Drug War Chronicle #516 - December 28, 2007

Feature: The Top Ten Drug War Stories of 2007, According to Drug War Chronicle

As 2007 winds down, it is time to look back at the year in drug policy. Here at Drug War Chronicle, we cranked out more than 500 stories about every aspect of drug policy in the US and around the world this year. But if we have to narrow it down to a handful of domestic and international stories or trends, the following are what we pick. Without further ado... the top ten drug war stories of 2007, according to Drug War Chronicle:

The Drug War Grinds On

While more than a decade of concerted drug reform activism has produced some encouraging changes, the drug war nevertheless continued to grind on throughout 2007. At mid-year, the Bureau of Justice Statistics announced that the US jail and prison population was at another all-time high, with more than 2.2 million people behind bars, including roughly 500,000 drug offenders. At the end of September, the FBI's annual Uniform Crime Report came out, and it found marijuana arrests and all drug arrests were both at all-time highs, with more than 800,000 pot arrests last year and more than 1.8 million drug arrests. Nothing yet has succeeded in putting the brakes on the drug war juggernaut.

The Walls Begin Tumbling Down: A Hint of Justice for Crack Prisoners

After two decades of draconian treatment of crack cocaine offenders, 2007 saw significant albeit modest progress in achieving justice for the thousands of people -- almost all black and brown -- imprisoned under mandatory minimum federal crack laws. After years of fruitless pleading to Congress to change the crack laws, the US Sentencing Commission in May announced it would amend the federal sentencing guidelines to slightly reduce crack sentences, and two weeks later, it urged Congress to act to reduce them even further by addressing the 100:1 disparity in the quantity of crack versus powder cocaine it takes to earn mandatory minimum sentences. (The guidelines and the mandatory minimums are separate, intertwined sentencing regimes.) Early this month, the Sentencing Commission announced that its earlier sentencing adjustments would be retroactive, meaning that as many as 22,000 current crack prisoners can seek hearings to gain sentence cuts. And a few days later, in a pair of cases having to do with the now advisory federal sentencing guidelines, the Supreme Court ruled that judges can make downward departures in crack sentences. These changes are for the better, but they are at the margins. The real problem is the way the law is written, and that will take action by Congress to change. Pressure is mounting, a handful of bills have been filed, and 2008 could be the year that Congress finally acts.

California Medical Marijuana: The Best of Times, the Worst of Times

California continues to be a world apart when it comes to medical marijuana. Under the state's broadly written law, gaining a recommendation to become a legal medical marijuana patient is not a daunting task. Depending on the location, neither is visiting one of the hundreds of dispensaries selling the weed to patients. It's a different story when it comes to the dispensaries, however. Around 40 of them have been raided by the DEA (we did stories on mass raids in Los Angeles in January and again in July), usually operating in cahoots with recalcitrant local law enforcement, and more than 100 people face federal prosecution. This year, the DEA has also unveiled a new tactic: threatening dispensary landlords in Los Angeles, Sacramento, and San Francisco. Meanwhile, the battle over medical marijuana in California is also being fought county by county, municipality by municipality, as local entities grapple with whether to allow dispensaries and how to regulate them. The state is collecting taxes off them, and one activist, the Drug Library's Cliff Schaffer, has put out an only partly tongue-in-cheek press release on behalf of the state's marijuana dealers to chip in a billion dollars of annual tax revenue to help the state overcome its budget crisis. The situation is fluid and rapidly changing in California, but it appears doubtful that even the feds can turn back the clock to the days before Proposition 215.

Medical Marijuana Continues to Expand

New Mexico became the 12th state to adopt a medical marijuana law this year, while Rhode Island made its law permanent. Connecticut passed a medical marijuana law, only to have it vetoed by Republican Gov. Jodi Rell. Serious medical marijuana efforts were also underway in the legislatures in Illinois, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New York, and Tennessee, while bills were introduced in about 15 more states. Wisconsin and Michigan are both on track to see serious efforts next year, the former in the legislature and the latter through the initiative process, while some of the states where efforts have been underway could get over the top next year. See our beginning of the year overview and our end of the season overview for more details.

Harm Reduction Makes Some Advances

After years of effort, the New Jersey legislature finally passed needle exchange legislation nearly a year ago, and last month, the state's first legal needle exchange program opened in Atlantic City. This month, Congress finally lifted its nine-year-ban on the District of Columbia using its own money to fund a needle exchange. Finally, the harm reduction benefits of needle exchanges appear to be losing some of their controversy. Meanwhile, back in April, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson signed the state's Good Samaritan law, protecting people who seek medical assistance for overdose victims. That's a first. On the West Coast, they are debating the boundaries of politically palatable harm reduction in the US with a San Francisco safe injection site discussion. That, too, would be a first. The fact that it is finally being looked at seriously somewhere in the US is significant in itself.

Derailing of HEA Reform a Lesson in Congressional Fickleness and Pre-Election Drug War Politics

After winning a partial rollback of the Higher Education Act drug provision (aka "Aid Elimination Penalty") in 2006, repeal advocates were counting on the Democratic Congress to kill it completely this year -- or at least to try. Things looked decent early on when in June, the Senate HELP Committee approved removal of the drug question from the federal financial aid application, though without repealing the law itself, as part of the long-awaited HEA reauthorization bill. But then things went bad on the Senate floor, as committee Chair Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA), who was floor managing the bill, allowed Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) to offer an amendment removing that language without opposition. Still, there was hope that the House would pass repeal legislation that could survive conference committee, but that hope, too, was dashed when House Education & Labor Committee Chairman Rep. George Miller (D-CA) refused to allow a repeal amendment to be voted on because of its potential budgetary impact, instead allowing Rep. Mark Souder (R-IN), the author of the drug provision, to offer his own amendment to further limit the scope of his measure. Now, what's that old saying about politicians and their promises?

