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Memo to Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton and Al Gore III: Drug Treatment Isn't a Silver Bullet

Localização: 
United States
Publication/Source: 
AlterNet (CA)
URL: 
http://www.alternet.org/story/58672/

Southeast Asia: Singapore Gives Treatment Option to Marijuana, Cocaine Users

Beginning August 1, marijuana and cocaine users caught in Singapore will face mandatory treatment at Drug Rehabilitation Centers, the Central Narcotics Bureau announced Wednesday. That means cocaine snorters and pot smokers will be given the same shot at "rehabilitation" as other drug users in the Southeast Asian city-state. Previously, marijuana and cocaine users were not eligible for treatment and faced stiff prison sentences.

https://stopthedrugwar.org/files/singaporecnb.jpg
Singapore Central Narcotics Bureau logo
But they better get it right the first time. People who undergo treatment and relapse and get arrested again will face a mandatory minimum five-year prison sentence and three strokes of the cane. Third offenders are looking at seven years and six strokes of the cane.

People who undergo "rehabilitation" and suffer relapses face a mandatory minimum seven-year prison sentence, as well as between six and 12 strokes of the cane.

Singapore has some of the world's toughest drug trafficking laws, and its Misuse of Drugs Act includes the death penalty for some drug offenses, including the trafficking of more than 660 grams (slightly more than one pound) of marijuana. Now, it will also have some of the world's harshest marijuana law enforcement directed at users.

DPA Press Release: NY Poised to Become First State to Require Addiction Programs to be Smoke-Free, Aimed at Helping Clients Quit Smoking; Treatment Advocates See Rule as a Mixed Bag

For Immediate Release: July 24, 2007 Contact: Tony Newman at (646) 335-5384 NY Poised to Become First State to Require Addiction Treatment Programs to be Smoke-free, Aimed at Helping Clients Quit Smoking Treatment Advocates See New Rule as a Mixed Bag: Applaud Effort to Help Smokers Quit; Warn of Possible New Barriers to Treatment Created by Smoke-free Centers New York Alcohol and Substance Abuse Service officials announced today a new rule that will require treatment centers to help their patients to quit smoking. The plan, which is slated to take effect next year, will require treatment centers to help patients quit smoking by offering nicotine replacement therapy, including nicotine gum and patches, to all smokers. For those lacking health insurance, the nicotine replacement therapy will be free of charge. The treatment centers also will be required to be smoke-free. Smokers will be prohibited from smoking at the centers. Officials estimate the new law will impact 110,000 patients on any given day. Approximately 92 percent of those in alcohol and other drug treatment programs are cigarette smokers, according to official estimates. Treatment advocates have mixed feelings about the new rule. They are applauding the effort to help people quit smoking, but warn that the smoking ban may deter some smokers who are hoping to quit other addictions. “Smoking leads to more premature deaths than all illicit drugs combined and it is a positive development to offer nicotine replacement therapy to all who want it,” said Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance. “But prohibiting smoking at the treatment centers may discourage people who want and need treatment to other drugs, but are not willing or able to stop smoking.” Many people struggling with addiction may have problems with multiple drugs, both legal and illegal. Advocates caution against barriers that will discourage people from seeking out help. “Not everyone can or wants to abstain from all drugs all at once,” said Tony Newman, media director at the Drug Policy Alliance. “Do we really want to set up barriers for someone who wants to quit heroin, but may not be ready to quit cigarettes? We need open doors that encourage people to get help for their problems, whether it be for illegal or legal drugs, and not rules that drive people away from life-saving programs.”
Localização: 
NY
United States

Dying for treatment

Localização: 
AL
United States
Publication/Source: 
The Birmingham News (AL)
URL: 
http://www.al.com/opinion/birminghamnews/index.ssf?/base/opinion/118448766070490.xml&coll=2

Home-grown drug solution

Localização: 
Ottawa, ON
Canada
Publication/Source: 
Ottawa Sun (Canada)
URL: 
http://ottsun.canoe.ca/News/OttawaAndRegion/2007/07/11/4329743-sun.html

