Posted on 02/16/2003 8:46:15 PM PST by new cruelty
Nora Callahan knows firsthand the effects of America's war on drugs.
Her brother was indicted for a drug conspiracy in 1989.
After he was sent to prison for 27 years, she began trying to educate the public about how drug laws have increased the prison population.
As executive director of the November Coalition in Colville, Wash., Callahan travels nationwide talking about the drawbacks of punitive drug laws. She speaks tonight at Savannah State University.
Jails and prisons are clogged with people serving sentences for drug offenses, many of which are non-violent, Callahan said. A drug arrest in any family, Callahan says, is frightening introduction to conspiracy statutes, government's liberal use of informants and guideline-sentencing laws,
"We are dedicated to abolishing destructive prohibition laws whose enforcement does far more harm than any intended good," Callahan said.
According to the November Coalition -- a nonprofit founded to give a voice to drug war prisoners and their family members -- one in four prisoners nationwide is serving time for a drug law violation. In the federal system, these people make up about 60 percent of the prison population, Callahan said.
"We call it a war on drugs, but it's actually a war against our own citizens," said Lisa Lane, founder of the Savannah group, Coalition of Compassionate Drug Policy Reform.
The group supports treatment for drug offenders -- not prison -- and opposes mandatory minimum sentencing laws, which takes away judges' discretion, Lane said.
"Not only does treatment work, whereas incarceration does not, it's also less expensive," Lane said. "It's fiscally much more responsible to put our money in something that works, instead of continuing to put our money into this failed drug war that shows no sign of working."
Liberty includes the freedom to do with ones life what one chooses, even if it is self destructive. Otherwise, it is not YOUR life, or YOUR rights. The state has taken authority, then, in deciding what behavior an individual may undertake.
I know: for the common good.
All of the tyrannies, abrogation of rights, and mountains of human corpses are by products of the mantra "for the common good, for the children, for society, for God."
Federal agents arrested thirteen people on federal drug trafficking charges.
The FBI believes the suspects have been supplying drug dealers on Montana Street in Buffalo with large amounts of heroin and cocaine for the past two and a half years.
Two out of the three suspected "kingpins" are from Amherst.
Police and Montana Street neighbors say people from the city and the suburbs would sometimes arrive early in the morning to buy drugs.
On this one, I had to laugh.
You're saying that the will of the majority should not ban marijuana, but the will of the majority should be allowed to legalize it?
No, just pointing out that you are advocating the opposite on both counts, which is logically indefensible. Personally I believe that the citizens of a state should decide what drugs are legal; the federal government has no Constitutional role.
You, on the other hand, advocate that the citizens vote directly on the issue. You're the one who's advocating direct voting, not me.
Replace the word drugs with the word abortion in your above italicized passage and you basically have Mario Cuomo's position on abortion.
FITCHBURG -- Hailing a taxicab couldn't get Jeffrey T. Madison far enough from the Thunderbird Motor Lodge on Thursday afternoon.
Madison, a suspected drug dealer from New York, was arrested during a regional police task force drug raid not far from the Lunenburg Street motel, where he was staying in room 216.
Police obtained a search warrant for 24-year-old Madison's motel room after he was found selling crack cocaine to an undercover police officer, according to a state police detective report authored by Sgt. Paul Boundy and trooper Michael Sampson.
Before members of the state detective unit and the North County Drug Task Force could execute the warrant, police said the suspect and a fellow motel occupant, Patricia Fitzgerald, stepped into the back of a taxicab just before 4 p.m. Thursday.
Police officers then pulled over the cab on John Fitch Highway and found that Madison was in possession of a plastic bag of heroin and a plastic bag of crack cocaine. Police also seized from the suspect a cell phone, packaging materials, a quantity of Manitol and about $11,000, according to the report.
Madison was arrested and charged with possession of heroin with intent to distribute, possession of crack cocaine with intent to distribute and distribution of crack cocaine.
At Fitchburg District Court on Friday morning, Judge Paul LoConto ordered the suspect, originally thought to be from Leominster, held on $2,500 bail until a court appearance on March 4.
But then, in the same morning, an assistant district attorney filed an out-of-state query for the Brooklyn resident and found the suspect had a lengthy criminal history in New York.
When the case was brought quickly back to court, LoConto upped the bail to $7,500, said Elizabeth Stammo, spokeswoman for the Worcester County district attorney's office.
Fitzgerald, who was arrested in possession of a leafy substance believed to be marijuana, was taken by police to the Worcester bus terminal and told she would later be summoned to court, according to the police report.
Despite the altered bail, the pretrial hearing for Madison still will be held March 4 in Fitchburg District Court.
PORTLAND (AP) -- Portland is launching an effort to curb the accidental drug deaths that have plagued the city in the last year.
City public health officials have been meeting over the past week with hospital representatives, treatment professionals, law enforcement and addicts to better understand the overdose phenomenon.
The number of drug deaths in Maine's largest city jumped from 16 in 2001 to 28 last year. There have been no fatal overdoses in Portland so far this year.
Medical and police officials say the factors behind the surge include a new group of painkiller abusers, a resurgence of heroin addiction and the unforeseen popularity of methadone as a recreational drug
State officials will be studying Portland's experience in hopes of duplicating any successes in other parts of the state.
Maine had at least 136 drug overdose deaths last year. That's compared to just 34 five years ago.
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