Mexico's Drug Wars Intensify, and the US Prepares a Massive Aid Package

Incoming Mexican President Felipe Calderón began his first year in office by sending soldiers to occupy Tijuana and ended it by declaring the drug war his highest priority and sending soldiers to occupy Reynosa. In between, Calderón sent thousands of troops into various states and cities to fight the drug war. They arrested thousands and seized lots of drugs, but failed to make a perceptible dent in the flow of drugs north, and were accused of various human rights abuses. Despite Calderón's drug war, prohibition-related violence killed an estimated 2,500 people this year, a record high. Calderón may be criticized in Mexico, but he has been lionized in Washington, which is preparing a $1.4 billion anti-drug aid package. There are no signs that things are getting better in Mexico despite Calderón's efforts, and if "Plan Mexico" turns out anything like Plan Colombia, things could get much worse.

Coca Peace in Bolivia

We haven't written much about Bolivia this year, and that's a good sign. Since former coca grower union leader Evo Morales won the presidency in December 2005, he has shifted from the US-imposed "zero coca" policies of his predecessors to one of "coca, yes; cocaine, no," and, as a result, conflict in the coca fields has dropped dramatically. Coca farmers reported there was peace, if not prosperity, and while the US and the International Narcotics Control Board grumbled about Morales allowing a limited expansion of the coca crop, they haven't offered stiff opposition. Bolivia, the world's third largest coca producer, now stands in sharp contrast with number two Peru, where eradication efforts repeatedly sparked cocalero strikes and conflict, and number one Colombia, where despite more than $6 billion in US aid, production continues unabated, as does the festering guerrilla war. It is not completely lovey-dovey in Bolivia's coca fields, but it is a vast improvement in the economic, political, and human rights situation of the coca farmers.

In Canada, A Battle Royal Looms Over the Conservatives' Repressive Drug Policy Approach

For most of this decade, American reformers have viewed Canada as a bastion of reason and tolerance when it comes to drug policy. While that view was a bit overdone, things have certainly changed for the worse with the election of the Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Only after a concerted national and international campaign did his government grudgingly grant an exemption to Vancouver's safe injection site, and then only for six months. Harper and his ministers have scoffed at the very notion of harm reduction, and this fall, they announced that their new National Anti-Drug Strategy would have no harm reduction funding. A few weeks later, the Tories introduced their new drug crime bill, with mandatory minimum sentences for some drug offenses, including growing marijuana. That has set off a huge fight, which will be played out next year. Will Canada march resolutely backward into the 20th Century? Stay tuned.

Afghanistan and Opium

Six years after the US invaded Afghanistan, neither the effort to defeat the Taliban nor the war on the opium poppy is going well. US and NATO casualties are up, and the poppy crop continues to hit new records every year. Afghanistan now accounts for 92% of the global opium supply, and the US and its NATO allies face a real dilemma: Go after the crops and drive the farmers into the waiting arms of the Taliban, or stand by and watch the Taliban profit handsomely from the traffic. Meanwhile, proposals to simply buy up the crop and divert it to legitimate medicinal uses are eroding the prohibitionist consensus, as everyone from Canadian think tanks to British parliamentarians to the European Parliament came on board to support such a plan. At year's end, the US government announced it had given up efforts to spray the poppies in the face of opposition from the Afghan government, NATO allies, and even the Pentagon and CIA. Now, the US is once again back to the drawing board, and Afghanistan is certain to remain a critical issue for the foreseeable future.

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Appeal: DRCNet Has Made Amazing Progress in 2007 and We Need Your Help for 2008

Dear DRCNet reader:

StoptheDrugWar.org (DRCNet) is at a very interesting and promising point, and I am writing to seek your support for our organization at this time. If you are making charitable gifts to organizations before the end of the year, I hope you'll include DRCNet Foundation in that set. If you make non-deductible donations to support lobbying organizations, I hope you'll include Drug Reform Coordination Network. Donations can be made at http://stopthedrugwar.org/donate online, where information is also available on how to donate by mail. (Contact us if you'd like information on donating stocks.)

In brief, first, and then in more depth:

1. We have enormously increased our web site visitation, with most of the increase being new people who don't read about drug policy or legalization on a regular basis. We have achieved this by capturing an audience share on the popular "Web 2.0" sites like Digg.com where readers nominate and vote on which articles should go to "the top," the only drug reform group to achieve this success on an ongoing basis.
2. We have taken concrete steps to expand the range of issues in which we actively do advocacy including: the explosive issue of the overuse of SWAT raids in drug cases with the sometimes deadly consequences (visit http://stopthedrugwar.org/policeraids for further information); the penalties for drug offenders and their families in welfare and public housing law, expanding the major coalition we've already built on the similar college aid law; and continued work on the college aid law. Initial steps have been taken to engage the Afghanistan opium issue as well.
3. We have expanded our public education efforts on the drug prohibition/legalization question itself, with more on the way (http://stopthedrugwar.org/legalization).
4. We have continued the most important aspects of our program from before, including the Drug War Chronicle newsletter, and our leveraging of our programs to benefit the work of other groups.
5. Further site work in the short- and medium- term pipeline should have additional major effects.

WEB SITE

As you may know from emails I've sent to the list, our web site underwent a major redesign during the summer of 2006, plus an expansion of our publishing (adding the daily content model – blogging, latest news links, daily posting of announcements and releases and so forth from other organizations) commenced in Sept. '06. The immediate result was a substantial increase in our site traffic, with a gradual increase in traffic continuing most of the time for the next several months following.

Around August this year, things started "going wild," with high profile links to DRCNet beginning to appear on major web sites, and more and more often ever since. We literally have had to have our server upgraded twice in order to handle the traffic, and are now negotiating a third upgrade. The chart appearing to the right, unique hosts by month on StoptheDrugWar.org (an estimate for the number of people), illustrates the trend.

