressrelf.htm). Titles such as "FY 2000, A Record-Setting Year: Arizona Customs Officers Seize Almost 90 Tons of Illegal Drugs," and "FY 2000, A Record Setting Year: West Texas/New Mexico Customs Officer Seize Almost 155 Tons of Illegal Drugs," illustrate the self-congratulatory tenor of the press releases. Customs and Border Patrol officials told reporters the increase in seizures, up every year since 1996, are the result of technological innovation and increased manpower. The Border Patrol has accounted for much of the increase in manpower. Since 1996, when Congress passed an immigration bill mandating massive increases in Border Patrol ranks, the agency has nearly doubled in size to 9,212 agents -- more than the DEA and rapidly closing in on the FBI's 11,428. The Border Patrol added 1,708 new agents during the fiscal year ending September 30th. Most of them are destined for desolate stretches of the border, such as the new station at Deming, New Mexico, opened last week, and the one at Fabens, New Mexico, which opened in September. The push to the remote borderlands comes as increased Border Patrol pressure on urban areas such as San Diego and El Paso pushes immigrants and smugglers alike into ever more desolate and dangerous parts of the border. In its effort to seal the border like a zip-loc baggie, the Border Patrol follows, pouring new agents into the fray. Congress authorized a thousand new agents a year, but even that isn't enough for some lawmakers. US Rep. Sylvestre Reyes (D-El Paso), a former El Paso Border Patrol sector chief, told the Houston Chronicle he and others in Congress want to build the Border Patrol to a force 20,000 strong. Despite all the dollars and manpower, drug law enforcers are plowing the sea. Customs officials admit they do not know the amount of drugs imported into the country every year. Customs spokesman Roger Maier told the Dallas Morning Herald, "We don't know the universe, we just know what we catch." "We don't know how much is out there. We're catching a lot, and obviously we're not catching it all, but we're having a significant impact." But 31 years and untold billions of dollars after President Richard Nixon first tried to stop cross-border drug trafficking with his ill-fated Operation Intercept, the truth of Maier's assertion is arguable at best. Here is what the Office of National Drug Control Policy's latest National Drug Control Strategy had to say. On marijuana availability: "According to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the majority of the marijuana in the US is foreign-grown. Mexico, Colombia, and Jamaica are primary source nations; Canada, Thailand, and Cambodia are secondary sources. On heroin availability: "Unprecedented retail purity and low prices in the United States indicate that heroin is readily accessible." Accompanying charts show heroin prices declining at both the retail and wholesale level for the past decade. On cocaine availability: "Cocaine continues to be readily available in nearly all major metropolitan areas. Approximately 60 percent of the cocaine smuggled into the US crosses the Southwest border." Can you say "cost-benefit analysis"?
2. Follow That Story: Discredited "Supersnitch" Rises From the Ashes to Testify Again It seems like the DEA and the Los Angeles US Attorneys' office just never learn. Despite scandals surrounding million-dollar DEA informant Andrew Chambers earlier this year, in which it became public knowledge that Chambers had lied repeatedly in courts across the land about his criminal record, his taxes, his payments from the DEA, and his use of false names, Chambers is on the prosecution witness list in a Los Angeles federal court case set for February. The Week Online reported on Chambers' career in June (http://www.drcnet.org/wol/139.html#supersnitch). By that time, three federal courts had called Chambers a liar, Attorney General Reno had personally ordered his removal from the DEA payroll, and the DEA was supposedly nearing the end of an investigation into its use of Chambers and the role its agents played in covering up his crimes and lies. That investigation, which was originally supposed to be finished in May, has yet to be released. It was withdrawn for revisions after the St. Louis Post-Dispatch found evidence suggesting that the report consisted largely of a DEA cover-up of its earlier cover-up. The DEA told the Post-Dispatch this week the investigation is finished, but the report will not be released until approved by senior agency officials. In the Los Angeles case, attorneys for another snitch, David Daley, who was informing for the Los Angeles Police Department when Chambers accused him of setting up a PCP deal, accuse a DEA agent of lying to a grand jury in the case by testifying that Chambers had a history of being "reliable." They also charge federal prosecutors with misconduct for failing