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The Sentencing Project: Disenfranchisement News/Updates 6/27/08

Virginia: Governor Receptive to Disenfranchisement Reform for those Charged with Non-violent Offenses The Washington Post editorialized in support of Virginia Governor Timothy Kaine's effort to re- enfranchise citizens who have completed their felony sentences. "We have no reason to believe Mr. Kaine is acting on political motives, but even if he were, his actions affirm a truth that all but a few states have accepted: Felons who pay their debt to society should not be denied the right to vote," the editorial states. Virginia is overly restrictive in its disenfranchisement policies and should not permanently exclude individuals with felony records from the voting process, the Post contends. Appearing on WTOP's "Ask the Governor" program earlier this week broadcast in the Washington, D.C. area, Gov. Kaine expressed his willingness to support changes in the Commonwealth's laws - but only to those convicted of non-violent offenses. "When somebody wants to participate, I think we ought to have procedures that enable them to once they've shown that [they] can do fine in civil society," he said. "It would have to be a constitutional amendment that would give the legislature the power to set up that kind of format and I think it should be in most instances, more automatic." In response to a Daily Press column , Janice Puffenberger commented on the issue of offering formerly incarcerated individuals a second chance in society. "The fact that we refuse to let felons return to full membership in society after paying their dues, by refusing them the right to vote, leads to recidivism," she writes. We don't give a break to those who make mistakes, so technically their problem is really our problem." Florida: To the Governor, Congrats … and Continue On "Gov. Charlie Crist is to be congratulated" for his part in helping to restore the rights of 115,000 citizens with felony offenses, a St. Petersburg Times editorial states. As more await voting rights eligibility notices, Crist has the option of streamlining the entire civil rights restoration process, which would include allowing those with felony offenses to apply for professional licenses. According to the Times, if Crist moves in this direction, the state could return to the Executive Clemency rules of 1975 under Gov. Reuben Askew, when restoration of rights was automatic after completion of parole or probation. The move could further eliminate the current backlog that the Parole Commission is experiencing as it continues to go through a backlog of 60,000 restoration cases. An additional 4,000 applications are submitted each month for review by the Commission. Massachusetts: Voting Not a "Privilege for the Virtuous" "Voting is a fundamental right, not a privilege for the virtuous," contends a Boston Globe editorial. Commenting on the Brennan Center for Justice's recent study on the various laws and impacts of disenfranchisement, the editorial further states that the fact that voting rights vary state by state is "bizarre." As recently as eight years ago, Massachusetts allowed those incarcerated to vote. Now, however, voting rights are restored upon release from prison. - - - - - - Help The Sentencing Project continue to bring you news and updates on disenfranchisement! Make a contribution today. Contact Information -- e-mail: [email protected], web: http://www.sentencingproject.org
In The Trenches

2008 Global Conference On Methamphetamine Newsletter Issue No1

 


1st global conference on methamphetamine

conference newsletter
issue no. 1

Prague. Czech Republic.
15th - 16th Sept. 2008

 

 

 

2Prague New City Hall
www.globalmethconference.com

The Czech Republic, City of Prague, the Centre for Addictology at Charles University, Network Environmental Systems, Podane Ruce, Cranstoun Drug Services, the Harm Reduction Coalition and The Thorne Group, are honored to cosponsor the 1st Global Conference on Methamphetamine: Science, Strategy and Response. The event is scheduled to take place this September 15 - 16, 2008 at Prague's new City Hall.

  

   The first event of its kind, experts from the fields of science, public health, criminal justice, government, and civil society, will come together in the historic city of Prague to discuss a wide range of topics centering around methamphetamine. While local and national communities are under siege by a perceived methamphetamine epidemic rush to pursue solutions, many facets of the problem remain to be discovered, examined, debated, illuminated and verified.
   It is in this spirit of discovery, discussion, and cooperation that we are convening this summit. As the first event to gather global experts from varied fields, with diverse and even sometimes divergent perspectives, the conference is assured to be an unparalleled event.
   The First Global Conference On Methamphetamine will take place in Prague's City Hall, with speakers and delegates attending from more than 20 nations. Delegates will have access to over fifty panel, breakout, and plenary sessions and the unique opportunity to interact with local, national, and international organizations, providers, scientists, and professionals. Visit the conference website to get more information and register.