I hope you'll agree that we are in a seriously different place now than before. To provide a flavor for how (in part) this has been accomplished, we here list "big hits" that StoptheDrugWar.org has had since fall 2006 – "big hits" defined as articles getting 4,000 "reads" or more. (These numbers were last updated on Nov. 26, so there have been new "big hits," as well as increases in the totals for the articles listed, especially the most recent.) The key point is not just how many times our stories have gone "big," but how much more often it is happening now compared with a year or more ago. Here they are:

9/29/2006	Feature: Colorado Marijuana Legalization Initiative Trails, But the Fight Is On	(7,013 reads)
9/29/2006	Feature: Nevada Marijuana Initiative Organizers See Tight But Winnable Race Going Into Final Stretch	(5,155 reads)
12/15/2006	Feature: Clamor Grows for Freedom for Texas Marijuana Prisoner Tyrone Brown	(20,190 reads)
2/5/2007	Feature: The Conviction That Keeps On Hurting -- Drug Offenders and Federal Benefits	(4,570 reads)
2/16/2007	The Anti-Dobbs: Winning the War Within Through Drug Legalization	(5,781 reads)
2/23/2007	Drug War Chronicle Book Review: "Lies, Damned Lies, and Drug War Statistics: A Critical Analysis of Claims Made by the Office of National Drug Control Policy," by Matthew Robinson and Renee Scherlen	(13,143 reads between two copies)
3/23/2007	Feature: "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" Free Speech Case Goes to the Supreme Court	(4,354 reads)
4/13/2007	Feature: The War on Salvia Divinorum Heats Up	(15,180 reads)
4/25/2007	ONDCP Admits Exaggerating Marijuana Potency	(10,589 reads)
5/25/2007	Middle East: Opium Poppies Flower Again in Iraq	(5,356 reads)
5/25/2007	Feature: Border Blues -- Canada, US Both Bar People Who Used Drugs -- Ever	(4,046 reads)
6/1/2007	Medical Marijuana: Rhode Island Bill Passes With Veto-Proof Majorities	(11,959 reads)
6/8/2007	Feature: Canadian Mom Searching for Missing Daughter Denied Entry to US Over 21-Year-Old Drug Conviction	(8,754 reads)
6/25/2007	Justices Stevens, Souter, & Ginsburg: Drug Policy Reform Sympathizers?	(8,050 reads)
6/28/2007	Editorial: Two Good Reasons to Want to Legalize Drugs	(6,185 reads)
7/10/2007	Rudy Giuliani Hates Medical Marijuana, But He Loves OxyContin	(15,090 reads)
7/26/2007	Analysis: Who Voted for Medical Marijuana This Time? Breakdown by Vote, Party, and Changes from '06	(7,227 reads between two copies)
7/30/2007	San Francisco Orders Medical Marijuana Dispensaries to Sell Fatter Bags	(7,438 reads)
8/2/2007	New Study: Marijuana Does Not Cause Psychosis, Lung Damage, or Skin Cancer	(49,721 reads)
8/6/2007	Press Release: Marijuana Dealers Offer Schwarzenegger One Billion Dollars	(72,302 reads)
8/6/2007	Marijuana Dealers Offer Schwarzenegger One Billion Dollars	(48,654 reads)
8/14/2007	Police Often Lack Basic Knowledge About Marijuana	(21,612 reads)
8/15/2007	Who's Planting All That Pot in the Woods?	(6,694 reads)
8/23/2007	Drug War Prisoners: 86-Year-Old Alva Mae Groves Dies Behind Bars	(6,821 reads)
8/30/2007	Drug Testing Encourages Cocaine, Heroin, and Meth Use	(20,291 reads)
9/26/2007	Why Do Police Really Oppose Marijuana Legalization?	(20,994 reads)
10/5/2007	McCain and Giuliani Say Terrible Things to a Medical Marijuana Patient	(39,636 reads)
10/10/2007	The Truth About Why Republican Candidates Oppose Medical Marijuana	(4,801 reads)
10/16/2007	Digg & Reddit Users Want to Legalize Marijuana	(16,576 reads)
10/22/2007	DEA Director Resigns, Says She Had an Awesome Time	(11,182 reads)
10/24/2007	This Man Receives 300 Marijuana Joints a Month From the Federal Government	(40,075 reads)
10/31/2007	Cowards: Democratic Front-Runners Reject Marijuana Law Reform	(6,608 reads)
11/2/2007	Feature: Can Medical Marijuana Cost You Your Kid? In California, It Can	(15,105 reads)
11/5/2007	Drug Scare: Kids in Florida are Getting High by Sniffing Feces	(7,797 reads)
11/13/2007	Marijuana Evolves Faster Than Human Beings	(27,144 reads)
11/23/2007	John McCain's Awful Response to a Cop Who Wants to End the Drug War	(34,950 reads)
11/23/2007	Feature: On the Anniversary of Kathryn Johnston's Death, Poll Finds Most Americans Oppose Use of SWAT-Style Tactics in Routine Drug Raids	(7,183 reads)

ISSUE EXPANSION

As mentioned briefly above, we have begun our first foray into the explosive issue of the overuse of SWAT teams in low-level drug enforcement, the kind of practice that led to the killing of 93-year-old Kathryn Johnston in Atlanta last year. In October we commissioned a set of polling questions (our first) in a likely voter poll conducted by the Zogby firm. One of them asked if police should use aggressive entry tactics in non-emergency situations. (The text of the question, which recounted the Johnston tragedy and listed a few specific tactics, along with other info about the issue including extensive recommendations of how policy should change appears on our web site at http://stopthedrugwar.org/policeraids, and our Chronicle article about it appears at http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/511/two_thirds_oppose_SWAT_raids_kathryn_johnston_zobgy_poll – it has continued to get traffic since the data compilation listed above, and now has almost 10,000 reads.) We got 66% of respondents on our side, including a majority of conservative and very conservative voters, politically a strong result.

There's a lot more to say about our issue expansion and our activist plans in the raids issue -- please email David Borden at [email protected] for further info.

ANTI-PROHIBITION ADVOCACY

Another question included in the aforementioned Zogby poll asked, "If hard drugs like heroin or cocaine were legalized, would you be likely to use them?" A mere 0.6% of respondents answered yes. While the poll should be thought of as more qualitative as quantitative -- people don't always predict their future behavior accurately -- the results clearly show that almost all Americans have strong reasons for not wanting to use these drugs that are not limited to the laws against them. Therefore the prohibitionists' specter of massive increases in addiction and social implosion following legalization isn't a sound assumption to make.

