Drug War Chronicle #478 - March 23, 2007

Feature: Prison Rape and the War on Drugs

Sexual assaults on prisoners is an endemic problem in America, not an isolated one, the war on drugs is making the problem worse, and drug war prisoners are among those most likely to be victimized, according to a report released Thursday. The report, "Stories from Inside: Prisoner Rape and the War on Drugs," by the human rights group Stop Prisoner Rape, calls prisoner rape "a human rights crisis of appalling magnitude."

Hard numbers are hard to come up with for a crime in which humiliation, stigma, the fear of retaliation -- and perhaps officials' fear of embarrassment or lawsuits -- inhibits reporting, but according to preliminary reports from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, which is setting up a nationwide, anonymous reporting system, 4% of prisoners reported being sexually assaulted within the last year. According to survey research cited in the report, as many as 20% of male prisoners and 25% of female prisoners have been victims of sexual assault in jail or prison. With a jail and prison population now nearing 2.3 million, the number of victims could be in the hundreds of thousands.

For male prisoners, the most common pattern is sexual assault by other male prisoners. For female prisoners, it is most often sexual assault by guards or other prison staff.

Even the reported numbers may be low, according to some experts. Dr. Terry Kupers, a psychiatrist specializing in mental health in prison and especially the mental health of prisoners who have been sexually assaulted, told Drug War Chronicle the numbers may be much higher.

"My estimate is that it is much more widespread than the statistics show," said Kupers, who has published frequently on prison rape and testified as an expert witness on behalf of prison rape victims. "I think the 20% figure is low for a couple of reasons. First, people don't report because they're afraid of the stigma. Men feel it is unmanly and won't admit it. There is also the fear of retaliation in prison, whether from staff or other prisoners. Secondly, a lot of sexual activity is not defined as rape by the participants. A young and fair male enters prison and is told by an older prisoner 'I'm going to have sex with you, and if you agree I won't beat you up and I'll protect you from other prisoners.' The young man agrees and becomes a 'willing' partner, but it's rape, it's coerced out of fear. These guys might say they're not being raped, but they are."

What happened to Chance Martin in 1973 was not pretty, but not unusual. The university-bound Indiana youth was arrested at a hotel party after another guest dropped a piece of hashish in the lobby and thrown into the Lake County Jail in Crown Point. There, he was attacked and sexually assaulted by six other inmates in an unmonitored group cell.

"'General pop' was a large cage holding about 40 men," he recounted in the report. "It was the dead of the night when I got there. My cellmates were all awaiting trial or serving county sentences. One was a blond man with a mustache whose face was beaten to a pulp -- and who kept strictly to himself. Finding me sitting hopelessly on my bunk, a trustee insisted that I join a card game to 'cheer me up.' The game only lasted three hands. It then became a demand for sex. Threats were made pointing out the example of the cellie with the battered face.

"Driving their point home, four other trustees jammed my ribs with broomsticks and mop handles. I tried to call for help. Repeatedly I had my breath beat from my lungs. Curled up on the floor, my arms protected my head. Dark memories recall being dragged to a bunk obscured by army blankets at the farthest end of the cell from the turnkey's office. One guy said, 'Now you have to give me head.' I had never even heard the term before. The scariest part was I lacked the first clue what was going to go down until it already happened. I'm glad that there were only six guys. Six is only the best of my recollection. It might have been more. I don't recall their faces, except a couple. I didn't even see most of their faces.

"There was near-zero supervision in that jail. No guard had line of sight into that cell. The guards' office was at the end of a hallway at the cellblock's end, and their TV was blaring 24/7."

From jail, Martin enlisted in the armed forces and went to Vietnam as part of a plea bargain to avoid any further time behind bars. There, he began drinking heavily and using drugs, a pattern he kept up back in the States. He suffered emotional problems and blew through three marriages. Now, he's a social justice activist in San Francisco who works in a law office by day and manages at low-income high-rise at night.

"It's been a long time and I don't get nightmares about it anymore, but I can still get panicky and I tend to fall into not trusting people," Martin told Drug War Chronicle. "I'm suspicious of hidden agendas when people are being nice. I can't form concrete interpersonal relationships. I'm not a complete basket case, but it's something that's always there," he said.

While Martin confided in friends about his rape, he didn't come out publicly until he found himself trying to explain to a San Francisco Chronicle reporter interviewing him about his homeless activism why he had ended up joining the military during Vietnam. "One of the Stop Prisoner Rape people read that and contacted me, and before you know it, I'm a survivor advocate," he laughed. "You try to create something good even out of a negative experience. This is going on every day, and I'm doing anything I can do to stop it from happening to the next person."

As a San Francisco resident, Martin is now a card-carrying medical marijuana user. "I knew when I got here I had been waiting my whole life for a place like this," he said. "I wasn't a criminal when I was smoking hash in high school and I'm not a criminal now. But for the sake of the drug war, I had my most basic human rights stripped away and was subjected to a brutal assault that left me with issues that lasted for years."

New York City resident Michael Piper wasn't raped, but was violently attacked fending off a failed attempt in jail in Tempe, Arizona, in 1974, after he was arrested for possession of a roach. The attack left him with serious head injuries, and a commitment to work for change. "My life has been challenging in many ways, and that attack was part of experiencing life for what it is," he told the Chronicle. "It's part of my motivation for speaking out. But I don't like the victim role; I don't play that," he said. "That attack increased my resilience."

It also hardened his attitude about the drug war. "Drug use is a personal choice," he said, extolling the virtues of various plants. "When we recognize we are not victims of drugs and they are not something we have to be protected from, then we can alter our environment and take responsibility for the way we live. It's a violation of natural law when a government says I can't interact with a seed that's a gift from the Creator."

Marilyn Shirley was sent to federal prison in 1998 on methamphetamine charges after a customer of her and her husband's auto repair business attempted to pay his bill with the drug. She was raped by a prison guard. In a rare turn of events, she was able to see him jailed after she kept the sweat pants she was wearing hidden in her cell for seven months.

