The Seattle city council voted to criminalize public drug use, the Czech drug czar suggests legalizing cocaine, and more. 

DHS Rolls Out Strategy for Combatting Illicit Opioids. The Department of Homeland Security on Tuesday rolled out its plan to combat illicit opioids, releasing its Strategy for Combatting Illicit Opioids.

"Our nation continues to face an unprecedented epidemic of deaths from illicit synthetic opioids -- our citizens are dying every year at an unimaginable rate," said Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Executive Associate Director Katrina W. Berger. "This is a bold and innovative strategy to stem the flow of dangerous narcotics and directly addresses the public health emergency this opioid crisis has become.

The "bold and innovative strategy" is heavy on law enforcement, which is no surprise for a law enforcement agency. Primary elements of the strategy include reducing the international supply of opioids, reducing the supply of opioids in the US, targeting "enablers" of drug trafficking organization, and working with private sector actors to better block drugs from entering the country.

The agency said it hopes to work with international partners to reduce the illicit importation of drugs into the country and that it will increase the number of HIS task forces targeting drug traffickers.

Seattle City Council Approves Ordinance Criminalizing Drug Posssession and Public Drug Use. The city council on Tuesday approved its own municipal version of the state's law barring public drug use, CB 120645. The measure creates the crimes of knowing possession of a controlled substance and use of a controlled substance in a public place.

A 2021 state Supreme Court decision threw out the state's felony drug possession law, but the legislature this year approved a bill making public drug use and possession a gross misdemeanor, allowing city attorneys to prosecute the drug charges. City Attorney Ann Davison proposed a bill for the city to confirm with state law, but the city council rejected that in June.

Mayor Bruce Harrell then formed a task force to draft a new proposal, which is what the city council approved this week. But the vote was not unanimous, with Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda voting no because it did not pay enough attention to diversion efforts.

"I want people to get access to public health services just as much as the people who testified in support of this legislation say they want," Mosqueda said. "But that is not what this legislation does. And without the funding that is purported to come with this bill, we have no assurances that there will be alternative structures and programs and diversion strategies to prevent people from going to jail. We do not have to pass this legislation."

International

UN Human Rights Office Report Calls for Shift from Punitive Drug Policies. A UN human rights report released Tuesday calls for a shift from punitive measures to address the global drugs problem to the use of policies grounded in human rights and public health, arguing that disproportionate use of criminal penalties is causing harm.

The report urges states to develop effective drug policies, including by considering decriminalization of drug possession for personal use. "If effectively designed and implemented, decriminalization can be a powerful instrument to ensure that the rights of people who use drugs are protected," it says.

"Laws, policies and practices deployed to address drug use must not end up exacerbating human suffering. The drugs problem remains very concerning, but treating people who use drugs as criminals is not the solution," said the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk.

"States should move away from the current dominant focus on prohibition, repression and punishment, and instead embrace laws, policies and practices anchored in human rights and aimed at harm reduction."

There has also been an increase in the use of the death penalty for drug-related convictions worldwide, contrary to international human rights law norms and standards. The recorded number of people executed for drug-related offences more than doubled in 2022 compared to 2021, amounting to 37 percent of all executions recorded globally, the report states.

"The current overemphasis on coercion and control to counter drugs is fanning an increase in human rights violations despite mounting evidence that decades of criminalization and the so-called war on drugs have neither protected the welfare of people nor deterred drug-related crime," Türk said.

The report shows that an increasing number of countries across regions are adopting policies and practices that decriminalize drug use and treat drug usage as a public health and human rights issue, and applying evidence-based, gender-sensitive and harm reduction approaches. The High Commissioner called on states to build on this positive trend.

Czech Drug Czar Proposes Cocaine Legalization. National anti-drug coordinator Jindrich Voboril has suggested that cocaine could be the next drug, after marijuana, to be handled in a regulated, legal market. He emphasized the importance of tailoring drug policies to the risks of individual substances and argued that cocaine ranks lower in inherent risks than some other illicit substances.

But government officials were not in accord. Deputy Prime Minister Marian Jurečka, who serves as the chairman of the Christian Democrats (KDU-CSL), unequivocally rejected the idea of cocaine liberalization, declaring it unacceptable.

There seems to be a problem in the Mobile Metro Jail, a San Diego deputy who was ripping off drug give-back boxes gets probation, and more. Let's get to it:

In Mobile, Alabama, a Mobile County corrections officer was arrested Tuesday on charges she smuggled drugs into the jail. Kimberly Henderson, 32, has been fired and charged with promoting prison contraband in the first degree. There is no information on which drugs were involved.