The web page http://stopthedrugwar.org/legalization presents this result, as well as links to our many "consequences of prohibition" news category feeds. We have also had video footage from the aforementioned 2003 legalization conference formatted for the popular YouTube web site, so that people can run the videos from their own web sites. Videos available so far are linked from the same legalization main page. A major component of our strategy is the idea of promoting the voices of respected leaders who are pro-legalization, in order to use the persuasiveness of their reputations to shift public opinion. With the web site successes of the past several months, and certain technical issues being addressed by a web site designer over the next couple of months, we will also soon be launching our VIP blogger series, also fitting into this strategy. Other publishing is on the way too.

DRUG WAR CHRONICLE AND SUPPORT FOR OTHER GROUPS

One of the particularly gratifying aspects of our web site success is that at times we have been able to bring other groups along with us. By this I refer primarily to the use of YouTube video – as mentioned above, a way that different web sites can easily present the same video clips without having to host copies of the footage on their own servers. Among our "big hits" articles are blog posts running video footage from Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (one of their speakers posing a tough question to John McCain that he answers in an unbelievable way), the DrugTruth Network (an interview conducted during the NORML conference with federally legal medical marijuana patient Irv Rosenfeld), and MPP's "Granite Staters" New Hampshire presidential candidates and medical marijuana campaign. YouTube's stats indicate that roughly a third of the people visiting our web pages running these videos actually click to watch the videos (though after a certain amount of time the YouTube stats start omitting older data).

The stats also indicate that our relative effectiveness for getting out the drug reform message in terms of number of people can actually be greater than the most widely visited web sites that cover lots of different issues. For example, of the 36,000+ readers we had on the aforementioned John McCain story, nearly 13,000 clicked to watch the video itself, accounting for more than half of the total views the video has gotten. An article about the encounter on the widely-read Huffington Post blog, by contrast, garnered not quite 1,400 views for the video. Our post with the Irv Rosenfeld video on DrugTruth, and our post featuring outrageous McCain and Giuliani footage responding to a medical marijuana patient with Granite Staters, both have garnered over 40,000 reads. Hence, our cooperative approach of promoting the work of other organizations has extended to the new web site format, and we are thereby in some cases getting them a lot of exposure.

Here are a few of the testimonials we've received recently for how readers put the Chronicle to use:

I read Drug War Chronicle assiduously to be up to date on the failing drug war. - Gustavo de Greiff, former attorney general of Colombia, chair of Latin American drug reform network REFORMA As LEAP [Law Enforcement Against Prohibition]'s representative in Washington, DC I read without fail the weekly Drug War Chronicle and have for years. This allows me to quickly and without wasted time know what events and people are shaping policy. To date I have met with staffers from half of the 535 offices on Capitol Hill. Years of reading the Chronicle have made me informed and able to speak knowledgeably on all facets of the New Prohibition. It is an invaluable tool I use constantly. - Officer Howard J. Wooldridge (Retired) The Drug War Chronicle is the first place I send people who want to know more about what is going on in drug policy today. - Tyler Smith, Associate Director, Interfaith Drug Policy Initiative I'm an award-winning investigative journalist. I've heard about things on DRCNet that I then turned into articles for the likes of Rolling Stone and Wired magazines. - Vince Beiser Drug War Chronicle is useful for me and my staff to keep us up to date on issues around drug policy and practice. We hear from hundreds of DC prisoners caught up in this nightmare and have little time to keep current on the issues you report on. - Philip Fornaci, Director, D.C. Prisoners' Project, Washington Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights I find Drug War Chronicle very helpful in doing grassroots activism. I serve on my county's Substance Abuse Advisory Board and Substance Abuse Prevention Association and as the community co-chair for the Washington State HIV Prevention Planning Group. I have used information from Drug War Chronicle to bring others in my community to recognize the need for drug policy reform. As a member of the Substance Abuse Advisory Board I have been able to circulate materials to all members of county government. - Monte Levine I host a weekly radio program where we discuss issues related to the failed war on drugs and the prison industrial complex. We use the DRCNet as a resource every week. DRCNet makes this activism work so much easier, by providing a resource that is accessible, not only as a tool for research, but as an interpreter in this political world. Occasionally, a guest will need to cancel at the last minute. This hazard is part of live radio, and our way of being prepared is to have the DRCNet information in hand, ready to share with listeners. - Sharon North, Shattered Lives Radio, KZFR, 90.1 FM, Chico, CA. Here in the Netherlands we use a lot of your paper to write our own monthly "war in drugs journal" made by the Legalize! Foundation. - Has Cornelissen, Stichting Legalize! I use stories from Drug War Chronicle to lead high school juniors and seniors in an on-going inquiry into the Drug War as a model of failed public policy. DWC enables me to track current issues, update my materials, and stay connected to the drug policy reform community so I can continue my work of developing in young people a deep and critical understanding of the world in which they are coming of age. - Jeanne Polk Barr, Chair, History Dept., Francis W. Parker School, Chicago I am editor of The Liberator Online, a libertarian email newsletter. With almost 70,000 readers, it is as far as we know the largest-circulation libertarian publication of any kind. It is published by the Advocates for Self-Government, a non-profit non-partisan libertarian educational organization. I use Drug War Chronicle and DRCNet as a source for information on Drug War-related issues of interest to our readers. In fact, we have a story based on a DWC item (Sen. Mike Gravel's support for drug law reform) in our current issue. I used information in an article to help form a scholarship for those convicted of a drug crime who have lost federal funding for school. Now, we are aiming to expand the scholarship to other universities and community colleges. Thanks for your help!

WEB SITE DEVELOPMENT PLANS

Plans in the works for StoptheDrugWar.org have the potential to achieve as much for the site's reach and impact as the work already done has achieved. Along with some needed improvements and fixes to our logon, commenting, and list subscription frameworks, we will be executing major improvements to how we promote our material to the aforementioned "Web 2.0" sites that have driven so much traffic to our site already. Right now, we are only doing a good job of promoting our material to the site Digg, and only for our blog posts. Our minor redesign will make the Digg links on our pages more prominent, will add them to our Drug War Chronicle pages and elsewhere, and will add links to promote articles to other important sites where we've had some success already, like Stumbleupon, Reddit and Netscape. This is a logical extension of a strategy that has already been very successful.

Plans are also underway to dramatically expand the background information we have available on all the different drug policy issues, using the technology available through our web site system to present it in some pretty powerful ways. (Here again, more later.)

