Cannabis Unity Week Apr. 28-May 1, 2025

I will be speaking at these events on behalf of the Law Enforcement Action Partnership.

 

Sponsored by the Last Prisoner Project, Students for Sensible Drug Policy and the National Cannabis Festival

 

Monday, Apr. 28, 2025  National Cannabis Policy Summit 

 

Tuesday - Thursday, Apr. 29 - May 1, 2025.  Washington, DC

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Police Violence and Accountability: The Role of Drug Policy and a Vision of Reform

 People around the world reacted with horror, again, at the murder, again, of an unarmed person by police in the United States. On May 25, 2020, a Minneapolis, MN, USA, police officer steadily knelt on the neck of George Floyd for nearly nine minutes, slowly crushing the life out of Mr. Floyd with an incomprehensible cold-blooded nonchalance. Mr. Floyd was a 46-year old Black man, unarmed, not resisting, and suspected of an offense involving $20. Only days earlier, a video was leaked of the February 23, 2020 murder of Ahmaud Arbery, an unarmed 25-year old Black man, by law enforcement vigilantes in Glynn County, GA, USA. On March 13, 2020, at about 1 a.m., Breonna Taylor, a sleeping, unarmed 26-year old Black woman, was shot eight times and killed by police who forced their way into her apartment in Louisville, KY, USA, on a "no-knock" warrant issued, looking for a drug suspect who lived 10 miles away.

Around the world, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators and thousands of organizations have been declaring their solidarity with #BlackLivesMatter and all who protest these murders and the unceasing abuse of power by police and security forces around the world. In the U.S., about 1000 persons are killed by the police annually (1004 in 2019; 991 in 2018, Washington Post). U.S. cultural dominance has the effect of highlighting these deaths, yet officially over 5000 persons have been killed (or as many as 12,000 according to human rights groups) in the Philippines by police and security forces since June 2016, to cite a representative instance of a global pandemic of unlawful police violence and misconduct.

These murders are only the most dramatic culmination of wholesale police misconduct. People around the world are sick and tired of being routinely harassed by law enforcement officers and security forces, very frequently under the pretext of suspicion of possession or distribution of drugs. Countless times, every day in every nation, without any lawful justification, people are stopped, questioned, and frequently assaulted as they are searched for contraband or weapons. These stops are always accompanied by the threat of violence, explicit or implicit! In many places, these threats are part of a systematic extortion racket by the police and security forces -- the consequence of failing to pay a demanded bribe is violence or arrest. 

Large populations -- people of color in the United States, and religious and racial minorities and residents of poor neighborhoods in almost every nation – are fully aware of the culture of impunity surrounding police and security forces and live in dread that any police stop can result in incarceration, severe physical injury or death.  This culture of violence is global. From the favelas of Brasil to the islands of the Philippines, from the People’s Republic of China to the Russian Republic, from the United States of America to the Republic of South Africa, from Nigeria to El Salvador, from Syria to Jamaica -- the world’s police are generally not accountable to the communities they purport to serve. Whether the police are following the orders of autocrats like President Duterte in the Philippines or are indifferent to or in defiance of the civilian authorities in many American cities, there is a global crisis of police violence and unaccountability. In all these instances, this unlawful violence is part of a wholesale violation of human rights and due process rights -- including rights of freedom of association, expression, free exercise of religion and privacy -- that is justified and financed by the “war on drugs” and supported by the colonialist ideology of prohibition.

Drug prohibition exemplifies the fundamentally flawed psychology of “justice” systems that harsh punishment -- imposed or threatened – is the foundation of good behavior and the just retribution for misconduct. The flaw is that harsh punishment does not work.

While some lethal police violence grows out directly out of individual racism, one thread of institutional or organizational toleration for police violence grows out of a rationalization that “street justice” is necessary and deserved to compensate for the inefficiencies of prosecutors and courts that fail to punish. The toleration of extra-judicial violence builds a culture of impunity.