In Ironton, Ohio, a former Ironton police officer was sentenced last Wednesday to a year in prison after being caught up in a domestic violence incident and found with 19 grams of methamphetamine—more than what is commonly considered a personal use amount. Bradley Spoljaric, 30, was originally charged with domestic violence, aggravated drug possession, and tampering with evidence but pleaded down to a single count of aggravated drug possession. In addition to the year behind bars, he faces two years of supervised release.

In Baltimore, a former Baltimore police officer pleaded guilty Monday to selling marijuana to a confidential informant and was sentenced to a year of home detention. Former Officer Cejus Watson had already been suspended from the job when he sold weed to a snitch an a tattoo shop in Pikesville. Prosecutors in the case argued for home detention over time behind bars, saying Watson's live could be in danger and his presence in a local jail could cause disruptions.

In San Diego, a San Diego County sheriff's deputy was sentenced Monday to two years' probation after being arrested in January for drug possession and 13 counts of burglary. Deputy Cory Richey stole prescription medications from public drop boxes to feed an addiction to opioid pain relievers. He was looking at up to 13 years in prison before copping a plea. In the meantime, he completed drug rehabilitation.

Whiteout: How Racial Capitalism Changed the Color of Opioids in Americaby Helena Hansen, David Herzberg, and Jules Netherland (2023, University of California Press, 369 pp., $29.95 HB)

Republican lawmakers in statehouses around the country who had built careers as fierce drug warriors now sponsored Good Samaritan bills (so that people overdosing and those seeking to help them did not face drug charges), the availability of medicine-assisted treatment (methadone and buprenorphine) spread—and went upscale, with bupe acting as white people's methadone.

While methadone, associated with the Black and Brown heroin addicts of the 1970s, remains heavily stigmatized, its administration heavily authoritarian, and its dispensing locations almost always deep within poor minority neighborhoods, buprenorphine –a drug for treating white opioid users of the 21st Century—is much more easily accessible, available in doctors' offices instead of grim industrial buildings, but also more expensive, limiting its access for people with little money or insurance.

In Whiteout, an addiction psychiatrist (Hansen), a drug historian (Herzberg), and a policy advocate (Netherland) tease apart the structures of Whiteness (the unspoken ideology of white virtue, purity, and superiority) and demonstrate how racial disparities have been cooked into American drug policies from the beginning—and how not only Black populations but white ones, too, have suffered for it.

In the first great wave of opioid addiction in the late 19th Century, it was middle class white women who suffered the grip of the poppy, and they were largely treated in the doctor's office. As relatively well-off people, they had the ability to access the health care system of the time, to be prescribed the pills they wanted, and to be helped off them if necessary.

Meanwhile, Black Americans more often lacked the money to gain access to the health care system, and once drug prohibition fell into place in the 1910s, they were shunted into the black market, criminalized, and stigmatized. Their neighborhoods became epicenters of the illicit drug trade. Black market drugs in the ghetto, white market drugs at the doctor's office and the drugstore.

But white privilege had its price—a price that hundreds of thousands of white opioid users have paid since the turn of the century as overdose deaths quintupled in 20 years. Affluent white drug consumers would be provided their drugs by a lightly regulated pharmaceutical industry that the authors demonstrate portrayed the users of its products as white people and marketed their products directly at white people. The poster child for this behavior is Purdue Pharma, the manufacturer of OxyContin, which zeroed in on mostly white Appalachia as its force of zealous sales reps went to work. This is the racial capitalism of the title.

Anyone who is uncomfortable with terms like "racial capitalism" is really going to be squirming when Critical Race Theory makes its entrance. Unlike the case with the moral panic around Critical Race Theory in children's schoolbooks (which it isn't), the academic tool is actually applied here and, indeed, is central to the argument the authors make.

It also colors their recommendations for what is to be done. In line with the critique of capitalism, a little more harm reduction here or a little more criminal justice reform there are not going to solve the social problems that give rise to the current opioid crisis. It is going to require real social change, things like universal health care and a real social safety net. And an ongoing interrogation of Whiteness.

The DA in Houston takes a step back from a softer touch on drug charges, Colombia sets goals for voluntary coca crop substitution, and more. 