I hope you can tell from the foregoing how excited we are about the state of DRCNet's work at this juncture, and how important we feel it is to continue to push forward at full strength. With your continued support, we will build on our successes reaching wider online audiences. We will take on the explosive issue of reckless police raids. We will expand the coalition opposing the college aid drug conviction penalty to include the similar laws in welfare and public housing. We will get the message out about the urgent need for legalization and the impressive people who support that viewpoint. We will continue to publish Drug War Chronicle to empower activists throughout the drug policy reform movement, and to educate the media, policymakers and the general public. And we will put in place new, important sections of our web site to increase the reach and impact of our educational work even further. Thank you for your support and for being part of the cause.

Sincerely,

David Borden, Executive Director

P.S. Contributions of $50 or more can be credited toward our first (not-yet-selected) book premiums of 2008. (You'll need to remind us after we send out the premium announcements next year.) Remember that tax-deductible donations should be made payable to DRCNet Foundation. (The amount that is deductible will be reduced by the retail price of any gift(s) you select.) Non-deductible donations for our lobbying work should be made payable to Drug Reform Coordination Network.

P.P.S. In case you would like to donate at this time, I am providing the information here for your convenience: DRCNet Foundation (for tax-deductible donations supporting our educational work) or Drug Reform Coordination Network (for non-deductible donations supporting our lobbying work), P.O. Box 18402, Washington, DC 20036, or http://stopthedrugwar.org/donate online. (Contact us if you'd like information on donating stock.)

P.P.P.S. Please feel free to call us at (202) 293-8340 if you'd like to discuss any of our programs or have other questions or concerns.

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Law Enforcement: Snitches Gone Bad

Just last week, Drug War Chronicle reviewed Ethan Brown's "Snitch: Informants, Cooperators, and the Corruption of Justice," which tells the story of the corruption and misdeeds fostered by federal drugs laws that virtually impel people who've been arrested to find others to inform on in order to avoid prison time themselves. We don't know if it's synchronicity or what, but in the week since then, bad snitch stories seem to be popping up all over. Here are three we've spotted in the past few days:

In Twin Falls, Idaho, a man charged in a Twin Falls murder was working as an informant for the Blaine County Narcotics Enforcement Team. John Henry McElhiney of Hailey is charged with killing an 18-year-old Twin Falls man in September. In response to press inquiries, the Blaine County Sheriff's Office has confirmed that McElhiney worked drug cases for the drug squad. The office stopped short of calling him a "confidential informant," however, instead referring to him as a "cooperative individual." It is unclear from local press accounts whether McElhiney became a snitch for money, to avoid prison time himself, or for some other reason. It is also unclear whether his assistance actually led to any other arrests. He awaits trial on the murder charge.

In Seattle, a "cooperating witness" pleaded guilty last Friday to framing people for drug sales offenses. Snitch Tina Rivard, 40, had been arrested in May for forging prescriptions, but instead of charging her, agents with the Cowlitz-Wahkiakum Narcotics Task Force offered her a deal: leniency in exchange for helping to build cases against prescription drug dealers. Rivard helped in one case, but in a second, she framed a 21-year-old man on Oxycontin dealing charges by undermining the task force's "controlled buy" system. Although agents would punch the suspect's phone number into Rivard's phone, she would then secretly hit speed-dial and instead call a friend posing as the suspect. He would then make incriminating statements and set up drug deals. Rivard also faked a drug buy from the suspect under the agents' noses, having her friend actually bring the drugs she claimed to have bought. The 21-year-old was indicted and faced up to 20 years in prison, but Rivard eventually admitted she had set him up. Now the indictment against him has been dropped, and she faces 20 years.

In Cleveland, Ohio, an informant for the DEA has been convicted of framing innocent people and getting them sent to prison. Informant Jerrell Bray staged drug deals with friends while investigators watched, but gave investigators the names of people not involved in the deals, then testified or gave sworn statements saying that the innocent people were the drug dealers. Bray managed to set up four people, including a woman who had refused to date him, while working under DEA agent Lee Lucas. It is unclear whether Lucas or other law enforcement personnel knew what Bray was up to, but a federal grand jury will meet next month to investigate obstruction of justice, perjury, and weapons charges against Bray "and others." Bray was sentenced to 15 years in prison on perjury and deprivation of civil rights charges, a sentence that will run concurrently with state time for shooting a man in a drug-related robbery.

Ironically, Bray can gain a sentence cut on the federal time if he "cooperates fully." When will they learn?

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Law Enforcement: This Week's Corrupt Cops Stories

The allure of cocaine proves too much for a California highway patrolman and a pair of Brooklyn narcs, and a pair of New Jersey cops pay for peddling pills. Let's get to it:

In Santa Ana, California, a California Highway Patrol officer was arrested Monday for allegedly stealing more than a million dollars worth of cocaine from a Highway Patrol evidence room. Officer Joshua Blackburn, 32, a six-year-veteran, is accused of breaking into the evidence room at the patrol's Santa Ana headquarters. Highway Patrol authorities discovered the theft Friday and notified Santa Ana Police, who made the arrest. Blackburn is being held on $4 million bail at the Orange County Jail.

In New York City, a former Newark police officer was sentenced December 20 to 33 months in federal prison after pleading guilty in a scheme where he, another Newark police officer, and a New Jersey doctor conspired to obtain dozens of illegal prescriptions for Oxycontin, fill the prescriptions, then sell the drugs for cash. Former officer Ronald Pompanio, 42, faced up to 87 months, but got a break for cooperating in the investigation and testifying against the doctor. Both Pompanio and former officer John Hernandez pleaded guilty in September 2006 to one count of conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute oxycodone, the main ingredient in OxyContin, after admitting that they filled the prescriptions and sold the drugs on the street in northern New Jersey. The doctor, Joan Jaszczult of Bloomfield, has also pleaded guilty and faces up to 10 years in prison. The conspirators admitted to trafficking in a minimum of 250,000 milligrams of oxycodone. [Ed: The question always needs to be asked in cases like this, was the doctor a real conspirator, or was the doctor an unwitting victim about whom the drug sellers made up a story to get time off their sentences? Or whose actions the prosecutors misrepresented? Media outlets often rely on the official line without investigating further, so to really know the story in a case like this it might be necessary to independently examine the facts.]

