Free Republic

In February 2021, politicians and activists celebrated Oregon's implementation of Measure 110, the nation's first law to decriminalize drugs like fentanyl, heroin, cocaine, and meth. It's not a surprise what happened next: a dramatic increase in overdoses. Fast forward to last week: Oregon Governor Tina Kotek and Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler declared a state of emergency in Portland due to sharp rises in overdose deaths, public drug use, and crime. Though the state of emergency is a step in the right direction, more must be done to undo the harm caused by Measure 110 and help more Oregonians live safe...

A town which once prided itself as being the “most hippie” in Washington has taken drastic action to outlaw drugs, after state-wide decriminalization led to spiking crime and child overdose deaths. The proudly liberal city of 92,000 has been pushed to its limit, with the fire department responding to 223 overdoses — 2.5 calls per day — between January and April 12, according to Cascadia Daily. Among the dead are two teenagers and a five year old, who had overdosed on fentanyl in March and was found dead by police with foam coming from her mouth. Overdoses have become so...

When Oregon voters approved a ballot measure in 2020 to decriminalize hard drugs, they were promised the lives of everyone would be improved and funds would be diverted to addiction recovery centers for which $300 million was allotted. But after more than one year, the rate of overdoses has spiked, and few offenders have used the treatment centers, DailyMail.com reported. At a legislative hearing Thursday, Steve Allen, Oregon's behavioral health director, acknowledged a "dramatic" increase in overdoses and overdose deaths statewide. One Republican state lawmaker said that her Southern Oregon community of Grants Pass has suffered a 700% increase in...

In November 2020, Oregon voters approved Measure 110, essentially decriminalizing possession of small amounts of drugs — from heroin to cocaine to opioid pills. Instead of criminal penalties, the law calls for treatment centers to be set up all over the state, so addiction could be treated as a health care issue, not a law enforcement issue. The problem, law enforcement says, is that has led to a huge increase in the amount of drugs on the streets — and now, an increase in crime. . . . "It's everywhere. It's everybody we contact. I have a couple cases that...

Walgreens closed 22 stores in San Francisco where thefts under $950 are effectively decriminalized...Shoplifter’s ParadisePlease note San Francisco Has Become a Shoplifter’s Paradise“Theft in Walgreens’ San Francisco stores is four times the average for stores elsewhere in the country, and the chain spends 35 times more on security guards in the city than elsewhere,” reported the San Francisco Chronicle. Earlier this year, a spokesman for CVS, which has closed at least two stores, told CNN that of its 155 locations in the Bay Area, the 12 in San Francisco account for 26% of all shoplifting incidents in the region.Much of...

France's top court ruled on Wednesday that the killer of an elderly Jewish woman will not go on trial, France24 reported. Kobili Traoré admitted to murdering his neighbor, Sarah Halimi, in 2017. He shouted "Allahu Akbar," or "God is great" in Arabic, and "I killed the devil," shortly before throwing her off the balcony of her third-floor Paris apartment, The New York Times said. On Wednesday, the Court of Cassation - France's final court of appeal - affirmed two prior judgments that ruled that Traoré could not be held criminally responsible for his actions because he was in a state...

VANITY. I'll post various sources. Here are the demands: For ease of consideration, we’ve broken these demands into four categories: The Justice System, Health and Human Services, Economics, and Education. Given the historical moment, we’ll begin with our demands pertaining to the Justice System. The Seattle Police Department and attached court system are beyond reform. We do not request reform, we demand abolition. We demand that the Seattle Council and the Mayor defund and abolish the Seattle Police Department and the attached Criminal Justice Apparatus. This means 100% of funding, including existing pensions for Seattle Police. At an equal level...

Some Michigan communities are already prohibiting adult-use marijuana businesses, a little more than a week after voters in the state approved legalization of recreational cannabis. According to various newspaper reports, Niles City in southwestern Michigan and Pinckney village in the southeastern part of the state have decided to opt out, at least for now. St. Joseph in southwestern Michigan is expected to do the same. Meanwhile, the Detroit Free Press reported Tuesday that officials at colleges across the state say marijuana won’t be allowed on campuses. That’s because they don’t want to jeopardize federal funding since marijuana is still illegal...

A Kenyan rights group says it is going to court to decriminalize gay sexual relations between consenting adults. The Kenyan National Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission said in a statement Friday that the case, which challenges the constitutionality of certain sections of the penal code, will be heard by the Constitutional and Human Rights Division of the High Court in the capital, Nairobi. …

Possession of all drugs, including heroin and cocaine, would be decriminalized under radical plans tabled by the Liberal Democrats today. The party’s push, led by ex-police chief Brian Paddick, will attempt to ambush a Government Bill to ban the sale of legal highs when it is debated by the Lords. Under their proposals, nobody would be arrested or prosecuted for possession of drugs—even the hardest Class A substances. Instead, police “may” ask the offender to attend a drug awareness course or treatment program. […] Kathy Gyngell, of the Centre for Policy Studies, described the latest plan to decriminalize heroin as...