"I didn't tell anyone at the prison except my welding boss, and I swore her to secrecy," Shirley told the Chronicle. "I didn't feel like I could trust any of them. But five minutes after I was released, I walked into the prison camp administration office and said 'Am I free?' and the lady said 'yes' and I handed her the sweat pants with his DNA on them. They called the FBI immediately and now he's doing 12 years himself."

Even with her tormentor now behind bars, it's not easy for Shirley. "I get severe panic attacks, I have to see two psychiatrists, I'm on five different kinds of medication," she said.

As with Martin and Piper, Shirley's experience has led her to speak out. "You can't just keep it bottled up inside you; it'll kill you," she said. "I spoke out because I feel like it might give other people confidence if I did. Something has to change. It's so easy to end up in prison; nowadays, it doesn't hardly take anything. It could be your wife, your kids, your mother."

"We hear stories like these from survivors from across the country on a daily basis," said Lovisa Stannow, co-executive director of Stop Prisoner Rape. "It's the most widespread and neglected human rights crisis in the country, and it's alarming on many levels," she told the Chronicle. "Prison rape is a form of torture, a human rights violation. No one should have to endure that as part of their sentence. It's also well-known that prisoners who are sexually abused suffer for years or decades from that trauma. We talk to people all the time who years later are still unable to function."

"They suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder," said Dr. Kupers. "There is an unofficial term we use, rape response syndrome. The effects of rape or sex abuse can last a life-time and be very serious and cause a lot of grief. Like in the Vietnam War, there is a lot of drinking and pot smoking, and we don't know how much of it is self-medicating. There are a lot of people affected who don't realize it," he said.

It is worse in prison, he said. "One of the things that makes it so severe for prisoners is the captivity. If you are raped, you try to do things to make yourself safe, you move away or you change houses, but when you're in prison, you can't do that. At worst, you are held in sexual captivity, where you are made into another prisoner's woman or punk, a repetitive hell of sexual abuse."

"We chose to highlight the role of the drug war in this because we felt the link hadn't been made," said Stop Prisoner Rape's Stannow. "Because of the war on drugs, we have seen a very dramatic swelling of the prison population, with half a million incarcerated on drug charges and hundreds of thousands more for drug-related offenses. The prisons are overcrowded, and that sets the stage for sexual violence. And a lot of nonviolent drug offenders fit the profile of inmates targeted for sexual violence -- young, nonviolent, inexperienced when it comes to prison life -- and are very much in danger."

It doesn't have to be that way. Changes can and should be made both in institutional policies within the prisons and in the US approach to drug policy in general, said Stannow.

"Sexual violence in prison is largely a management problem. In a well-run prison, you don't have rampant sexual violence," she pointed out. "One thing that needs to be done immediately is to make sure our prisons and jails are safe, so inmates don't get assaulted. Corrections officials can do this with proper classification and housing, and by taking immediate action when someone has been assaulted. They can also ensure that abused inmates receive counseling and access to medical care. There is a lot that can be done at the institutional level," she said.

Changing policies inside prisons is critical, Stannow argued. "We receive hundreds of letters a year from survivors, and one in four comes from Texas," she said. "On the other hand, some places, like the San Francisco County Jail, have very good policies in place to address prisoner rape and sexual violence. There are vast differences between prisons and prison systems across the country, and we are concerned about states where we receive a very large number of complaints," she said.

"But we also need to reduce the incarceration rate for people convicted of nonviolent drug offenses," Stannow continued. "We need to take treatment and diversion programs seriously and not automatically send everyone to prison."

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Feature: "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" Free Speech Case Goes to the Supreme Court

The United States Supreme Court Monday heard oral arguments in a case that will determine how much free speech public school students are allowed. On one side is the Juneau, Alaska, school district, national school board associations, former special prosecutor Kenneth Starr and the US government. On the other side is former Juneau student Joseph Frederick, the ACLU, the drug reform organization Students for Sensible Drug Policy, and a variety of liberal and conservative organizations concerned about restricting the rights of students to voice opinions at odds with school policies.

Back in 2002, the Juneau high school let students out of school to watch an Olympic parade pass by. Frederick led a group of students who hoisted a large, nonsensical banner reading "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" as the parade passed by. School Principal Deborah Morse tore down the banner and suspended Frederick for 10 days, saying that the banner violated the school's anti-drug policy. Frederick sued, arguing the school's decision violated his First Amendment rights and seeking monetary damages from Morse. He lost in US district court but won on appeal in the US 9th Circuit. With pro bono assistance from Starr, the school district appealed to the Supreme Court.

While on the surface, the case is about a silly banner that may or may not have promoted drug use, it cuts to the heart of the ongoing dispute over the extent of student free speech rights in schools. The high court ruled in a 1969 case, Tinker v. Des Moines School District, that students wearing black arm bands to protest the Vietnam War were protected by the First Amendment, but two later cases have carved out limited exceptions. The current case, Frederick v. Morse, will determine whether the high court is willing to carve out a drug war exception as well.

SSDP was among a number of groups that filed friend of the court briefs supporting Frederick. In a curious alliance that transcended the normal left-right distinction in American politics, those groups included the ACLU and the gay rights Lambda Legal Defense Fund, as well as conservative groups backing religious freedom, such as the Rutherford Institute and the Alliance Defense Fund, who worried that schools would attempt to crack down on religious free speech.

"This is an extremely important case," said SSDP executive director Kris Krane. "What the government and the school district are arguing for is the right of school administrators to punish students who say anything that may be interpreted as expressing a positive sentiment about drugs," he told Drug War Chronicle. "If a student writes a paper about grandma using medical marijuana to successfully ease her pain, that student could be punished. If students were to talk about how random school drug testing policies are ineffective or to question the effectiveness of DARE, they could be punished for that speech."

Oral arguments Monday were lively, with justices subjecting both Starr and Frederick's attorney, Douglas Mertz, to tough questioning. Starr argued that public schools should be able to ban signs, buttons, or speech that conflicts with their anti-drug policies. "Illegal drugs and the glorification of the drug culture are profoundly serious problems for our nation," Starr said as he argued that Frederick's message promoted drugs and was "utterly inconsistent" with the basic educational mission of the school.