for two years to tell defense counsel about Chambers' well-documented history of lying on the stand. Prosecutors are required by law to divulge such information. Assistant US Attorney Lizabeth A. Rhodes, who is prosecuting the case, told the Post-Dispatch she does not know why the original prosecutor did not hand over the information to defense attorneys, but that she had done so. She attempted to finger the DEA. "It's a DEA case," she said. The DEA declined to take credit. Asked by the Post-Dispatch about why prosecutors would be willing to use a discredited, suspended informant, DEA spokesman Mike McManus demurred. "That's not our decision," he said. Rhodes also pled ignorance about Chambers, arguing that there were just too many government snitches to keep track of them all. But the Los Angeles US Attorney's office was certainly familiar with Chambers. Records uncovered by the Post-Dispatch show that Chambers had worked for the DEA in Los Angeles County since 1987, and that he had worked with at least 14 different federal prosecutors there. A day after Daley was charged in 1997, the US Attorney's office also filed charges in another drug case where Chambers was the key witness. But this time, prosecutors told the court about Chambers' pattern of perjury and mentioned he had received more than $1 million (later bumped up to $2 million) from the DEA. Last fall, another Los Angeles Assistant US Attorney, Stephen Wolfe, told the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals that Chambers was "undefendable." He blamed the DEA for failing to tell prosecutors about the snitch's problems with the truth. Daley defense attorney John Martin met last month with Rhodes and her boss, Los Angeles US Attorney Alejandro N. Mayorkas, to notify them that he was planning to charge the government with prosecutorial misconduct and, he said, to ensure that Mayorkas was personally aware of the government's pattern of deceit. Last week, Rhodes and Mayorkas responded with a weasel-worded letter admitting that their office was "at fault for its inconsistent approach to the submission of information regarding the informant," but that the mistake "was not intentional and, in any event, was not material." But despite Chambers' history of perjury and its own admissions that he is unreliable, the US Attorney's office has not said that it would withdraw Chambers from the witness list.
3. Follow That Story: Asset Forfeiture Reform a Big Hit at Southern Legislative Conference Given the success of asset forfeiture reform initiatives in Utah and Oregon in the recent elections, it was no surprise that last Saturday's asset forfeiture reform panel at the Southern Legislative Conference (SLC) got an attentive hearing from legislators, who had gathered for the group's annual fall meeting in Coral Gables, Florida. (See http://www.drcnet.org/wol/160.html#southernlegislators for last week's heads-up on the conference.) Afterwards, lawmakers from several states vowed to review asset forfeiture laws at home. "This is almost as controversial as the presidential election," Maryland Delegate Dana Denbow (D-Montgomery County) told the Kansas City Star, whose Karen Dillon has written extensively on abuses in state asset forfeiture programs. Denbow, who heads the SLC's Intergovernmental Affairs Committee and moderated the four-person panel, put asset forfeiture reform on the group's agenda at the request of Missouri state Sen. Henry Wiggins (D-Kansas City). Wiggins authored asset forfeiture reform legislation that is pending in Missouri. The focus of Wiggins' bill and of his testimony on the panel was state and local police abuse of state asset forfeiture laws. Many states mandate that funds from seizures be dedicated to specific ends, typically education. The Star's Dillon, in a series of reports earlier this year (http://www.kcstar.com/projects/drugforfeit/), showed how state and local police evade state requirements by handing seized goods over to federal agencies. The federal agencies then return roughly 80% to the local police agency. Funds that under state laws should have gone to a specified program thus end up in the hands of police agencies. The panel included rare appearances by attorneys from the Justice and Treasury departments. Both agencies have been reluctant to defend their programs in public forums. But Steven Schlesinger, a trial attorney with the Department of Justice Asset Forfeiture and Money Laundering division, attempted to do so despite sometimes skeptical questioning from attending legislators and harsh attacks from co-panelists. Armed with hand-outs showing that asset forfeiture had garnered $2 billion for state and local law enforcement agencies since 1986, Schlesinger told his audience, "That is money that didn't have to come out of your taxpayers' pockets. States, communities and law enforcement agencies have benefited