President Obama believes more states are likely to legalize marijuana following efforts in Colorado and Washington state. "My suspicion is that you're going to see other states look at this," the president told YouTube blogger Hank Green. Obama said that the federal government was "not going to spend a lot of resources" enforcing federal marijuana laws in states that had decided to legalize the drug. He also noted that the Department of Justice was examining how to shift policies for nonviolent drug offenders. In an interview with The New Yorker last year, Obama appeared to tacitly endorse a Colorado referendum...

Cannabis use in the United States has increased, with more people visiting hospital emergency departments over its use, a UN report says. The potency of the drug in the US appeared to have increased, making it more harmful, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime's World Drugs Report added. It said it was too early to tell if the legalisation of cannabis in two US states had had an impact on drug use. Global illegal opium poppy farming rose 26% between 2012 and 2013, it added. "In the United States, the lower perceived risk of cannabis use has led to...

The debate over legalizing marijuana for medical and even recreational purposes is blurring conservative and liberal lines. With polls showing a slight majority of Americans now supporting the legalization of the drug, especially younger voters, and billionaire campaign financiers such as George Soros funding the pro-pot movement, a number of candidates are finding themselves at odds with their own party's positions. Ari Fleischer, a White House press secretary for President George W. Bush, called marijuana "a sleeper issue," in the upcoming campaign and noted its trickiness, telling The Wall Street Journal, "All of a sudden the ground is shifting, and...

There are things you expect to see at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) and there are things you don't. One of the things you probably don't is an audience cheering and applauding arguments for legalizing pot and bemoaning the war on drugs. A panel titled "Rocky Mountain High" held Thursday afternoon started out as a debate between Mary Katherine Ham of Fox and Hot Air and Christopher Beach a staffer for former Drug Czar William Bennett's radio show. But as the debate wore on it became clear the real disagreement was between Beach and the overwhelming majority of the...

(CNSNews.com) - Decriminalize marijuana possession before legalizing it, says a man who wants to be the next mayor of Washington, D.C. City Councilman Tommy Wells, a Democrat, has introduced a bill that would fine people a maximum of $100 for possessing less than an ounce of pot in the nation's capital. The city passed a medical marijuana law in 1998, but Congress didn't approve that measure until 2009. Wells told WMAL-Radio on Tuesday that he's "open to legalization," but he sees "decriminalization" as the first step. He also said he doesn't envision a city full of stoned federal workers: "Legalization...

If you're near the Capitol on the Fourth, celebrating your patriotism and whatnot, or if you see images from Washington of the building during broadcasts of John P. Sousa performances, take a look at the flag on top of the dome. That flag, ladies and gentlemen, will for the first time in decades be made of hemp. The Washington Post reports on the patriotic move. (Its headline includes the word "high," do you get it?) Colorado hemp advocate Michael Bowman is the man responsible for getting the flag, made from Colorado-raised hemp and screen-printed with the stars and stripes, up...

New York City is going green — with ganja. Pot arrests and seizures are plummeting as low-level offenders duck jail and cops ease off dealers, who are racking up record profits, police sources say. Gov. Cuomo vowed in January to wipe out the lowest marijuana charge — fifth-degree criminal possession — for those caught lighting up in public or flashing their stash. The crime, which currently calls for an arrest if the pot is in public view or weighs more than 25 grams, accounted for 149,951 of 155,048 marijuana busts in New York City since 2010 — 99.2 percent of...

The woman who led the court battle to strike down a Montana law that made gay sex illegal knows that having the unconstitutional law struck from the books is a symbolic act. All the same, Linda Gryczan began to cry when the state House finally brought the issue to the floor on Monday. … Senate Bill 107, the measure that strikes from the state code the obsolete language criminalizing gay sex as deviate sexual conduct, passed its final legislative hurdle Wednesday with a 65-34 vote in the House. … Gryczan was the lead plaintiff in a 1995 lawsuit that led...

Jack Koency, an 86-year-old California man, was one of nearly 1.5 million surviving World War II veterans. He was neither terminally ill, nor bedridden, nor immobile. His neighbors remember him as quiet and good natured. Koency died at the hands of Elizabeth Barrett, an acquaintance of his. She served the decorated war vet a cup of yogurt in which she ground up a lethal dose of Oxcontin with two other medications. Barrett, a social worker, pled guilty a fortnight ago to so-called “assisted suicide.” She could have received up to three years in state prison for her role in Koency’s...

Ten years ago this month, Portugal rejected the conventional approach to drug policy–more laws, stiffer prison sentences, more police–and went the other way by decriminalizing all drugs, even cocaine and heroin. The drug warriors predicted a disaster. They said drug use would spike and there would be a public health crisis. That did not happen. As Glenn Greenwald showed in a 2009 Cato report, Portugal is doing better than before and in many respects is doing better than other countries in the European Union