People who use drugs are prime targets for “street justice” and police violence. Due to the illegality of drug use, people who use drugs do so privately to avoid attracting attention. Yet, in many parts of the world, drug use is widespread and normative behavior, and justice system bureaucracies are unable to impose legal punishments on most drug users. Police, as the primary warriors in the “drug war” and able to impose the punishment on the spot, often feel justified using “street justice” -- intimidation, violence and confiscation of property in illegal stops -- in order to carry out the “war on drugs” and advancing its century-old goal of punishing drug users.

The specific legal and political character of the problem of police violence varies. In some nations the violence of the police follows the policies of the rulers -- elected or not, civilian or not.  In other nations, police violence is simply tolerated as one of the perquisites of the office, and the price endured of having police provide some measure of state sanctioned social control. And in other nations, such as the United States, the police violence is formally unauthorized but institutionally protected by Jim Crow-style legal doctrines of “qualified immunity” and collective bargaining agreements ratified by city, county and state governments.

Police misconduct seems to be intrinsic to most legal systems. Worldwide, the criminal justice bureaucracies are organized primarily to impose punishment, and operationally are largely indifferent to injustice. Police perjury, if not engaged in by every police officer, is so widespread that only the most egregious instances of police falsehoods are commented upon by court personnel or acted upon. Prosecutors in most nations routinely accept the cases brought by police and proffer the testimony of police witnesses. Judicial officers throughout the world generally favor police testimony and the representations of prosecutors. Concepts of due process set forth in Constitutions, national charters, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights are widely disregarded around the world.

People of color in the United States, people who use drugs, and disadvantaged people everywhere know an encounter with a police officer is an extraordinarily risky situation that has the potential to become a life-changing catastrophe. In most white-dominated societies, the police are particularly uncontrolled in their behavior toward racial minorities. In some parts of the United States, the contemporary state and municipal police forces arose from the slave patrols created to prevent enslaved persons from running away or rebelling. The authority to catch escaped enslaved persons and “deliver [them] up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labor may be due,” is today still part of the text of the U.S. Constitution (Art. IV, sec. 2, cl. 3). In other parts of the United States, the early functions of the police were to protect property-owning elites from immigrants, the indigenous and internal migrants. Supposed “crimes” such as vagrancy or loitering have for generations been used to control people of color, the poor, the young, and those with disabilities, emotional distress, mental illness or the disease of addiction. Legal reforms of the abuse of those outmoded laws have been circumvented in much of the United States by the use of the drug laws.

Of course, we oppose violence, theft, violation of human rights and exploitation. However, drug prohibition empowers criminals and criminal organizations to exploit the peasants and farmers who cultivate poppy, coca, and cannabis. The inevitable disagreements of commerce, when they arise in the illegal drug trade, can only be resolved through violence because the nonviolent dispute resolution mechanisms of legal commerce are unavailable. The trade in highly valuable illegal drugs, carried on outside the legitimate channels of commerce, can only be protected by illegal armed groups, and their exchange for cash is perpetually at risk of armed robbery. This is a greater problem, of course, in the consumer countries. Sadly, throughout the world, police agencies are corrupted by the illegal drug trade. One must consider how extensively the resistance of the police everywhere to oversight, regulation and accountability by management and civil society is due to dependence of police officers on income from the illegal drug trade and bribery.

Thus, not only is the war on drugs the pretext for the initiation of police-civilian contact for the purpose of extortion, surveillance, social control and invidious racial subjugation, but the war on drugs is a driver of police resistance to accountability.

It should go without saying that there is a legitimate role for proper policing, but policing as it has been practiced demands wholesale reform of police and domestic security agencies worldwide. It must be acknowledged that policing as currently organized is dangerous, but police behavior and misconduct have fueled enormous resentment and inflamed passions for revenge. Enforcing unpopular laws in a high-handed manner increases the risk of violent resistance to police officers.

But many police agencies are so tainted by a culture of impunity and grievance that they must be reconstituted from the ground up.  Entirely new management needs to be hired, empowered to vet potential recruits. The functions of the police services need to be wholly reorganized. Police in the community have the responsibility to bring services to individuals and families that are troubled. Whenever there is a response to a call for service, a key question a police officer should ask is, “Are everyone’s needs in this household being met?” The primary role of the police should be crime prevention. The investigation of crime is a specialized function of the police, not its primary function. The primary goal of the police agencies should be maximizing health and safety, not “law enforcement.” The police should be as vigilant about pollution, chemical spills, adulterated food, labor exploitation because of the many victims who are powerless, as they are about their more traditional defense of property and certain classes of “violence.”