tremendously from this program." Schlesinger also described the value of seizures handed over to federal agencies to circumvent state laws as a small proportion of the total. But figures earlier provided to the Kansas City Star by the Department of Justice showed that federal agencies got $208 million from state and local police in one three-year period alone. Such numbers suggest that as much as half the $2 billion could be the result of police evading state laws. Schlesinger also drew flak when he suggested that the fault lay with the state laws. Missouri, for example, "has a major loophole," he argued, in that it requires a felony conviction before property can be forfeited. Police who cannot gain convictions then turn to federal law, which allows confiscation without conviction, he explained. Those comments prompted a sharp response from fellow panel member Steven Kessler, a New York City criminal defense attorney and author of two works on forfeiture law. "What a novel idea" that someone must be convicted of a crime before his property can be seized, said Kessler. "I advocate that loophole to each and every one of you in this room," Kessler advised, adding that requiring a criminal conviction protects the public from law enforcement abuses. Several of the 40-odd legislators who attended the session told the Star that they would act on the issue. Tennessee state Senator Douglas Henry (D-Nashville) said he would ask that his state's laws be reexamined, and state Sen. Jim Hill, a Democrat from small town Nashville, Arkansas, said he had already asked Kessler to review the Arkansas statute. Virginia state Senator Yvonne Washington (D-Norfolk) told the Star, "I'm horrified by what I hear. This sounds like legalized extortion." She said she will send the Virginia statute to outside groups such as the NAACP for review. But Maryland's Delegate Denbow said he believed the only way to end the police end-runs was to reform federal asset forfeiture law. He told the Star he had asked Wiggins to help draft a policy statement asking Congress to address who should get the booty and how to separate federal from state seizures. That statement would be voted on at the SLC's annual conference next summer.
4. Andean Update: Peru's Fujimori and Coca Eradication Gone, Colombia's Peace Talks on Hold as Country Braces for Drug War Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori resigned this week, bringing to an end an authoritarian regime that made its reputation by repressing two strong insurgencies in the mid-1990s. Fujimori, however, proved more adept at defeating guerrillas than working within the constraints of a genuine democracy. The Peruvian strongman appeared invincible as recently as a few months ago, but his popularity began to erode in the wake of a hotly contested presidential election in the spring. Then, after his leading advisor and head of the national intelligence service, Vladimiro Montesinos, was linked to a bribery scandal and to a guns-for-drugs deal with the Colombian FARC, Fujimori's approval ratings went into freefall. Fujimori resigned long distance, notifying Peruvian authorities of his decision from Japan, where he had stopped after a global economic conference in Brunei. He remains in Japan. New elections are scheduled for April, and while the political picture is muddied, Fujimori's Second Vice Presdent Ricardo Marquez has been sworn in as a caretaker pending the elections. The congressional opposition, however, stands ready to replace Marquez with a centrist elder statesman, Victor Paniagua. Fujimori garnered assistance and accolades from the United States for his tough stance on drugs. Aided by US troops manning radar stations and transmitting intelligence to Peruvian authorities, Fujimori okayed the shooting down of suspected drug smuggling planes, which helped to erode the Peru-Colombia coca connection. He also engineered a tough coca eradication program that succeeded in cutting Peruvian coca production in half since 1995. But in a shining example of the law of unintended consequences, total Andean coca production remains roughly unchanged, with large scale production shifting from Peru and Bolivia to Colombia, where it is fueling a brutal civil war. But Fujimori outlasted his coca eradication program. Early this month, as Fujimori struggled to maintain his grip on power, farmers in Peru's coca growing heartland, the Upper Huallaga Valley, rose up in protest. Some 35,000 growers blocked highways in the region for a week, forcing the embattled government to give in. "We have been able to arrive at a consensus... in which the eradication is stopped," Health Minister Alejandro Aguinaga, who also heads Peru's anti-drug efforts, told local radio news. Aguinaga said that any future eradication of coca bushes would occur only with the agreement of farmers. Protests are on hold, according to