That provoked Chief Justice John Roberts to worry about how far such an argument could be carried. "The problem is that school boards these days take it upon themselves to broaden their mission well beyond illegal substances," he said.

But on the whole, it appeared Roberts was sympathetic to Starr's argument. "Why is it that the classroom ought to be a forum for political debate simply because the students want to put that on their agenda?" he asked Starr.

With the question coming just after Starr conceded that Tinker "articulates a baseline of political speech" that students have a right to engage in, Roberts' question suggested the chief justice thought Tinker went too far. "Presumably, the teacher's agenda is a little bit different and includes things like teaching Shakespeare or the Pythagorean theorem," he said, adding that "just because political speech is on the student's agenda, I'm not sure that it makes sense to read Tinker so broadly as to include protection of that speech."

Justice Joseph Alito, on the other hand, seemed much more skeptical of the government's case. When deputy solicitor general Edwin Kneedler argued that a school "does not have to tolerate a message that is inconsistent" with its educational mission, Alito objected.

"I find that a very, very disturbing argument," Alito responded, "because schools have defined their educational mission so broadly that they can suppress all sorts of political speech and speech expressing fundamental values of the students under the banner of getting rid of speech that's inconsistent with educational missions."

Starr attempted to address such concerns by arguing for a drug exception to the First Amendment. "The court does not need to go more broadly" than the drug issue, he said. Starr also argued that the banner was "disruptive" of the school's mission. Under the Tinker precedent, speech that is disruptive can be restricted.

But Justice David Souter questioned Starr's argument. "I can understand if they unfurled the banner in a classroom that it would be disruptive," Souter said, "but what did it disrupt on the sidewalk?... It sounds like just a kid's provocative statement to me."

Justice Anthony Kennedy, who is often a swing vote on the high court, showed much more sympathy for schools' efforts to counter drug use, arguing that Frederick's banner was disruptive. "It was completely disruptive of the message the school wanted to promote and completely disruptive of the school's image that they wanted to portray in sponsoring the Olympics," he said.

When his turn came, Frederick's attorney Douglas Mertz argued that the case is much broader than drugs. "This is a case about free speech. It is not a case about drugs," he said.

"It's a case about money," Chief Justice Roberts interrupted, making reference to school principal Morse's personal liability for monetary damages.

Justice Antonin Scalia sneered at Mertz's argument. "This is a very, very -- with all due respect -- ridiculous line. Where do you get that line from?" For Scalia, even Starr's argument that schools can suppress speech contrary to their educational missions didn't go far enough. "Any school," he proposed, "can suppress speech that advocates violation of the law."

Not all the action at the Supreme Court Monday went on inside. SSDP led a demonstration by students and supporters outside the court that was shown on every cable news network and almost every major newspaper in the country that covered the story -- and most did -- ran photos of the protesters with their stories.

"We flew in high school students from around the country, including two from South Dakota who had been suspended for wearing t-shirts supporting last year's medical marijuana initiatives, in order to demonstrate support for student free speech rights concerning drug policy issues," said SSDP's Krane. "In addition to these students and our local contacts, a number of high schoolers visiting the Supreme Court on field trips joined in the demonstration with us," Krane added.

"We were trying to move the focus from the silly 'Bong Hits' banner to this being a free speech issue," said SSDP's Krane. "We made a large banner that said 'Free Speech 4 Students' and we had students holding up posters saying the same thing. To the extent that the media focused on us, we succeeded better than we had ever imagined."

Eric Sterling, president of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation and a member of SSDP's board of directors, told the San Francisco Chronicle's Debra Saunders in a column published Tuesday he believed the Court would "both uphold and reverse" the Ninth Circuit ruling by finding that the suspension violated Frederick's rights but that Morse could not be held personally liable.

An opinion in the case is expected in June.

(Visit our post-rally blog post to see more pictures from the event.)

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Feature: Reefer Madness Strikes a Leading British Newspaper

Careful observers of the British press are accustomed to tabloid-style grotesqueries. Even a cursory review of stories about drugs in the British press reveals breathless headlines -- "Cannabis Boy in Drugs Shame," "Heroin Girl in Drugs Tragedy" -- and mind-boggling statements right out of Reefer Madness. Just this week, the tabloid Liverpool Echo warned that "SUPER-strength cannabis so potent that just one puff can cause schizophrenia is being grown by Merseyside drug gangs."

Along with topless models, lottery appeals, and gossip, lurid drug stories are to be expected in the tabloid press. It's another thing when one of Britain's premier serious newspapers gets down in the muck with the tabloids, but that's just what happened Sunday when the Independent on Sunday reversed course on cannabis. A decade ago, the upstart newspaper launched a campaign to legalize the weed, but this week it said it was wrong. In a series of articles led by the editorial "Cannabis: An Apology," the newspaper said the emergence of powerful cannabis varieties like skunk and increasing evidence of mental health problems for smokers prompted its recantation.

"In 1997, this newspaper launched a campaign to decriminalize the drug," began the editorial penned by Jonathan Owen. "If only we had known then what we can reveal today... Record numbers of teenagers are requiring drug treatment as a result of smoking skunk, the highly potent cannabis strain that is 25 times stronger than resin sold a decade ago. More than 22,000 people were treated last year for cannabis addiction -- and almost half of those affected were under 18. With doctors and drugs experts warning that skunk can be as damaging as cocaine and heroin, leading to mental health problems and psychosis for thousands of teenagers, The Independent on Sunday has today reversed its landmark campaign for cannabis use to be decriminalized."

The newspaper also cited "growing proof that that skunk causes mental illness and psychosis" and statistics showing "that the number of young people in treatment almost doubled" between 2005 and 2006. And again with the skunk: "The skunk smoked by the majority of young Britons bears no relation to traditional cannabis resin -- with a 25-fold increase in the amount of the main psychoactive ingredient, tetrahydrocannabidinol (THC), typically found in the early 1990s."

The newspaper cited several academic specialists who have been at the forefront of the campaign to prove that cannabis has serious mental health consequences. According to Professor Robin Murray of the London Institute for Psychiatry, cannabis use accounts for fully 10% of all schizophrenics in the UK. "The number of people taking cannabis may not be rising, but what people are taking is much more powerful, so there is a question of whether a few years on we may see more people getting ill as a consequence of that."