Police should not be trained to self-identify as “crime fighters.” Recruits need to be carefully screened, and properly trained to create a culture of service to the communities in which they operate and to be scrupulous honesty. Police training regarding encounters with the public must be completely reconceptualized to conflict de-escalation and to deprioritize the use of force. Police officers must be paid an appropriate professional salary. Internal systems of management, control and discipline must be vibrant and transparent.

Now is the time to stand with #BlackLivesMatter and those who are demanding not only accountability by the police for their acts of misconduct, but wholesale, structural reconstruction of the criminal justice system and the role of the police within it.

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True and False about Legalizing Marijuana

From the Big Ten by Jeff D'Alessio, Editor of the Champaign, IL News-Gazette, about legalizing marijuana.
Eric E. Sterling
Mayor Pete Buttigieg (D- South Bend, IN)
IL State Rep. Kelly Cassidy (D-Chicago)
Emily Dufton
Ed Rosenthal
Debby Goldsberry
John Walters
Kevin Sabet
Hope Wiseman
Eli McVey

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"Addiction Nation" author Timothy McMahan King interviewed by Rev. Alexander Sharp

This short interview on the website of Clergy for a New Drug Policy addresses key issues in addiction and public policy. Al Sharp asked excellent questions.

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Pell Grants for Prisoners? @JoeBiden, this is a good idea

From transcript of Second Democratic Debate, night 2.

TAPPER: Welcome back to the CNN Democratic presidential debate. We are live from Detroit.

I want to turn now to criminal justice. Mr. Vice President, Senator Booker called your new criminal justice reform plan, quote, "an inadequate solution to what is a raging crisis in our country," unquote. Why is Senator Booker wrong?

BIDEN: Well, I don't -- I think he is wrong. I think we should work together. He has a similar plan. I think that we should change the way we look at prisons.

Right now, we're in a situation where, when someone is convicted of a drug crime, they end up going to jail and to prison. They should be going to rehabilitation. They shouldn't be going to prison. When in prison, they should be learning to read and write and not just sit in there and learn how to be better criminals.

And when they get out of prison, they should be in a situation where they have access to everything they would have had before, including Pell grants for education, including making sure that they're able to have housing, public housing, including they have all the opportunities that were available to them because we want them to become better citizens.

Vice President Biden seems to be mixed up on the details. According to a U.S. Department of Education Feb. 2019 fact sheet, once you "get out of prison" a person with a conviction generally is eligible for Pell grants and other assistance. (Exceptions: (1) Your adult conviction was for possessing or selling drugs when you were receiving federal financial aid.  You can become eligible --  pass two unannounced drug tests from a drug rehabilitation program or complete an approved drug program. (2) Your conviction was for a "sexual offense" and you were subject to involuntary civil commitment post conviction.) Not surprisingly, the Vice President's "Criminal Justice" plan claims it would enable "formerly incarcerated persons" to become eligible for Pell grants -- but that is the current law.

"In fact," as Vice President Biden likes to say, one of the infamous provisions of the 1994 Crime Bill said people currently in state or federal prison are not eligible for Pell grants (Section 20411. Awards of Pell Grants to Prisoners Prohibited. Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, Public Law 103-322, Sept. 13, 1994 (20 U.S.C. 1070a(b)(6))).  

However, an Obama Administration reform created a "Second Chance Pell" experimental program for persons in prison. According to a Department of Education FAQ on Second Chance Pell in April 2019, "so far this award year (July 1, 2018- June 30, 2019) there are currently 10,048 students receiving Federal Pell Grant funds from 64 institutions." That does not seem to be an impressively large number of prisoners studying at the college level out of an state and federal prison population of 1.5 million (2016).