farmers' groups, pending government proposals to assist with alternative crop development. In Colombia, to which much of the Peruvian and Bolivian coca production migrated, political violence continues to increase in anticipation of the US-sponsored Plan Colombia. Under that plan, US-trained and -equipped troops will attempt to invade strongholds of the leftist FARC guerrillas to wipe out coca production. The first anti-drug brigade is expected to roll into conflicted Putumayo province as early as next month. Right-wing paramilitaries effectively allied with the Colombian military have entered the province in large numbers in recent months, as have hundreds of FARC guerrilla reinforcements. Twenty-eight people died in fighting early last week, and the month-long FARC blockade of the province remains intact. Although the military airlifted some 300 tons of food into Puerto Asis, the provincial capital, earlier this month, local authorities are bitter and depressed. "The government has abandoned Putumayo," Mayor Manuel Alzate told the St. Petersburg Times. Neither does Alzate think Plan Colombia will make a difference. "The government would have to station its troops every 50 yards along the highways, and they lack the manpower to do that. And even if they did, the rebels could creep up and kill them." In a further sign of trouble to come, last week the FARC guerrillas announced they were withdrawing from slow-moving peace talks. The FARC statement pointed to Colombian government tolerance of the paramilitaries and accused the government of choosing the US-inspired war plan over negotiations. Meanwhile, in a an indication of problems for Plan Colombia in Washington, a leading Republican hawk, Rep. Benjamin Gilman of New York, has broken with the administration. In a letter last week to Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey, Gilman called Plan Colombia "a major mistake" and criticized the Colombian military's human rights record. But the Gilman move is not a case of sudden enlightenment. Instead it is partly a partisan attack on the Clinton administration and partly an effort to shift US military assistance from the Colombian armed forces to Gilman's favored National Police. Still, Gilman's defection from the Plan Colombia consensus on the Hill means the plan will be an even tougher sell in Congress in the coming session. Administration officials are preparing to ask for an additional $400 to $600 million to prosecute the war during the next budget year. Undaunted by the virtual collapse of Plan Colombia before it even begins, McCaffrey, in his Colombian swan song, touched down in Bogota to cheerlead one last time before retiring. Although he predicted heavy fighting and an increase in Colombian cocaine production, McCaffrey said he could see no alternative to Plan Colombia. McCaffrey repeatedly told his audiences that US aid was not designed to influence the country's decades-long civil war, but instead aimed at suppressing the drug trade. But in a remark that cuts to the heart of US confusion over its goals in Colombia, McCaffrey repeated his claim that the FARC is "the principal organizing entity of cocaine production in the world."
5. US Anti-Drug Aid Endangering Indigenous Communities and Amazon Biodiversity, Experts Charge In a Washington, DC press conference held last Monday, an international coalition of indigenous, environmental, human rights, and policy organizations have warned that escalation of the US-funded Colombian government's herbicide spraying program to eradicate illicit crops could seriously harm the health of indigenous and peasant communities, endanger the biodiverse ecosystems of the Amazon Basin, while failing to reduce overall drug production and use in the US. The Colombian National Police, assisted by US government spray aircraft, fuel, escort helicopters, and private military contractors, will significantly increase aerial fumigation operations in December in the southern state of Putumayo. Fifty-eight indigenous peoples are among those affected by fumigation in the Colombian Amazon. Their territories cover almost half of the region. Emperatriz Cahuache, President of the Organization of Indigenous Peoples of the Colombian Amazon, stated "Fumigation violates our rights and territorial autonomy. It has intensified the violence of the armed conflict and forced people to leave their homes after their food crops have been destroyed." "Aerial eradication, and the thousands of US-trained soldiers deployed in the region, are escalating social tension and political violence," added Bill Spencer, Deputy Director of the Washington Office on Latin America. "These operations force many peasants to join the ranks of the guerrillas or to flee the region -- adding to the hundreds of thousands of Colombians displaced internally or abroad." The Human Rights Ombudsman offices at the national and