The Independent also cited veteran anti-drug campaigner Professor Neil McKeganey from Glasgow University's Centre for Drug Misuse Research. "We could well see over the next 10 years increasing numbers of young people in serious difficulties," he said.

But proponents of drug law reform and academic marijuana experts were shocked and dismayed by the Independent's new stance and its seeming fall into tabloid-style reporting. "This is very reminiscent of the potency panics in the US a few years ago," said Steve Rolles of the London-based Transform Drug Policy Foundation, who earlier this week wrote a highly critical blog post about the Independent's change of course. "If you take the weakest cannabis from one era and compare it to the strongest from the current era, you can make that 25:1 argument, but that just doesn't represent reality. It is fair to say there has been an increasing prevalence of more potent indoor grown cannabis, but the Independent was just cherry-picking the data. What they did was to grossly overstate it to make it seem a bigger issue than it is, and that's both bad science and lazy journalism."

"This is one of the most ridiculous and flaccid attempts to justify prohibition I have ever seen," said Allen St. Pierre, executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML). "The UK media is ensconced in incredible reefer madness that even the US can't match at this point. I keep a file called bad journalism. It's a fairly large dossier, but I never added so much material to it as I did last Sunday. That skunk they keep talking about must be extremely strong; look at the incredibly deleterious effect just writing about it has on people's ability to think rationally," he told Drug War Chronicle.

Dr. Mitchell Earleywine, professor of psychology at the State University of New York at Albany and author of "Understanding Marijuana: A New Look at the Scientific Evidence," scoffed at the Independent's claims about potency and the link between marijuana and schizophrenia. "There has probably been a two- or three-fold increase in potency on average," he told Drug War Chronicle. "Estimates from the 1970s are likely underestimates because we didn't understand how storage in hot police evidence lockers degraded THC. Most of the estimates from back then were around 1% THC. When we give folks marijuana that's 1% THC in the laboratory today, it's so weak that they get a headache and think they've received a placebo. Obviously, the plant wouldn't have become popular if it just gave people headaches."

Even if cannabis is stronger today, it does not follow that it is more hazardous, and stronger may even be better, Earleywine added. "The tacit assumption that stronger equals more dangerous is also wrong. Data on the subjective high that people obtain suggest that folks don't get any higher than they used to," he pointed out. "They may end up smoking less, using less total cannabis as a result, and therefore limiting the chances of developing any respiratory symptoms. Although cannabis use doesn't increase lung cancer risk, it can increase cases of cough, wheezing, et cetera. Those who smoke stronger cannabis tend to take smaller hits and deposit less gunk in their lungs."

Earleywine also raised questions about the science behind the claimed link between marijuana and schizophrenia. "The obvious stuff, that pot doesn't cause schizophrenia but schizophrenics like pot, tends to apply here," he said. "The longitudinal studies often do a great job of assessing psychosis at the end of the period but a poor job of assessing symptoms at the beginning of the study. There are now about five longitudinal studies suggesting increases in 'psychotic disorders' or 'schizophrenic spectrum disorders' in folks who are heavy users of cannabis very early in life. There are also six studies to show more symptoms of schizo-typal personality disorder in cannabis users. Note that none of these are full-blown schizophrenia, the rare, disabling disorder that affects about 1% of the population," he said.

"The best argument against this idea comes from work showing that schizophrenia affects 1% of the population in every country and across every era, regardless of how much cannabis was used at the time or up to ten years before," Earleywine added.

The alleged schizophrenia connection is more hype, said Rolles. "Nothing has really changed. The dangers associated with cannabis have been documented for years. Certain groups, particularly teenagers and people with preexisting mental health problems, can have problems if they use cannabis," he conceded. "But again, this is more cherry-picking of the statistics, the Reefer Madness thing used to justify prohibition. You hype the dangers. We see this over and over again with all drugs."

As for the Independent's claims that strong cannabis is driving record numbers of young Britons into drug treatment, Rolles was equally skeptical. "The experience in America is instructive," he said. "There, your drug czar talks about huge numbers of young people in treatment for cannabis-related problems, but if you look at the numbers, most of them are referred by the courts. The same is true here."

"This schizophrenia thing is unique to England and, to a lesser degree, Australia," NORML's St. Pierre said. "The principle advocate of this thesis, researcher Robin Murray, is literally trying to create a new myth around cannabis. It seems like we have a new myth every decade or so. In the '30s, pot made you crazy; in the '40s, it made you a criminal; in the '50s, it made you want to use hard drugs; in the '60s; it made you a hippie or radical communist; in the '70s, it made you apathetic and unmotivated. Now we have this latest version -- that cannabis is a source of psychoses. The way the British media has bought into this is a disgrace," he said.

"Empirically, this is one of the easiest marijuana myths to shoot down," St. Pierre said. "From London, you can practically see the Netherlands, a country where cannabis is readily available and fairly potent. If one one-hundredth of what they claim were true, you would be walking over bodies in Amsterdam."

St. Pierre noted that the marijuana-schizophrenia connection has not migrated to the United States. "Where is the American Psychological Association, where is the American Psychiatric Association?" he asked. "They should be the natural allies of the Brits on this, but they're not because this is absolutely bonkers."

Like NORML, Transform is an advocacy group working to end marijuana prohibition. British mental health organizations have a different take. "We now know that cannabis can be a trigger for mental health problems and smoking it under the age of 18 can double people's chances of developing psychoses," a spokesman for the mental health group Rethink told Drug War Chronicle. "The government must invest in a wide-scale public health campaign so that young people know cannabis is not risk-free."

While Rethink has led the charge for higher awareness of the dangers of cannabis through its Cannabis and Mental Illness Campaign, the group is not advocating for a reclassification of the drug. Instead, it believes its current classification as a Class C drug is appropriate.

That's not what Member of Parliament Paul Flynn thinks. Evidence of possible harms doesn't change the underlying dynamic of his anti-prohibitionist position. "My view is exactly the same. Prohibition doesn't work," he said. "It's much worse to have the market controlled by dangerous criminals than for it to be properly controlled."