Delegate has idea for drug settlement

Localização: 
WV
United States
Publication/Source: 
The Charleston Gazette (WV)
URL: 
http://sundaygazettemail.com/section/News/2007070226

Daly blasts mayor for drug rehab cuts

Localização: 
San Francisco, CA
United States
Publication/Source: 
San Francisco Chronicle
URL: 
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/06/20/BAGBPQIBV21.DTL

A drug-war setback

Localização: 
MD
United States
Publication/Source: 
The Baltimore Sun (MD)
URL: 
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bal-md.bupe20jun20,0,6881220.story?coll=bal-local-headlines

Presidential Politics: Democrat Mike Gravel is Latest to Say Legalize

Opposition to the drug war among major party presidential candidates has thus far been represented by Rep. Ron Paul, libertarian Republican congressman from Texas, and Rep. Dennis Kucinich, progressive Democratic congressman from Ohio. The list just got longer. Former Alaska US Senator Mike Gravel is definitely a long-shot for the Democratic Party 2008 presidential nomination, but his performance at the first Democratic presidential candidates debate (transcript here) April 26 in Charleston, SC, really raised his profile and is giving Paul and Kucinich some competition for the anti-prohibitionist vote.

Gravel's combination of humor and anger as he attacked President Bush and his fellow Democratic contenders for their stances on the Iraq war, relations with Iran, and other issues were for many watchers the first introduction to a man who retired from politics in 1980. But the Mike Gravel who played a key role in the publication of the Pentagon Papers and ending the draft all those years ago didn't really seem to have changed all that much. He's still the iconoclast he was forty years ago.

It shows in his position on drug policy. According to his campaign web site, Gravel's prison and drug reform plank is as follows:

"The United States incarcerates more people and at a higher rate than any other peacetime nation in the world. According to the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics the number of US residents behind bars has now reached more than 2.3 million.

"We are losing an entire generation of young men and women to our prisons. Our nation's ineffective and wasteful 'war on drugs' plays a major role in this. We must place a greater emphasis on rehabilitation and prevention. We must de-criminalize minor drug offenses and increase the availability and visibility of substance abuse treatment and prevention in our communities as well as in jails and prisons.

"We must increase the use of special drug courts in which addicted offenders are given the opportunity to complete court supervised substance abuse treatment instead of being sentenced to prison. We must eliminate mandatory minimum sentencing laws. We must increase the use of alternative penalties for nonviolent drug offenders. Drug defendants convicted of nonviolent offenses should not be given mandatory prison sentences. We should emphasize the criminalization of the importers, manufacturers, and major distributors, rather than just the street vendors. Prisons in this country should be a legitimate criminal sanction -- but it should be an extension of a fair, just and wise society."

But Gravel went much further in a May interview with the Iowa Independent. When asked if he really thought marijuana should be legal, and should cocaine and methamphetamine be legal, too, he replied: " When are we are going to learn? We went through the Depression and we realized how we created all the gangsters and the violence. When FDR came in he wiped out Prohibition. We need to wipe out this whole war on drugs. We spend $50 billion to $70 billion a year. We create criminals that aren't criminals. We destabilize foreign countries. With respect to marijuana, Doug, I'll tell you what: Go get yourself a fifth of scotch or a fifth of gin and chug-a-lug it down and you'll find you lose your senses a lot faster than you would smoking some marijuana."

When pressed again about cocaine and meth, Gravel replied: "We need to legalize the regulation of drugs. The drug problem is a public health problem. It's not a criminal problem. We make it a criminal problem because we treat people like criminals. You take a drug addict, you throw him in jail, you leave him there, and he learns the criminal trade so that when he gets out you have recidivism."

Drug War Chronicle Book Review: "The Heroin Solution" by Arnold Trebach (2nd ed., 2006, Unlimited Publishing, 330 pp., $19.99 pb.)

Phillip S. Smith, Writer/Editor

(Click here to order "The Heroin Solution or other books by Arnold Trebach through DRCNet's latest book offer.)