local level have also registered hundreds of complaints from peasants throughout Colombia that aerial eradication has caused eye, respiratory, skin, and digestive ailments, destroyed subsistence crops, sickened domesticated animals, and contaminated water supplies. These complaints, and other occupation health data warning against direct human exposure, suggest that the impact on human health could be extremely detrimental. According to Linda Farley, American Birds Conservancy Science Officer, "While glyphosate's direct toxic effects on the ecosystem may not be as extreme as those seen with other herbicides, the indirect, long term ecological effects are severe. Aside from non-target plant species killed by aerial "drift" during spraying operations, glyphosate has well-documented deleterious effects on soil micro-organisms, mammalian life including humans, invertebrates, and aquatic organisms, especially fish." This represents a major cause for concern since a significant portion of coca cultivation occurs alongside rivers in the Colombian Amazon that flow directly into Ecuador and Brazil. Moreover, the ecosystems of Colombia contain approximately 10% of the world's terrestrial plant and animal species. "Deforestation has also increased as farmers whose coca crops have been sprayed move deeper into the rainforests," Farley continued. In this sense, glyphosate spraying is already having a significant detrimental effect on the endemic and threatened birds of Colombia, as 95% of the 75 plus threatened species are forest-dependent. Colombia is one of the richest areas in the world in terms of birds diversity." On top of these concerns, drug policy experts argue that source-country counternarcotic strategies will never be successful at decreasing overall drug production because cultivation will shift to other regions and countries around the world. Coca and opium poppy production in Colombia tripled from 1994 to 1999, despite fumigating over 240,000 hectares of illicit crops with more than two million liters of glyphosate. Experts argue that the stated goal of the $1.3 billion US aid package for Plan Colombia -- to reduce drug use in the streets of America -- will never be achieved by aerial fumigation or other supply-side strategies. "Until we admit the drug economy is driven by three problems we refuse to seriously address -- poverty in drug producing countries, demand in rich countries, and the "value added" to these relatively worthless crops by prohibition policies -- we will never get a handle on the problem," stated Sanho Tree, Director of the Drug Policy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies. Bill Piper, Associate Director of Public Policy and Legislative Affairs for the Lindesmith Center-Drug Policy Foundation echoed his concerns, adding, "When Congress chose to spend over hundreds of millions of dollars on risky counter-narcotic efforts in Colombia instead of closing the treatment gap here at home, the door was closed on thousands of Americans needing help, while innocent Colombians were made to pay a horrible price for our country's addictions." Visit http://www.usfumigation.org for statements and other information related to Monday's press conference.
6. Newsbrief: New Polish Drug Bill Ends Experiment, Outlaws Possession for Personal Use A three-year experiment in tolerating drug possession has ended in Poland. President Aleksander Kwasniewski this week signed into law a tough new drug bill passed by the Polish parliament in September. The new law undoes provisions of the 1997 Act On Countering Drug Addiction, which exempted drugs for personal use from criminal penalties and called for drug treatment to occur only voluntarily, except in the case of minors. In regard to drug possession, the 1997 law said, "The perpetrators of [drug offenses], who possess narcotic drugs or psychotropic substances in diminutive quantities for their own use, are not liable to any penalty." In regard to coerced treatment, the 1997 law said, "Submission to treatment, rehabilitation or re-adaptation shall be voluntary, except when the regulations under this Law provide otherwise. Under the new law, possession of narcotics or psychotropic substances, including marijuana, can be punished by up to three years in prison. The new law also allows judges to force drug users into treatment. "The police can now arrest and stigmatize youngsters and addicts, which will be easier than cracking down on professionals," Marek Kotanski told Reuters. Kotanski heads Monar, Poland's largest private drug abuse service organization. Supporters of the new legislation argued that it would target drug dealers, whom they asserted took advantage of the personal use exemption to evade prosecution. They also pointed to official statistics showing a steady increase in the number of habitual drug users since the fall of communism in 1989.