In New York City, two NYPD officers were arrested on December 19 on charges of misconduct and falsifying records in connection with the disappearance of 11 bags of cocaine. Officers Julio Alvarez and Sean Johnstone of the Brooklyn South narcotics unit arrested a man on September 13 and turned over 17 bags of cocaine as evidence, but Johnstone, who was working undercover with Alvarez, was later recorded saying that Alvarez had actually seized 28 baggies of cocaine. This is the same pair of officers who made these pages last week, when we reported on a brewing scandal at Brooklyn South over the use of racial epithets recorded by transmitters they were wearing. It was those same transmitters that recorded the admission of stealing the 11 bags of cocaine. Unlike most defendants in New York's courts, Alvarez and Johnstone were given the courtesy of appearing in court without handcuffs and were allowed to remain free without bail. [Ed: Why the special treatment? Why not the same courtesy for other defendants?]

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Prisons: Facing Budget Crisis, California Governor Ponders Early Release of 22,000 Nonviolent Offenders

Faced with a $14 billion budget deficit next year, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is considering a proposal to slash ballooning prison spending by granting early release to some 22,000 nonviolent, non-sex offender inmates. The proposal would also cut the state's prison population by another 6,000 by changing the way parole violations are handled. But Schwarzenegger has not approved the proposal, and it is already generating political opposition.

With some 172,000 inmates, California's prison system is second only to the federal system in size, and its budget has ballooned by 79% in the last five years to nearly $8 billion. Still, the system is vastly overcrowded and faces two federal class-action suits seeking to cap inmate populations because overcrowding is resulting in the state not delivering constitutionally adequate medical and mental health care.

According to the California Department of Corrections' latest prisoner census, more than 35,000, or 20.6%, of those prisoners are doing time for drug offenses. Drug offenders, property offenders, and "other" nonviolent offenders together account for half the state prison population.

Under the plan, presented to the governor's office by his departmental budget managers, low-risk offenders with fewer than 20 months left in their sentences would be released early. That would save the state about $250 million in the coming fiscal year and more than $780 million through June 2010, according to the Sacramento Bee, which first broke the story last week. It would also involve cutting some 4,000 prison jobs, mostly for the state's highly paid prison guards, whose base salary is nearly $60,000 a year.

The proposal also calls for a "summary" parole system, where released offenders would remain under supervised release, but would not be returned to prison for technical parole violations, such as dirty drug tests or missing an appointment, but only if they are convicted of a new crime. Moving to a summary system would cut the average parole population by 18,500 in the next fiscal year and reduce the prison population by another 6,250, according to the proposal. It would also cost about 1,660 parole jobs. Altogether, changes in the parole system would save the state $329 million through June 2010.

While such a proposal would be groundbreaking if enacted, the odds appear long. Queried by the press after the Bee broke the story, Schwarzenegger spokesman Bill Maile said the governor had not decided if he liked the idea or not. "The governor asked his department heads to work with their budget managers to find ways to cut the budget by 10% because of the budget crisis we are facing, and this idea was one of many that was floated in reaction to that request," Maile said. "It's not a proposal yet, just an idea."

Early reaction from the political class has not been good. Rep. Jose Solorio (D-Santa Ana), head of the Assembly Public Safety Committee, said Democratic reaction would range from skepticism to outright opposition. "Many of us are going to have some very strong concerns about whether it's the direction we want to begin taking," Solorio told the Bee in a followup story. Early releases are "DOA" with Assembly Republicans, he added.

Republican Assemblyman Todd Spitzer (R-Orange), one of his party's criminal justice leaders, said early releases would undermine recently enacted Assembly Bill 900, a $7.9 billion measure that will add 53,000 jail and prison beds, but also establish rehabilitation as the philosophical underpinning of the state's prison system.

"By letting people out 20 months early, which is supposed to be when they get their reentry skills, they're not going to get them at all, so recidivism is going to get worse," Spitzer said. "This budget plan is a forfeiture of AB 900 principles, which was supposed to change how we treat criminality in California."

Republican political consultant Ray McNally was even more dramatic. "It's pretty clear, the governor has decided not to run for US Senate or other political office," said McNally, whose clients include the California Correctional Peace Officers Association. "You can't release 22,000 people from prison and expect to ever get elected to another office again. I think he's made his decision to retire from politics."

If Schwarzenegger braves the firestorm and adopts the proposal, he will probably include it in budget filings next month. If the proposal makes it to the final appropriations bill, that bill must pass with a two-thirds vote. There is a long way to go, but this proposal at least acknowledges that there might be a better path than just building more prisons.

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Legislation: Illinois Joins Short List of States Banning Salvia Divinorum

As of January 1, possession of salvia divinorum in Illinois will be a felony. Before the legislature passed a bill this year, the obscure Mexican mint with hallucinogenic properties had been unregulated and freely sold at tobacco stores, "head shops," and even gas stations.

"We decided to move forward rather than waiting for someone to be killed because of it," said state Rep. Dennis Reboletti (D-Elmhurst), the bill's sponsor. He told the Chicago Tribune it was necessary for Illinois to regulate the herb tightly because the federal government had failed to act. The DEA considers salvia a "drug of concern," but has so far not moved to schedule it under the Controlled Substances Act.

Salvia has traditionally been used in religious ceremonies by Mazatec Indians in southern Mexico, but in recent years, it has spread to the US and other countries, where it is easily available over the counter or via the Internet. At high doses, salvia can produce intense hallucinations, but those effects are short-lived, with a "trip" being over in a matter of minutes. It is not a drug experience that most users wish to repeatedly revisit.

But for Reboletti and his peers, the risk of teens and college students from salvia use are so great that it must be banned. "It's very likely that you could hurt yourself or hurt others while in this drug-induced state," he said.

But others said that given salvia's spiritual and medical uses and potential, banning it is too harsh. Crystal Basler, owner of a religious supply store in Carbondale, told the Tribune most of her customers were medical -- not recreational -- users. "Some people describe [the effect] as they get very relaxed, kind of like taking an anti-stress pill," Basler said. "The leaf is very, very mild. There's no reason to ever make the leaf illegal. A lot of women buy it for PMS depression."