And so the debate over cannabis in Britain roils.

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Book Offer: Lies, Damn Lies, and Drug War Statistics

Normally when we publish a book review in our Drug War Chronicle newsletter, it gets readers but is not among the top stories visited on the site. Recently we saw a big exception to that rule when nearly 2,000 of you read our review of the new book Lies, Damned Lies, and Drug War Statistics: A Critical Analysis of Claims Made by the Office of National Drug Control Policy. Much of this reading took place during a week that had other very popular articles as well, so clearly the topic of this book, which was authored by respected academics Matthew Robinson and Renee Scherlen, has struck a chord. As well it should.

Please help DRCNet continue our own work of debunking drug war lies with a generous donation. If your donation is $32 or more, we'll send you a complimentary copy of Robinson and Scherlen's book to help you be able to debunk drug war lies too.

Over the coming weeks I will be blogging on our web site about things I've learned reading Lies, Damn Lies, and Drug War Statistics. Stay tuned!

Your donation will help DRCNet as we advance what we think is an incredible two-year plan to substantially advance drug policy reform and the cause of ending prohibition globally and in the US. Please make a generous donation today to help the cause! I know you will feel the money was well spent after you see what DRCNet has in store. Our online donation form lets you donate by credit card, by PayPal, or to print out a form to send with your check or money order by mail. Please note that contributions to the Drug Reform Coordination Network, our lobbying entity, are not tax-deductible. Tax-deductible donations can be made to DRCNet Foundation, our educational wing. (Choosing a gift like Lies, Damn Lies, and Drug War Statistics will reduce the portion of your donation that you can deduct by the retail cost of the item.) Both groups receive member mail at: DRCNet, P.O. Box 18402, Washington, DC 20036.

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P.S. You can read Chronicle editor Phil Smith's review of the book here.

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Law Enforcement: This Week's Corrupt Cops Stories

Just another week of drug prohibition-related law enforcement corruption. An NYPD cop gets caught with a stash in her undies drawer, an Ohio cop has some bad hits, more prison guards get greedy, and a former St. Paul cop goes to prison.

But before we get to it, we need to make a couple of corrections. Last week, we briefly included a former Wisconsin prosecutor who got busted with marijuana and grow equipment in our hall of shame. We shouldn't have. He was a prosecutor long, long ago and for only a brief period, and while he was charged with manufacture and delivery of marijuana, it's not clear that he was dealing. Our apologies to Gene Radcliffe.

More than a year ago, we included Arizona attorney William Reckling in the list of law enforcement bad boys. We shouldn't have. We saw him as a hypocritical prosecutor who used drugs himself, but that's not the case. After belatedly coming across our article, Reckling wrote to clarify that he was a city attorney, who, unlike district or county attorneys, don't prosecutions. Furthermore, Reckling wrote, he shares our views on the cruelty and futility of the drug war, and his experience getting busted has so soured him on his homeland that he is leaving for the more freedom-loving climes of Central America. Good luck to him.

The weekly rundown of corrupt cops is supposed to be just that. Sometimes it's pretty clear cut; sometimes it's more subjective. We don't generally include police who get caught using or possessing drugs. While people who arrest people for doing the same thing they do in their spare time may qualify as hypocrites, that doesn't make them corrupt. Where do you draw the line? This week, we include the Ohio cop who has so far only been arrested on possession charges on the basis of claims in the search warrant that he was dealing. At this point, that cop is a borderline case. Now, if we run into a judge or prosecutor who is persecuting drug offenders during the night but snorting lines at home, we'll probably include him too, just because of the unmitigated hypocrisy of it. I guess we hold them to a slightly higher standard than police and prison guards. These are judgment calls, but that's the way we've tried to make them so far. Okay, let's get to it:

In New York City, an NYPD rookie officer was arrested March 15 after police executing a search warrant on her home found a large stash of drugs in her underwear drawer. Officer Carolina Salgado, 30, was arrested after a month-long probe of drug sales near the home she shared with her boyfriend, Nelson Fernandez, a reputed Latin Kings gang member. During the search of her home, police found 150 small bags of marijuana, two bags of cocaine, $3,000, and a bunch of Latin Kings paraphernalia. Although Salgado and Fernandez were not home at the time, police found them in a car nearby. In the car, police found another 15 bags of pot and two more bags of cocaine. Salgado faces counts of endangering the welfare of a child (three children with no adults present were at the home when it was raided) and drug possession.

In Toledo, Ohio, a Toledo police officer was arrested Saturday on drug possession and related charges. Officer Bryan Traband, 36, and another man were arrested at Traband's home after police serving a search warrant found cocaine and marijuana. According to the search warrant, police received two confidential tips last month that Traband was involved in selling and using drugs, but authorities so far have only charged him with possession of cocaine, marijuana, and drug paraphernalia and permitting drug abuse. The 13-year veteran of the force has resigned and is now out on a personal recognizance bond.

In Amite, Louisiana, a Tangapahoa Parish sheriff's deputy serving as a county jail guard was arrested March 15 after agreeing to smuggle crack cocaine and vodka to an inmate. According to federal officials, Deputy Harris Robertson has confessed to smuggling banned items into the jail at least 10 times since September and receiving from $100 to $300 per delivery. Robertson went down after someone called in a tip that he was delivering drugs, alcohol, cell phones and food to prisoners, and the feds set up a sting. An agent posing as an inmate's friend gave Robertson 15 grams of crack, two bottles of Grey Goose vodka, and $300 for his efforts. Robertson was arrested after accepting the goods and cash. Now he faces up to 40 years in prison on federal possession with intent to distribute crack cocaine charges.

In Sacramento, California, a former state prison guard pleaded guilty last Friday to smuggling methamphetamine into a prison in Amador County. John Charles Whittle, 47, a 22-year veteran of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, went down after internal affairs investigators intercepted a package mailed to Whittle's home and found it contained 10 grams of meth hidden inside a teddy bear. When agents arrived, Whittle had already removed the meth and secreted it in a stab-resistant prison guard vest. Whittle admitted that he was paid $5,150 by friends of inmates to smuggle drugs into the Mule Creek State Prison. He agreed to forfeit his profits and now awaits an April 19 sentencing date, when he faces up to two years in prison.