 

Opium in essence is about poverty, where as Yaa Baa is about greed.  ~ Jean-Luc Lemahiey (UNDOC)

 


Major & Concurrent Sessions

GMC1
Abuse and Dependence and the Onset of Schizophrenia - Super Labs and Cartels - Spreading Like Wildfire: 'Tik' Use in the Western Cape of South Africa - Social Marketing - Trade Awareness of Illicit Sourceing of Chemicals Required for Production - Law Enforcement: Through the Barriers - Use Among Opiate Abusers in Iran - Personal Values and Meaning in Use Among HIV Positive MSM - Voter Approved Treatment Through the Criminal Justice System - Methamphetamine Use in China - Biopyschosocial Aspects of Use Meth Lab - Contamination Assessment - The Future of Global Drug Policy - Novel Interventions for Reducing Risk - Meth Lab Eradication Through Effective Control of Pseudo/ephedrine - Use and Property Offending and Drug Dealing in New Zealand - High Risk Behavior and Avoidance Based Coping Among HIV+ MSM Sexuality and Mental Health Concerns - The Matrix Model for the Treatment of Dependence - Use Among Black MSM - Marketing Education to the Club World - Quite a Lot of Smoke But Very Limited Fire - The Use of Methamphetamine in the European Union - History of Methamphetamine in the US - Hypogonadism and Use Among HIV Positive Men - Therapeutic Communities in Czech Republic - Use In Central & Eastern Europe: How Recent Social History Shaped Current Drug Consumption Patterns - Youth and Ya Ba Use in Chiang Mai, Northern Thailand - Use Among Youth in Inner City Winnipeg - Methamphetamine,Meth Labs, and Drug Endangered Children - Use Among Queer Street Involved Youth In Vancouver - Use During Pregnancy: Where Did the Current Surge in Treatment Admissions Come From? - Working with Users in an Urban Setting - Unveiling the Needs of Women Who Use In Indonesia - Providing Integrative Services to Users: The Ukrainian Experience - Use Among Patients of Buprenorphine Maintenance Programs - Injection and HIV Risk in Ukraine - Amphetamines in "Free" Serbia - Pharmacological Treatment of Meth Addiction -  Exploring the Efficacy of Matrix in Tehran - The Czech Republic: EU Pervitin Deviance or Laboratory of EU Drug Future? - Safety First: Prevention Education - Use and Networks of Drug Injectors in St. Petersburg - Drug Choice and HIV Risk Among IDUs in St. Petersburg - Brief Motivational Interventions - Exploring Intimacy, Sexuality, and Identity -  "Aquí Empieza la Patria" ("Here the Homeland Begins") - Patterns of Use - Relationship Between Use, Other Drugs, and Sexual Effects - Dependence and HIV Risk -  Behavior Hepatitis A, B, and C Virus Infection  Among Users in Treatment - Use Among Treatment Seeking Youth: An Emerging Problem? - Russian Narcologoical Treatment Crisis - Meth Free Alliance's Neighborhood Intervention Project - Social Cognition, Executive Function & Use - Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About - Ibogaine -  Regional Updates- The Relationship Between Use & Violence - Consumption & Expenditure: A Cultural Analysis - Dramatic Increase in Treatment Admissions in Cape Town, South Africa - Methamphetamine, Justice and Public Health - Crime and Punishiment

(More to be announced)

 

 

A knowedge of the formulas and chemicals used to produce methamphetamine is essential to the effort to minimize harm.

 

   

Featured Speakers

                                        GCM 2                                  
   Keynote Speaker: Louisa Degenhardt, PhD
   National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, University of  
   NSW, Sydney
   "The Global Methamphetamine Picture"

   Special Guest Speaker: Ivan Langer
   Minister of The Interior, Czech Republic
   "Welcome"
                           
   Speical Sessions: Jeremy Douglas
   Manager, Global SMART Program
   Matthew Nice, Research Expert
   United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Vienna
   "The Global ATS Situation Assessment 2008"


This Week's Highlighted Speakers

Richard Rawson, PhD
UCLA Integrated Substance Abuse Programs, Los Angeles
"On the Treatment of Methamphetamine"

Prof. Lin Lu, MD, PhD
Director, National Institute of Drugs and Development, Beijing
"Methamphetamine Abuse in China"

Apinun Aramrattana, MD, PhD
Faculty of Medicine, Chiang Mai University, Chiang Mai
"The New Methamphetamine Epidemic in Thailand"

Danica Klempova, MA
Drug Situation Analyst, European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, Lisbon
"Quite a Lot of Smoke But Very Limited Fire - The Use of Methamphetamine in the E.U."