Salvia should be regulated, but not banned, she said. "I'm a big fan of it being regulated," Basler said. "But it shouldn't be illegal because you're interfering with people's right to choose in terms of their health care and religious following."

Salvia has already been made a Schedule I drug under state laws in Delaware, Louisiana, and Missouri, as well as a handful of towns around the country. Bills to ban it have also been brought in Alabama, Alaska, California, Florida, Iowa, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Texas, but have so far not succeeded.

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Marijuana: Idaho Balks at Town's Pot Initiatives

Last month, voters in tiny Hailey, Idaho, approved three municipal initiatives that legalized medical marijuana, cultivation of industrial hemp, and ordered the city to make enforcement of state and federal marijuana laws the lowest law enforcement priority. Now, city officials have delayed acting on the initiatives, and Idaho's attorney general says the first two initiatives conflict with state law and are invalid and the third "is likely not an allowable subject for an initiative, and therefore invalid."

In the brief written by Deputy Attorney General Mitchell Toryanski, Toryanski said that in addition to conflicting with state law, the initiatives were also problematic on free speech grounds and because they affected the constitutional division of powers between the state and municipalities.

In the brief, Toryanski wrote that: "The Idaho Constitution guarantees that 'every person may freely speak, write and publish on all subjects, being responsible for the abuse of that liberty. The right to free speech includes the right not to speak.'"

Toryanski also cited Idaho case law on the division of powers to invalidate the lowest law enforcement priority initiative, noting that "while subjects of a legislative nature were allowable for local initiatives, subjects of an administrative nature were not."

"None of this surprises me in the least," Hailey city attorney Ned Williamson told Sun Valley Online. "There are at least three issues, three problems with the initiatives."

"The provision in the initiatives that require you guys to advocate for changes in law violate your freedom of speech and freedom of political discretion," Williamson said, referring to the requirement imposed on city officials to attempt to persuade officials in other cities, the county and anyone else to promote legal use of marijuana.

"The bottom line is that major provisions of the initiatives are illegal and are invalid," Williamson said. "It coincides with what I said in the past, and we have to decide how to proceed." Williamson said the city can choose between litigating, repealing or amending the initiatives.

Now, city officials have put off any decisions even on whether to move ahead with the oversight committees mandated by the initiatives. No word yet from the Idaho Liberty Lobby, the group that sponsored the initiatives.

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Asia: China Set to Adopt Anti-Drug Law

China's National People's Congress is set to pass that country's first anti-drug law to curb drug use and trafficking. Currently, drug offenses are handled under China's general criminal law.

The Congress this week is studying a third draft of the law after its Law Committee announced Sunday the law was "ready for adoption." If passed in its current form, the drug law would mark a step forward for China's estimated 1.16 million registered drug users. Current regulations require drug users to be confined in rehabilitation centers, but under the new law, many would be able to undergo treatment in their communities.

The law would also exclude minors under 16 and pregnant or breastfeeding women from compulsory isolated drug rehabilitation, although this provision was controversial. Some lawmakers argued that youthful drug offenders could receive treatment designed especially for them in an isolated environment.

"If some parents are unable to help their addicted children rehabilitate, and community corrections have proved ineffective as well, then young addicts should receive isolated compulsive drug-rehab," they argued.

Among the drugs banned in the new drug law are opium, heroin, morphine, marijuana, methamphetamine, and cocaine. The law also sets strict rules on the clinical use of pharmaceuticals and other chemicals and medicines that could be used to make illegal narcotics, such as methadone and ephedrine.

China's opium trade was virtually wiped out after the Communist Party took power in 1949 -- an historically unique event -- after the party combated it using the same draconian repression with which it attacked Chinese society as a whole. Like prostitution and other perceived Western vices, however, opium has staged a comeback in China in the wake of economic reforms over the past three decades. The Chinese government reports that the number of registered drug users had increased by a whopping 35% between 2000 and 2005.

It is unclear what criminal sanctions the new law contains. Under current Chinese law, drug trafficking can merit sentences as severe as death. Some 50,000 people were arrested on drug trafficking charges last year.

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Latin America: Ecuador President Wants to Pardon Drug "Mules"

In his weekly radio address last Saturday, Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa proposed pardoning low-level drug couriers, commonly known as "mules." Correa also called for drafting new drug laws that more accurately reflect the severity of various drug crimes.

Correa said he would ask a special assembly drafting a new constitution to pardon the mules. The assembly has taken on legislative powers since the country's congress was suspended last month, and Correa and his political allies control 60% of the assembly.

Under current Ecuadorian drug laws, which Correa complained were drafted under pressure from Washington, people caught with as little as 3 1/2 ounces of cocaine can be sentenced to more than 10 years in prison, a situation Correa called "absurd." The current law "treats as the same the boss of the Cali cartel and a poor unemployed single mother who dared to carry 300 grams of drugs," Correa said. "It's a barbarity."

While Ecuador produces almost no coca, the key ingredient in cocaine, it is frequently used as a transit country for drugs coming from neighboring Colombia and Peru, the world's top two coca producers, to the United States.

Since his election earlier this year, Correa has been a critic of the US drug war in Latin America. He has refused to extend the lease on the US airbase at Manta, and has buddied up with Washington's bête noire, Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez. When it comes to the drug war, Correa also has some personal experience. Earlier this year, he acknowledged that his father, who died when he was nine, served three years in prison in the US for carrying drugs.

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Weekly: This Week in History

January 1, 1932: The newly established Federal Bureau of Narcotics, a unit in the Treasury Department, takes over from the Alcohol Unit of the department the enforcement of the federal anti-opiate and anti-cocaine laws. Former Assistant Prohibition Commissioner Harry J. Anslinger takes over as commissioner of narcotics.

December 29, 1988: Judge Mark Polen, in State v. Mussika, comments, "There is a pressing need for a more compassionate, humane law which clearly discriminates between the criminal conduct of those who socially abuse chemicals and the legitimate medical needs of seriously ill patients..."

December 30, 1989: Ignoring evidence to the contrary, DEA Director John Lawn orders that cannabis remain on the Schedule I narcotics list which is reserved for drugs which have no known medical use.