When "The Heroin Solution" was first published by Yale University Press a quarter-century ago, it got rave reviews from the likes of the New York Times and Publishers Weekly. It was a mindblower. For the vast majority of readers, Arnold Trebach opened a window into an astonishing world they had never before imagined, one where -- gasp! -- doctors, not policemen, dealt with heroin and heroin users.

https://stopthedrugwar.org/files/heroinsolution.jpg
Trebach, who from his base at American University began influencing a generation of disciples and who founded the Drug Policy Foundation (the progenitor of the Drug Policy Alliance) in 1986, is now known as the grand old man of the American drug reform movement, and the success of "The Heroin Solution," along with his 1987 "The Great Drug War," played a big role in cementing that reputation.

What Trebach did in the "Heroin Solution" was tell three interwoven stories: the story of heroin, the story of the American approach to heroin, and the story of the British approach to heroin. For many, that book was an awakening, a realization that there was an alternative to what by 1982 was already being reviled as an atrocious and failing policy of prohibition and repression. Where the American system denied that heroin had any medical utility whatsoever and jailed physicians, junkies, and hapless pain patients alike, the British system was kinder and gentler, with doctors given considerable latitude to prescribe heroin even -- and especially -- in cases where they knew they were only allowing their patients to maintain their addiction.

Now, "The Heroin Solution" is out in a second edition, the last volume of the "Trebach Trilogy," which also includes the reprinted "The Great Drug War" and last year's "Fatal Distraction." But this edition of "The Heroin Solution" is not a substantive reworking of the material; the only addition to the original volume is a new preface.

It still makes timely and compelling reading, but the reason why is hardly good news. "The Heroin Solution" is still relevant because we have progressed so little since it was written. The issues Trebach addressed in 1982 are, in many cases, the same issues we face today. Much has happened, but little has changed, and much of what has changed has changed for the worse.

In Britain, which Trebach described as a model of an enlightened (if not perfect) approach to heroin, the heavy hand of the state and governing medical bodies has slowly shrunk the space in which doctors may prescribe heroin. When Trebach wrote, probably a few thousand British addicts were being prescribed heroin; in his new preface, he estimates that perhaps 500 are. For all the talk of opiate maintenance in Britain, it seems like for the past quarter-century it seems like it's been one step forward, one step back.

https://stopthedrugwar.org/files/trebach-shadows.jpg
Arnold Trebach at 2003 press conference on which DRCNet collaborated
Trebach decried the cruel and inhumane treatment of physicians and pain patients alike in "The Heroin Solution." If anything, the problem has gotten worse in the intervening quarter-century. One thing the book offers, though, is some perspective. The latest round of pain doctor persecutions smell remarkably similar to those of doctors Trebach mentioned operating back in the 1930s. It's a similarity Trebach notes himself in his preface to the new edition, where he cites the case of Dr. William Hurwitz, who just weeks ago was convicted again on federal drug charges for loose prescribing practices and faces possible decades in prison. (He's already been in for two years.)

Trebach asked in 1982 where America found itself nearly seven decades after passage of the Harrison Narcotics Act, and was not happy with the answer. It's much worse now. Back then, Trebach complained that the federal government spent $6 billion fighting the drug war in the 1970s; now $6 billion would fund the federal drug war for about three months. Since then, the prison population of the United States and the number of drug prisoners has gone through the roof. You know the drug war litany.

Trebach does, too, and that is part of the reason his thinking about drug prohibition has evolved over time. When he wrote "The Heroin Solution" in 1982, he called only for doctors to be allowed to prescribe heroin. Now, he is a full-blown anti-prohibitionist. Lack of progress on reforming US drug policy breeds more radical responses.

A revised and updated "The Heroin Solution" would be nice. There could be new chapters on the cutting-edge work on heroin maintenance going on in Switzerland and Germany, Spain and the Netherlands; the rise of safe injection sites; the trials in Vancouver; the spread of heroin addiction in Iran, Pakistan, and the Central Asian republics; and contemporary use patterns in the West, among others.

But 25 years after it was first published, "The Heroin Solution" is still relevant, still revelatory, and still a good read. Or, as Publishers Weekly said the first time around, "A blockbuster!"

(Click here to order "The Heroin Solution or other books by Arnold Trebach through DRCNet's latest book offer.)

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