Kat Coric
Artist, President, Arts & Ideas, Montreal
"Crystal  - See Through it - Marketing Crystal Meth Education to the Club World"

Stephanie Lovett   
Compliance Director, Chemical Compliance International, Birmingham
"Trade Awareness of Illicit Sourcing of Chemicals Required for Methamphetamine Production"

Marsha Rosenbaum, PhD
Director Emerita, Safety First Program, Drug Policy Alliance, San Francisco
"Safety First: Prevention Education For Methamphetamine and Other Drugs"

Michael Siever, PhD
Director, The Stonewall Project, San Francisco
"The Evolution of Party and Play: Counseling Gay Men in San Francisco Who Do Methamphetamine"

Michael D. Siever, PhD., is a licensed psychologist whose specialty is addictive behaviors. He is the founder and Director of the Stonewall Project, which provides services to gay and bisexual men who use methamphetamine.

The Stonewall Project has two components: 1) a harm reduction treatment program providing integrated substance use, mental health, and HIV counseling and education; and 2) a harm reduction outreach and education program best known by its web site, www.tweaker.org that also includes real time outreach and education in the community. He also was one of the founders of Magnet, a community space and sexual health center for gay men. Both Stonewall and Magnet are programs of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation.

Dr. Siever was a founding member of and, for three years, the Community Co-Chair of the Substance Abuse Treatment on Demand Planning Council for the City and County of San Francisco and has been active in several other advisory groups and task forces for the San Francisco Department of Public Health. He was a member of the Continuum of Services System Re-engineering Task Force for the California State Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs.

Dr. Siever received his B.A. in Social Relations from Harvard University and both his M.Ed. in Special Education and his PhD. in Counseling Psychology from the University of Washington in Seattle. He was a NIAAA-funded Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Addictive Behaviors Research Center at the University of Washington under G. Alan Marlatt, PhD., and Research and Clinical Associate in the AIDS Risk Reduction Project in the School of Social Work at the University of Washington. Dr. Siever also has a long history of community activism dating back several decades.

He was a member of Survive AIDS (formerly known as ACT-UP Golden Gate). In addition to his activism as a gay man living with HIV, he is an advocate for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender communities and other marginalized and oppressed communities particularly with the San Francisco Department of Public Health. He was a founding member of Queer Nation/Seattle and served on the Steering Committees of Seattle Committee Against Thirteen, the Washington Coalition for Sexual Minority Rights, and the Union of Sexual Minorities. His activism started in the civil rights and anti-war struggles in the 1960's and 1970's.


Wendee Wechsberg, PhD
Director, Substance Abuse Treatment Evaluations and Intervention, RTI International
"Spreading Like Wildfire: 'Tik' Use in the Western Cape of South Africa"

Tomas Zabransky, MD, PhD,
Research and Development Manager, Centre for Addictology at Charles University, Prague
"Meth in the Czech Republic: EU Pervitin Deviance or Laboratory of EU Drug Future?"

 
 

 

An estimated 25 million individuals used amphetamine-type stimulants in 2006. - United Nations World Drug Report

 


Conference Programme
upload

Sunday Evening, September 14, 2008
7:30 -10: 00 p.m. Welcoming Reception
Zlatá Praha Restaurant ~ The Rooftop Terrace
of the InterContinental Hotel Praha
(Main Conference Hotel)


Monday, September 15, 2008
9:00-10:30 a.m. Opening Ceremony
11:00-12:30 p.m. Opening Plenary
12:30-13:30 p.m. Lunch (provided)
13:30-15:00 p.m. Major & Concurrent Sessions
15:30-17:00 p.m. Major & Concurrent Sessions
17:00-18:30 p.m. Major Session

7:30-10:00 p.m. Mayor's Gala Event
Lord Mayor Residence
Hosted by Pavel Bém, Lord Mayor of Prague


Tuesday, September 16, 2008
8:30-10:00 a.m. Major Session
10:30-12:00 p.m. Major & Concurrent Sessions
12:00-13:00 p.m. Lunch (provided)
13:00-14:30 p.m. Major & Concurrent Sessions
15:00-16:30 p.m. Major & Concurrent Sessions
16:45-17:30 p.m. Closing Ceremony

 

 

 