January 3, 1990: After eluding capture following the US invasion of Panama and seeking asylum in the Vatican embassy, General Manuel Noriega surrenders to the DEA, and is brought to Miami the next day.

December 28, 1992: ABC Television airs a major special on the drug war in Bolivia which, according to the Bush Administration, is our "best hope" for winning the drug war in South America. ABC concludes decisively that there is no hope and that the war on drug production has already been lost.

January 2, 1994: Through the emergency scheduling process, the synthetic psychedelic 2C-B (4-bromo-2,5-dimethoxyphenethylamine) is added to the list of Schedule I drugs.

January 1, 1995: Oregon's largest television station, KATU-TV in Portland, conducts a "telepoll" asking the question, "Do you support legalizing marijuana to fund education?" Over fifty-four percent of the thousands of respondents answer "yes."

December 30, 1996: President Clinton approves a plan to combat the new state laws legalizing marijuana for the sick and dying.

December 29, 1997: The New York Times reports that US and Mexican officials said that the United States was providing the Mexican military with extensive covert intelligence support and training for hundreds of its officers to help shape a network of anti-drug troops around the country. The Times points out that "the effort has proceeded despite growing US concern that it may lead to more serious problems of corruption and human rights in one of Mexico's most respected institutions... In fact, a new US intelligence analysis of the military's drug ties will cite evidence of extensive penetration of the officer corps."

January 2, 1998: The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) backs off attempts to subpoena the names of individuals who purchased a marijuana cultivation book entitled "Marijuana Hydroponics: High-Tech Water Culture." The agency withdraws its demands after legal challenges from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and an acknowledgment from Assistant US Attorney John Stevens that the subpoenas are "unduly burdensome."

January 1, 1999: The Drug Peace Campaign, a California political action committee, is formed in order "to seek a peaceful end to the war now being waged by our own governments against us, the citizens of the United States of America, and the World."

December 31, 2000: A Department of Justice report states that State prisons are operating between full capacity and 15% above capacity, while Federal prisons are operating at 31% above capacity.

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Students: Intern at DRCNet and Help Stop the Drug War!

Want to help end the "war on drugs," while earning college credit too? Apply for a DRCNet internship for this fall semester (or spring) and you could come join the team and help us fight the fight!

DRCNet (also known as "Stop the Drug War") has a strong record of providing substantive work experience to our interns -- you won't spend the summer doing filing or running errands, you will play an integral role in one or more of our exciting programs. Options for work you can do with us include coalition outreach as part of the campaign to repeal the drug provision of the Higher Education Act, and to expand that effort to encompass other bad drug laws like the similar provisions in welfare and public housing law; blogosphere/web outreach; media research and outreach; web site work (research, writing, technical); possibly other areas. If you are chosen for an internship, we will strive to match your interests and abilities to whichever area is the best fit for you.

While our internships are unpaid, we will reimburse you for metro fare, and DRCNet is a fun and rewarding place to work. To apply, please send your resume to David Guard at [email protected], and feel free to contact us at (202) 293-8340. We hope to hear from you! Check out our web site at http://stopthedrugwar.org to learn more about our organization.

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Weekly: Blogging @ the Speakeasy

Along with our weekly in-depth Chronicle reporting, DRCNet has since late summer also been providing daily content in the way of blogging in the Stop the Drug War Speakeasy -- huge numbers of people have been reading it recently -- as well as Latest News links (upper right-hand corner of most web pages), event listings (lower right-hand corner) and other info. Check out DRCNet every day to stay on top of the drug reform game!

Since last issue:

Scott Morgan brings us: "The Drug Czar's Fair-Weather Fascination With Drug War Violence" and "Journalism 101: Everything the Drug Czar Says is Wrong." (It was a short week because of the holidays.)

David Guard posts numerous press releases, action alerts and other organizational announcements in the In the Trenches blog.

Please join us in the Reader Blogs too.

Thanks for reading, and writing...

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Feedback: Do You Read Drug War Chronicle?

Do you read Drug War Chronicle? If so, we'd like to hear from you. DRCNet needs two things:

1. We are in between newsletter grants, and that makes our need for donations more pressing. Drug War Chronicle is free to read but not to produce! Click here to make a donation by credit card or PayPal, or to print out a form to send in by mail.
   
   
2. Please send quotes and reports on how you put our flow of information to work, for use in upcoming grant proposals and letters to funders or potential funders. Do you use DRCNet as a source for public speaking? For letters to the editor? Helping you talk to friends or associates about the issue? Research? For your own edification? Have you changed your mind about any aspects of drug policy since subscribing, or inspired you to get involved in the cause? Do you reprint or repost portions of our bulletins on other lists or in other newsletters? Do you have any criticisms or complaints, or suggestions? We want to hear those too. Please send your response -- one or two sentences would be fine; more is great, too -- email [email protected] or reply to a Chronicle email or use our online comment form. Please let us know if we may reprint your comments, and if so, if we may include your name or if you wish to remain anonymous. IMPORTANT: Even if you have given us this kind of feedback before, we could use your updated feedback now too -- we need to hear from you!

Again, please help us keep Drug War Chronicle alive at this important time! Click here to make a donation online, or send your check or money order to: DRCNet, P.O. Box 18402, Washington, DC 20036. Make your check payable to DRCNet Foundation to make a tax-deductible donation for Drug War Chronicle -- remember if you select one of our member premium gifts that will reduce the portion of your donation that is tax-deductible -- or make a non-deductible donation for our lobbying work -- online or check payable to Drug Reform Coordination Network, same address. We can also accept contributions of stock -- email [email protected] for the necessary info.

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Webmasters: Help the Movement by Running DRCNet Syndication Feeds on 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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Resource: DRCNet Web Site Offers Wide Array of RSS Feeds for Your Reader

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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Resource: Reformer's Calendar Accessible Through DRCNet Web Site

DRCNet's Reformer's Calendar is a tool you can use to let the world know about your events, and find out what is going on in your area in the issue. This resource used to run in our newsletter each week, but now is available from the right hand column of most of the pages on our web site.

• Visit http://stopthedrugwar.org each day and you'll see a listing of upcoming events in the page's right-hand 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.

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