The Tenderloin in San Francisco. The city is three months into a crackdown on drug use and sales there. (SFPD)

Harris County, Texas, Reverses Policy on Low Level Drug Charges. Citing an "increasing public safety threat due to fentanyl," Harris County (Houston) District Attorney Kim Ogg has announced that she is reversing an April policy change that required police to have drugs tested before charges could be filed if the amount of drugs in question was less than four grams. That effectively meant that many miniscule drug possession cases were never charged.

Under the new policy, which went into effect this week, the DA's Office will again evaluate every drug possession case regardless of the amount of drug seized as long as probable cause is established "through the expert testimony of two officers with drug enforcement experience."

But the cops will still be responsible for submitting "seized substances to the appropriate lab and to request testing and analysis, for presentation of the case to a grand jury," according to a memo setting out the changes. In the memo, DA Ogg acknowledged that the change could cause some delays in case filings and that district courts have "regularly" dismissed pending drug cases that did not move because of slow evidence processing.

"We need labs that work," Ogg said. "The courts are ready. The State of Texas, my office representing the people, are ready. The police are ready. And we need a crime lab that gives us evidence."

San Francisco Provides Update on Crackdown on Open Air Drug Markets. A crackdown on the drug trade and public drug use in the Tenderloin and SOMA (South of Market Street) neighborhoods of the city that began June 1 has resulted in "significant increase in drug seizures and arrests in the first three months of the City’s efforts to shut down open-air drug markets," the city said Friday.

During the last three months, both local and state law enforcement agencies combined have made hundreds of arrests under drug laws and for outstanding warrants, and seized 103 kilos of narcotic, including 56 kilos of fentanyl. These numbers don’t include additional federal efforts being conducted by the Drug Enforcement Agency. The SF District Attorney’s Office has seen a record number of felony narcotics cases.    

Some 300 of the arrests were for drug sales and another 123 were arrests of wanted fugitives. Another 450 arrests were made using public intoxication laws against public drug users. Additionally, playing a support role in the city, the California Highway Patrol and National Guard have made another hundred drug arrests.

As a result of this operation the District Attorney’s Office has seen a record number of felony narcotics cases presented and filed year to date since 2018. Through August 23, of this year 656 felony narcotics cases were presented of which 566 were filed (86% filing rate) compared to the previous record of 574 cases presented in 2018 and 476 cases filed.   

"Shutting down open air drug markets is critical to the safety of our neighborhoods and the overall health of our City," said Mayor London Breed. "The work that our city agencies and state and federal partners are doing to confront this crisis has to be sustained and expanded and we can’t continue to accept the existence of these drug markets on our streets. I want to thank Governor Newsom for his support in delivering resources, as well as our federal leaders, including Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi. We will continue to offer help to people in crisis, but we must hold people accountable who are hurting our communities."    

While it is clear that more people are being funneled into the criminal justice system, whether more arrests and prosecutions will result in fewer overdoses and better quality of life remains to be seen.

International

Belize Police Discover Coca Plantation with Half Million Plants. Police on Tuesday announced that they had discovered a coca plantation in the Toledo region that held an estimated 500,000 coca plants. The raid comes weeks after police destroyed a cocaine manufacturing lab in the south of the country.

Cocaine has traditionally been grown in three Andean nations—Bolivia, Colombia, and Peru—but in recent years plantings have been discovered in Belize, Guatemala, and southern Mexico. A small number of labs have also been uncovered.

The plantings and labs are believed to be the work of Mexican drug trafficking organizations, which largely control the flow of cocaine to the north.

Colombia Sets Coca Crop Substitution Goal of a Thousand Square Kilometers Over Next Four Years. Government officials said Thursday that the country is aiming for the voluntary substitution—not forced eradication—of a thousand square miles of coca crops over the next four years. The announcement marks a policy shift that emphasizes seizing cocaine over destroying coca plants.

According to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), coca cultivation in 2021 (the last year for which data is available) covered some 787 square miles, so if the government removes 250 square miles per year from the crop, it should reduce the crop each year by about one-third.

Felipe Tascon, the director of the government's illicit crops substitution program, said Colombia and the U.S. had committed to replacing 50% of 2021 crop levels. "Everyone says this goal is crazy," Tascon said. "If you look at it as a policing issue, coercing people, it's impossible. If you look at it as an economic issue, about giving economic opportunities to those families to produce something else, it's achievable."

The new crop substitution goals come amid a crash in coca prices in the country caused by oversupply and contested drug trafficking routes, providing farmers with an economic incentive to try something new.