Conference Objectives


  As the use of methamphetamine and other amphetamine-type stimulants proliferates across the globe, there is an emerging consensus among experts that stimulant use is a unique and complex problem that presents a significant challenge to existing philosophies and strategies. The 2008 Global Conference on Methamphetamine will provide an arena for the world's foremost scientists, leaders and professionals working on issues of drug use to come together to discuss a wide variety of topics centering around methamphetamine.
   Established trends show methamphetamine use to be widespread in North American, Asia, Australia, and New Zealand; while India, Pakistan, Eastern Europe, the Russian Federation Sub-Saharan Africa and Western Europe represent emerging markets or areas of perceived risk. According to estimates by the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime and the World Health Organization more individuals worldwide now use stimulants than opiates and cocaine combined. Yet the development of appropriate and effective responses to stimulants lags. In most cases, treatment and prevention are inappropriately modeled on opiate and alcohol treatment, ignoring both the physical properties of the drug itself, and the fact that methamphetamine use patterns vary widely, and effective responses must be tailored to the unique needs of regions, cultures, and individual users. A lack of infrastructure, of funding, and of experts trained specifically in methamphetamine response compounds the problem.
   As nations struggle to develop appropriate responses to methamphetamine, it is crucial that the most current scientific research, information, and best practices be available to those seeking to implement solutions. The primary goal of the First Global Conference on Methamphetamine is to provide a context for this important work to take place.

 

For details on registration, hotel accommodations and the wonderful City of Prague, please visit the conference website  or contact the conference organizer directly at [email protected]

Media and program inquires should be directed to Luciano Colonna, EPC chair, at [email protected]

2008 Global Conference On Methamphetamine
The White House
Sevenoaks, TN13 2QP Great Britain
www.globalmethconference.com

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No Charges Filed Against Man Who Mistook A Cop For a Burglar and Shot Him

Anyone who has followed the Cory Maye and Ryan Frederick cases knows how hard it is to convince police and prosecutors that you thought you were being burglarized when you fired on police who charged into your home unexpectedly.

This bizarre story from Alabama puts a new twist on that tragically familiar narrative:

An off-duty Huntsville police officer was shot in the shoulder early Saturday when a friend mistook him for a burglar.

Police Chief Henry Reyes said Tony McElyea, a Strategic Counterdrug Team agent, decided to surprise a good friend and former police academy cadet at his home in the 1300 block of Virginia Boulevard.

McElyea, his girlfriend, and the friend's wife snuck into the home at about 2:30 a.m.

McElyea walked down the hallway and started shouting "Wake up, wake up," at his friend, Reyes said.

The friend, who Reyes said didn't immediately recognize McElyea, grabbed a .38-caliber revolver and shot him.

"It's just one of those things where he got startled and reacted," Reyes said. "It's unfortunate that it happened, but it's fortunate that it's not any worse."
…

The incident has been ruled an accident, and no charges will be filed against the shooter, whose name was not immediately released. [Huntsville Times]

So apparently, when you take the botched drug raid out of the equation, suddenly it makes perfect sense that someone would use force to defend their home when intruders come bursting in. Of course, in this case there was no warrant and no vague criminal activity for which the homeowner could be accused of attempting to evade capture. So maybe it's a little unfair to compare this to the Maye and Frederick cases.

Still, it's just impossible to ignore the fact that Cory Maye and Ryan Frederick are no more guilty than this man, who wasn't even charged. They made the same fundamental error he made: thinking that their lives were in danger and using force against the intruder. It shouldn’t matter whether or not police had a warrant. The bottom line is that if police behave like burglars, they might be mistaken for burglars. Citizens who make that mistake are not guilty of murdering a cop. They are victims of bad policing brought on by a bad drug policy.
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Ok, so nearly ¾ of illegal drug users are employed. They have jobs, just like everybody else. Interesting. But here's where you're supposed to get freaked out:

Furthermore, research indicates that between 10 and 20 percent of the nation's workers who die on the job test positive for alcohol or other drugs.

Umm, pardon me, but so what? The National Survey on Drug Use and Health shows that 8.3% of respondents had used illegal drugs in the past month and 50.9% had used alcohol. If that many people are using alcohol and other drugs regularly, then it is not surprising to learn that 10-20% of people who died at work had drugs in their system. It doesn't prove that the drugs caused the accident.

Think about this: 80-90% of people killed at work tested negative for alcohol/drugs, even though more than half the population uses them. If anything, the evidence suggests a frightening link between sobriety and workplace fatalities. But don't take it from me. After all, it was the Drug Czar who brought this up.
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