In St. Paul, Minnesota, a retired St. Paul police sergeant was sentenced to five years in prison last Friday on methamphetamine trafficking charges. Retired Sgt. Clemmie Tucker could have faced up to life in prison after he was caught picking up a meth shipment at the Greyhound Bus terminal in Minneapolis. He pleaded guilty in September to possession with the intent to distribute more than a pound of meth. US District Judge Joan Ericksen said she was going to give Tucker a "substantial break" in sentencing because he had no prior record and little likelihood of reoffending, but gave him a few years "because drugs are so harmful."

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Medical Marijuana: Minnesota Bill Approved By Second House Panel

Members of a Minnesota House committee Monday voted to approve a medical marijuana bill despite the objections of law enforcement. The House Public Safety and Civil Law Committee approved the bill, HF655, on an 11-8 vote. It has already passed the House Health and Human Services Committee and is now headed for the House Finance Committee.

A Senate companion bill passed the Senate Health, Housing and Family Committee a month ago. It currently sits in the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The bill would allow seriously ill patients to use marijuana upon obtaining a recommendation from a doctor and registering with the state. But in an effort to address law enforcement concerns, the public safety committee amended the bill so that individual patients cannot grow their own supply. Instead, sanctioned nonprofit organizations would be permitted to grow up to 12 plants and 2.5 ounces per patient.

The law enforcement contingent was out in force at the committee hearing. "Immediate and obvious areas of concern include existing conflicts with federal law, the potential for youth access and abuse, and the potential for this action being used as a platform for legalizing marijuana on a larger scale," Mitch Weinzetl of the Minnesota Chiefs of Police Association told KARE TV 11 News in Minneapolis-St. Paul.

"Smoking is harmful to the human body in any form, and it's particularly harmful with marijuana, which has significantly more dangerous chemicals than tobacco," said Dakota County Attorney James Backstrom.

But while committee members attempted to ease law enforcement worries by amending the bill as noted above, they seemed more moved by the testimony of patients like Don Haumont, who suffers from liver cancer and other ailments. He told lawmakers only one thing helps: marijuana.

"I ate more, I gained weight, I felt healthier, I felt that I could take care of myself, I could do things," he said. "I could work and be productive." A former California resident, Hauman said he could smoke legally there. "And then when I moved here, it was harder to obtain and the quality was less," he said.

While law enforcement and Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R) oppose the bill, it is gathering bipartisan support in the legislature. "It's more of a left and right coming together, which I think is a very good bill and one Minnesota should become the 13th state to pass," said Rep. Steve Sviggum (R-Kenyon), who once opposed such a measure.

Eleven states have working medical marijuana programs. New Mexico is about to become the 12th once Gov. Bill Richardson (D) signs the bill that passed there last week.

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The Candy Counter: Georgia Set to Ban Sales of Marijuana-Flavored Lollipops to Kids

Under a bill passed by the Georgia House of Representatives Tuesday, retailers there may soon be barred from selling lollipops, gumdrops, and any other candies flavored to taste like marijuana to children. The bill, HB 280, steamrolled through the House, passing by a margin of 133-26.

The bill is aimed at businesses that sell candies with drug-inspired names like "Pot Suckers" and "Kronic Kandy." Such products are flavored with hemp essential oil to create the taste of marijuana, but do not contain measurable amounts of THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana.

If it passes the Senate, Georgia would become the first state to enact such a ban. The sale of marijuana-flavored candies has already been outlawed in the city of Chicago, Suffolk County, New York, and parts of Alameda County, California.

"This kind of product is being taken to concerts like the old ice cream pop that is being marketed on the street," said Republican state Rep. Judy Manning of Marietta, the bill's sponsor. "They're selling for $4 to $8 apiece. It's quite expensive and it's quite detrimental to our children."

Manning's bill says the candies promote drug use and promote the "false impression that marijuana is fun and safe." It bans the sale of "marijuana flavored products" to minors, with offenders subject to a $1,000 fine for each offense.

Atlanta is home to Coca-Cola. As Vote Hemp national outreach coordinator Tom Murphy told DRCNet in an e-mail message, "This makes you wonder if they would consider banning a coca-flavored soft drink. That's marketed to children and..."

Murphy also pointed out an error made by the New York Times in an article appearing Wednesday: The Times said the candies were made with hempseed oil -- an ingredient used in many now-mainstream food products that doesn't taste like marijuana -- as opposed to the candies' actual ingredient, hemp essential oil.

Vote Hemp is backing a state Senate bill, SB 258 that would create an exemption for hemp-based foods.

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Europe: Clamor for Licit Medicinal Afghan Opium Grows Among British MPs

Dozens of members of the British Parliament (MPs) are calling on Prime Minister Tony Blair to allow Afghan farmers to head off what they call a world shortage of opiate pain relievers. Some 40 MPs, including senior Conservative opposition leaders Michael Ancram, Bill Cash and Sir Malcolm Rifkind, are urging Blair to support a UN-led pilot program to allow the cultivation of Afghan poppies for the medicinal market.

Afghanistan is the world's dominant opium producer, accounting for more than 90% of the global harvest last year. This year's crop is expected to grow even larger. The Afghan government and its NATO and US backers are attempting to suppress the crop, but doing so threatens to undermine the broader counterinsurgency effort against the resurgent Taliban.

The call from MPs came in a parliamentary motion last week. The motion followed by two weeks the revelation that the British Foreign Office had considered such a proposal, but gave up in the face of implacable opposition from the American and Afghan governments. Under the NATO-US agreement, Britain is charged with responsibility for the fight against opium, but despite spending more than $400 million in the past four years, both the poppy crop and the Taliban have instead expanded.

The call from the British MPs is only the latest to echo a 2005 proposal from the European defense and drug policy think thank the Senlis Council, which called for the diversion of illicit opium production destined to be turned into heroin for the black market into licit medicinal markets, especially in the poorer countries of the South. While not embraced by any government except Italy, the clamor for this radical idea continues to grow.