7. Newsbrief: Sweden Survives MTV Festival As reported by The Week Online with DRCNet last week (http://www.drcnet.org/wol/160.html#sweden), Swedish police were in an uproar over the advisability of sending in special drug squads to help police an MTV pop music awards event at the Globe theater in suburban Stockholm. Local police first denied drug squad requests to assist at the event, but later relented under pressure from the narcs and prominent Swedish drug warriors. In addition, Swedish Customs went on special alert, employing drug-sniffing dogs at the Stockholm airport to counter the feared influx of dope-addled musicians and fans. According to a post-concert report in Aftonbladet, the police squabble turned out to be much ado about nothing. The Swedish newspaper's log of police activity at the show tallied one ticket theft, two drunk minors driven home by police, and one arrest for possibly being high. A more countercultural alternative to the MTV event held at the Fryhuset club in Stockholm yielded three more unfortunate drug consumers. Meanwhile, Aftonbladet reported, the Swedish Narcotics Commission continues down its hard-line path. In its latest report, the commission has proposed the use of laxatives to speed body searches of suspected drug smugglers. It also urged banning the sale, purchase, and possession of cannabis seeds, all of which remain legal under current law. New Justice Minister Thomas Bodstrom has not commented on the report. Bodstrom had criticized Sweden's restrictive approach to drug policy, but has moderated his stand since assuming office last month.
8. Newsbrief: Clinton Allies Call for Commutation of Drug Kingpin Death Penalty, Moratorium on Federal Executions Issue #146 of the Week Online last summer featured coverage of the Juan Raul Garza federal drug kingpin death penalty case, including an interview with anti-death penalty activist and Hollywood actor/producer Mike Farrell (http://www.drcnet.org/wol/146.html). The Associated Press reported on Tuesday that allies of President Clinton are asking him to declare a moratorium on federal executions and commute Garza's sentence to life in prison. The group wrote, "Unless you take action, executions will begin at a time when your own attorney general has expressed concern about racial and other disparities in the federal death penalty process." Garza, who was convicted of committing three murders in the course of drug trafficking, is scheduled to be executed on December 12th, which would make him the first person since 1963 to be executed under federal criminal statutes. Among the 40 signatories, according to the AP, are US Civil Rights Commission Chairwoman Mary Frances Berry, Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles, NAACP Chairman Julian Bond, civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, former Notre Dame President Theodore Hesburgh and entertainers Barbra Streisand and Jack Lemmon. The AP reported that White House spokesman Jake Seiwert said the letter had been received but no decision had been made. According to Siewert, the President is "troubled by the disparities... that were turned up by the Department of Justice report [on the death penalty]... That's something we're still examining."
9. Coalition for Jubilee Clemency A national coalition of faith leaders is petitioning President Clinton to release on supervised parole those Federal prisoners serving unconscionably long sentences for low-level, nonviolent drug offenses. The Coalition for Jubilee Clemency holds that "These unduly severe sentences violate human rights and waste scarce criminal justice resources," and that "The constitutional power to grant reprieves and pardons is a unique and powerful tool to express the public's merciful spirit." Please visit the Coalition for Jubilee Clemency at http://www.cjpf.org/clemency/ to read their letter to the President and the national list of clergy signatories. Print out a statement to show to clergy you know and ask them to sign on.
10. Reducing Racial Disparity in the Criminal Justice System: Sentencing Project Releases Manual for Practitioners and Policymakers A new publication of The Sentencing Project, produced through a collaboration with leaders from all components of the criminal justice system, provides guidance to criminal justice professionals on identifying and understand the causes and manifestations of racial disparity and selecting options for reducing it. Reducing Racial Disparity examines the full chain of criminal justice practices, from enforcement to pretrial to prosecution, defense, judiciary, probation, jails and prisons to parole. For further information, contact The Sentencing Project at (202) 628-0871 or visit http://www.sentencingproject.org on the web.