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Europe: Heroin Substitute Buprenorphine Now Available in Scotland

A Scottish government agency has approved the use of the heroin substitute buprenorphine as a replacement for heroin users unable to take the more common substitute methadone. A tablet form of the drug, Suboxone, is now available through the National Health Service.

Although buprenorphine is widely used in England, Europe, and Australia, and is available with restrictions in the United States, it had been banned in Scotland since the mid-1980s because it had been abused by users who heated and injected it to get high. But Suboxone will, according to its manufacturer, cause withdrawal symptoms if injected, easing fears of abuse.

The Scottish Medical Consortium, the agency that decides which drugs can be prescribed, has approved Suboxone only for patients for whom methadone is not suitable. It also requires that Suboxone maintenance stand place only "within a framework of medical, social, and psychological treatment."

Drug experts interviewed by the newspaper the Scotsman generally thought it was a good thing, although at least one advocated abstinence instead. The decision was welcomed as a "useful addition" by David Liddell, director of the Scottish Drugs Forum. Andrew Horne, of the drug treatment charity Addiction Scotland, said: "We think it is a useful alternative and will complement the rehabilitation work we do."

But opiate maintenance is "part of the problem," said Neil McKeganey, professor of drug misuse research at Glasgow University. "We have a large number of people on substitute medications and here is another substitute drug; it will still leave us with too few abstinence-focused drug treatments."

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Web Scan

Report: The Consequences Aren't Minor: The Impact of Trying Youth as Adults and Strategies for Reform, Campaign for Youth Justice

Video: Member of Canadian Parliament Libby Davies at the recent CSSDP inaugural conference

Save Bernie's Farm!, campaign by medical marijuana patient and drug war victim Bernie Ellis

Drug Truth update, 3/16/07:
Cultural Baggage: Phil Smith of Stop The Drug War (DRCNet) reports on recent trip to Peru and Bolivia, Atty Joe Alford + Terry Nelson of LEAP, Drug War Facts , & Black Perspective (MP3)
Century of Lies: Prof. William Martin of the James A. Baker Institute for Policy Studies + Eric Sterling & Maia Szalavitz (MP3)

Where's the outrage? Schiavo coverage v. Raich's struggle to stay alive, Silja Talvi, Women in Media and News blog

Veterans Suffering from Trauma are Turning to Drugs, and Even Suicide, DPA's asha bandele and Tony Newman in the Huffington Post

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Weekly: This Week in History

March 23, 1983: Vice President George Herbert Walker Bush is placed in charge of the National Narcotics Border Interdiction System, which was supposed to staunch the drug flow over all US borders. Twenty-five years later drugs continue to be widely available throughout the United States.

March 25, 1994: Retired minister Accelyne Williams dies of a heart attack when a SWAT team consisting of 13 heavily armed Boston police officers raids his apartment based on an incorrect tip by an unidentified informant. No drugs or guns were found in the apartment. An editorial in The Boston Globe later observed: "The Williams tragedy resulted, in part, from the `big score' mentality of the centralized Boston Police Drug Control Unit. Officers were pumped up to seize machine guns in addition to large quantities of cocaine and a 'crazy amount of weed,' in the words of the informant."

March 24, 1998: House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) establishes the Speaker's Task Force for a Drug-Free America to design a World War II-style victory plan to save America's children from illegal drugs and achieve a Drug-Free America by 2002.

March 29, 2000: CNN reports that a multination drug sweep known as Operation Conquistador nets 2,331 arrests, 4,966 kilograms of cocaine, 55.6 kilograms of heroin, and 362.5 metric tons of marijuana. The 17-day operation takes place in Panama, Colombia, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, Montserrat, Dominica, St. Kitts and Nevis, Antigua, Anguilla, St. Martin, British Virgin Islands, Barbuda, Grenada, Barbados, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, St. Lucia, Aruba, Curacao, Jamaica, Haiti, Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico.

March 25, 2002: The Maryland House of Delegates overwhelmingly approves H.B. 1222, the Darrell Putman Compassionate Use Act, which removes criminal penalties for the medical use of marijuana.

March 26, 2002: A unanimous US Supreme Court rules that public housing tenants can be evicted for any illegal drug activity by household members or guests, even if they did not know about it.

March 28, 2002: Federal Judge Emmet G. Sullivan rules that the Barr Amendment, which blocks the District of Columbia from considering a medical marijuana voter initiative, infringes on First Amendment rights.

March 28, 2003: The Hemp Industries Association, several hemp food and cosmetic manufacturers and the Organic Consumers Association petition the federal Ninth Circuit to again prevent the DEA from ending the legal sale of hemp seed and oil products in the US.

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Announcement: DRCNet Content Syndication Feeds Now Available for YOUR Web Site!

Are you a fan of DRCNet, and do you have a web site you'd like to use to spread the word more forcefully than a single link to our site can achieve? We are pleased to announce that DRCNet content syndication feeds are now available. Whether your readers' interest is in-depth reporting as in Drug War Chronicle, the ongoing commentary in our blogs, or info on specific drug war subtopics, we are now able to provide customizable code for you to paste into appropriate spots on your blog or web site to run automatically updating links to DRCNet educational content.

For example, if you're a big fan of Drug War Chronicle and you think your readers would benefit from it, you can have the latest issue's headlines, or a portion of them, automatically show up and refresh when each new issue comes out.

If your site is devoted to marijuana policy, you can run our topical archive, featuring links to every item we post to our site about marijuana -- Chronicle articles, blog posts, event listings, outside news links, more. The same for harm reduction, asset forfeiture, drug trade violence, needle exchange programs, Canada, ballot initiatives, roughly a hundred different topics we are now tracking on an ongoing basis. (Visit the Chronicle main page, right-hand column, to see the complete current list.)

If you're especially into our new Speakeasy blog section, new content coming out every day dealing with all the issues, you can run links to those posts or to subsections of the Speakeasy.

Click here to view a sample of what is available -- please note that the length, the look and other details of how it will appear on your site can be customized to match your needs and preferences.

Please also note that we will be happy to make additional permutations of our content available to you upon request (though we cannot promise immediate fulfillment of such requests as the timing will in many cases depend on the availability of our web site designer). Visit our Site Map page to see what is currently available -- any RSS feed made available there is also available as a javascript feed for your web site (along with the Chronicle feed which is not showing up yet but which you can find on the feeds page linked above). Feel free to try out our automatic feed generator, online here.

Contact us for assistance or to let us know what you are running and where. And thank you in advance for your support.

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Announcement: DRCNet RSS Feeds Now Available

RSS feeds are the wave of the future -- and DRCNet now offers them! The latest Drug War Chronicle issue is now available using RSS at http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/feed online.

We have many other RSS feeds available as well, following about a hundred different drug policy subtopics that we began tracking since the relaunch of our web site this summer -- indexing not only Drug War Chronicle articles but also Speakeasy blog posts, event listings, outside news links and more -- and for our daily blog postings and the different subtracks of them. Visit our Site Map page to peruse the full set.

Thank you for tuning in to DRCNet and drug policy reform!

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Job Opportunities: PreventionWorks, Washington, DC

PreventionWorks, a needle exchange/harm reduction program operating in the District of Columbia, has recently applied for funding for a new program they are calling FOCUS. This will be an HIV treatment adherence support program for low-income residents of the District of Columbia who are current or former drug users, are in care for HIV infection, and struggling to focus on their HIV care and/or treatment regimen. Though funding has not been secured, the recruiting of strong candidates -- people with solid backgrounds in HIV and substance use, and who know District resources -- to staff the program has begun.

Interested applicants should submit a cover letter and resume to Paola Barahona, PreventionWorks executive director, by e-mail ([email protected]), fax (202-797-3553), or mail (PreventionWorks, 1407 S Street, NW, Washington, DC 20009).

Job 1: FOCUS Consultant Clinical Director

The FOCUS Clinical Director will work 20 hours per week and will provide the leadership for the FOCUS program. The Clinical Director will supervise the two full-time Care Coordinators who will each carry a caseload of 20-25. The Clinical Supervisor will not carry a caseload. Instead, the Clinical Supervisor will conduct all of the support group meetings, will provide coverage during drop-in hours, and will provide individual counseling with clients as needed. Meetings will be an important part of this job, as the Clinical Director will attend the PreventionWorks weekly meeting, will conduct a weekly team meeting with the Care Coordinators, and will meet privately with the Executive Director weekly (or as needed). The FOCUS Clinical Director will be supervised by the PreventionWorks Executive Director. Performance goals will be outlined with the Executive Director at the beginning of the assignment. These will serve as the primary means of performance evaluation during semi-annual performance evaluation meetings.

The FOCUS Clinical Director will work at least one evening per week and on Saturday afternoon. Aside from meetings, support groups, and drop-in hours, the schedule will be flexible.

Requirements for the FOCUS Clinical Director include a bachelor's degree (master's degree preferred), certification as a Licensed Professional Counselor (CAC, LCPC, or LCSW), documented experience in HIV care and treatment and substance use issues, experience leading support groups and providing individual therapy, belief in and commitment to harm reduction approach regarding substance use, prior case management experience, prior supervisory experience, and a clean driving record.

Additional desired qualifications include being bilingual (English/Spanish), having life experience with substance use and/or HIV treatment adherence, and having a familiarity with and connections to a wide variety of services in DC to which clients could be referred and from which clients could be recruited.

Job 2: FOCUS Care Coordinators (2)

Two Care Coordinators will be hired by the FOCUS Director to work with clients and help them adhere to their HIV medication regimens. The Care Coordinators will each work 40 hours per week (some evening and weekend coverage will be required) and carry a caseload of twenty to twenty-five clients. The Care Coordinators will work with clients to develop an individual treatment adherence plan and help clients stick to their plan. This position will require accompanying clients to medical appointments, meeting with clients individually on a weekly basis, calling and emailing clients to remind them about appointments and taking their medications, referring clients to a wide range of services that are geographically convenient and will meet the client's needs, staffing drop-in hours, and providing any additional support that clients require to help them adhere to their treatment regimen.

The Care Coordinators will be supervised by the FOCUS Director. Performance goals will be outlined by each Coordinator with the Director at the beginning of the assignment. These will serve as the primary means of performance evaluation during semi-annual performance evaluation meetings. In addition, the Director will observe services and provide feedback to each Care Coordinator on a scheduled and/or spontaneous basis.

The Care Coordinators will work at least one evening per week and on alternate Saturday afternoons. Aside from meetings and drop-in hours, the Care Coordinator's schedule will be flexible to allow each Coordinator to meet the needs of his/her individual clients.

Requirements for the FOCUS Care Coordinator include an associate's degree (bachelor's degree preferred), experience with addictions counseling (CAC, BSW, LGSW preferred, but life experience could be substituted for these degrees), documented experience in HIV care and treatment and substance use issues, belief in and commitment to harm reduction approaches regarding substance use, prior case management experience, and a clean driving record.

Additional desired qualifications include being bilingual (English/Spanish), having life experience with substance use and/or HIV treatment adherence, and having familiarity with and connections to a wide variety of services in DC to which clients could be referred and from which clients could be recruited.

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Announcement: New Format for the Reformer's Calendar

With the launch of our new web site, The Reformer's Calendar no longer appears as part of the Drug War Chronicle newsletter but is instead maintained as a section of our new web site:

• Visit http://stopthedrugwar.org each day and you'll see a listing of upcoming events in the page's righthand column with the number of days remaining until the next several events coming up and a link to more.

• Check our new online calendar section at to view all of them by month, week or a range of different views.
• We request and invite you to submit your event listings directly on our web site. Note that our new system allows you to post not only a short description as we currently do, but also the entire text of your announcement.

The Reformer's Calendar publishes events large and small of interest to drug policy reformers around the world. Whether it's a major international conference, a demonstration bringing together people from around the region or a forum at the local college, we want to know so we can let others know, too.

But we need your help to keep the calendar current, so please make sure to contact us and don't assume that we already know about the event or that we'll hear about it from someone else, because that doesn't always happen.

We look forward to apprising you of more new features on our web site as they become available.

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