(Please submit listings of events related to drug policy and related areas to [email protected].) November 25, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, 11:00am-5:00pm, Medical Marijuana Rally. At the Centennial Flame, in front of the Parliament Buildings, on behalf of all medical marijuana exemptees. For further information, visit http://www.zyx1.com/rallyposter.html or contact Rick Reimer at (613) 735-2345. December 2, New Haven, CT, 9:30am-6:30pm, First Conference on Drug Policy and the Prison Overcrowding Crisis in Connecticut. At Yale University, Lindsley Chittenden room 101, 203, 204 and 205, open to the public. For further information, contact Luke Bronin at [email protected] or Adam Hurter at (860) 285-8831 or [email protected]. January 13, 2001, St. Petersburg, FL, Families Against Mandatory Minimums Regional Workshop, location to be determined. Call (202) 822-6700 for information or to register. March 9-11, 2001, New York, NY, Critical Resistance: Beyond the Prison Industrial Complex. Northeast regional conference, following on the large national gathering in 1998, to focus on the impacts of the prison industrial complex in Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and bWashington, DC. Visit http://www.criticalresistance.org for further information, or call (212) 561-0912 or e-mail [email protected]. April 1-5, 2001, New Delhi, India, 12th International Conference on the Reduction of Drug Related Harm. Sponsored by the International Harm Reduction Coalition, for information visit http://ihrc-india2001.org on the web, e-mail [email protected], call 91-11-6237417-18, fax 91-11-6217493 or write to Showtime Events Pvt. Ltd., S-567, Greater Kailash - II, New Delhi 110 048, India. April 19-21, Washington, DC, 2001 NORML Conference. Call (202) 293-8340 for information. Registration and other information to be made available soon at http://www.norml.org. April 25-28, Minneapolis, MN, North American Syringe Exchange Convention. Sponsored by the North American Syringe Exchange Network, for further information call (253) 272-4857, e-mail [email protected] or visit http://www.nasen.org on the web. At the Marriott City Center Hotel, 30 South Seventh Street.
12. A Thanksgiving Note to Our Readers David Borden, Executive Director, [email protected] On this eve of the Thanksgiving holiday, and on behalf of all of DRCNet's staff and allies, I would like to extend our thanks to you, our readers, for your support through these past several years. Without you, there would be no DRCNet! More importantly, without you, there would be no hope of ending this century's destructive prohibition and war on drugs. In part because of you, hope is growing, and growing every day. Readers of this newsletter are in a better position to realize that than others who don't follow drug policy issues so closely. One of the ways we'd like to say thank you is also a milestone in our organization's growth and development: Today marks the first time an issue of The Week Online has been published during the week of Thanksgiving itself, albeit slightly shorter than issues published during ordinary, full work weeks. So I'd also like to give my personal thanks to our staff, who have committed themselves so deeply to this and other projects of the organization. A look at a pre-Thanksgiving issue of a few years ago can provide some perspective on our struggles today. Issue #20, published on November 23rd, 1997, reported that the state of Texas, under Gov. George W. Bush, had okayed construction of 4,120 more prison beds, having already tripled their incarcerated population since 1992. Gov. Bush is now mere inches from the presidency of the US, with only a handful of "dimpled ballots" or "pregnant chads" away from victory. His opponent, Vice-President Al Gore, has spent eight years as the number two man in an administration presiding over a staggering increase in federal incarcerations. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. On a more hopeful note, however, issue #20 also reported that Canada's "Mounties" police force was targeting a medical marijuana network, despite public support for medical marijuana polling at 85%. Today, however, Canada now has legal medical marijuana through governmental certification and is setting up a full-blown regulated system of medical marijuana availability for all patients needing it. Some things have definitely gone right. Also from issue #20, "Giving Thanks in a Time of (Drug) War," by DRCNet's former Associate Director, Adam J. Smith, http://www.drcnet.org/wol/020.html#thanks in our archives. Adam can be reached at [email protected]. If you didn't read last week's editorial, "A Message to the President-Elect," it still applies: We still don't know who the new President will be, but we do know he's used drugs -- http://www.drcnet.org/wol/160.html#editorial -- read it and start thinking about how you can help make drug war hypocrisy the theme of the next four years. See you next week, and in the meantime, happy Thanksgiving. But don't forget about those who can't go home for Thanksgiving because their freedom has been taken away by the drug warriors. Let us all work to bring them a second chance. 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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