This program was based on a 2013 RAND Corporation study, funded by the Justice Department:

Key Findings: Correctional Education Improves Inmates' Outcomes after Release

• Correctional education improves inmates' chances of not returning to prison.
• Inmates who participate in correctional education programs had a 43 percent lower odds of recidivating than those who did not. This translates to a reduction in the risk of recidivating of 13 percentage points.
• It may improve their chances of obtaining employment after release. The odds of obtaining employment post-release among inmates who participated in correctional education was 13 percent higher than the odds for those who did not participate in correctional education.
• Inmates exposed to computer-assisted instruction learned slightly more in reading and substantially more in math in the same amount of instructional time.
• Providing correctional education can be cost-effective when it comes to reducing recidivism

A program with such benefits should be expanded. It would be great if Vice President Biden's Pell Grant reforms zeroed in on what actually needed to be fixed!

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Candidate Joe Biden on Criminal Justice -- An incomplete strategy

               In advance of the next debate round of Democratic candidates for President, former Vice President Joseph Biden unveiled his criminal justice plan. As a “criminal justice plan” for the U.S. government, in many respects, it is quite shockingly inadequate. Generally, the analyses I’ve seen of his plan frames it as a mea culpa for his years of leading crack down policy-making, and naturally, and as a riposte in his battle against other candidates for president. German Lopez at Vox explains its virtues well, noting these highlights:.

The plan includes many ambitious goals: decriminalize marijuana, eliminate mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent crimes, end the death penalty, abolish private prisons, get rid of cash bail, and discourage the incarceration of children. All of it is aimed at reducing incarceration and fixing “the racial, gender, and income-based disparities in the system,” according to Biden’s campaign.

Certainly it is commendable as a crime prevention strategy and as a justice reform strategy.  Those are good ideas, but as a comprehensive criminal justice strategy for the U.S. Department of Justice and federal investigative agencies it is utterly incomplete.

             What is most striking to me, and I think is most important, is that there is no agenda for how to properly use the U.S. Justice Department to fight crime. There appears to be nothing that should be a priority assignment for the thousands of federal prosecutors around the country, or the tens of thousands of federal investigators.

            * There is no strategy or agenda for mass shootings or gun violence. He promises to issue something, “in the months ahead.” Developing a meaningful response to mass shootings is actually quite challenging, but surely the man who had been the leader of Senate Democrats on the Judiciary Committee for 20 years can put something on the table regarding background checks, interstate trafficking in firearms, or fencing stolen firearms.

            * There is nothing about antitrust violations, banking or securities regulatory violations and fraud, tax fraud and evasion, credit card fraud, consumer protection, telemarketing fraud, identity fraud, or fraud in general.

              *  There is nothing about addressing cyber attacks, terrorism, organized crime or illegal pollution and environmental crimes. (Biden says “he’ll require states to fix environmental health problems in prisons, such as a lack of clean water and clean air.”) 

              *  There is nothing about the role of the Department of Justice in investigating public corruption. 

                All of these are extremely important criminal justice responsibilities of the U.S. Department of Justice. It takes criminal referrals from the regulatory agencies -- these need to be encouraged. The nation cannot rely on state enforcement agencies for this work.

            Sadly these serious and uniquely federal crimes have frequently been downplayed by the U.S. Department of Justice that for decades has wrongly favored drug enforcement, and crimes that could be prosecuted by state authorities. Biden’s plan, so far, maintains a status quo that ignores “crime in the suites.”

            Americans are being attacked by fraud hourly. According to the Federal Trade Commission, in 2017, 1.1 million Americans reported that they were targeted by a fraudulent scheme, and suffered losses of over $905 million. If you are like me, multiple times a day our telephones ring with a crook trying to get us to give them our credit card numbers. They pretend to be calling from Microsoft to “fix your broken computer,” from IRS or the Justice Department warning that we are about to be arrested, our cousin or dear friend lost a wallet and desperately need money or is jailed and needs bail money, or some other scam. We are being inundated with attempts to defraud us if we have a fax number, an email address or a telephone. The 1.1 million is surely is an undercount as that is only the number of those who reported these attempts to the FTC. Fighting this climate of fraud is something an honest President of the United State should direct the Department of Justice to work on. Why, even the banks estimate they lost $2.2 billion in fraud in 2016.

            * There is nothing about prosecution of criminal violations of civil rights. Prosecution of actual instances of police misconduct – such as the killing of Eric Garner – the kinds of prosecution that happened in Los Angeles after the beating of Rodney King, are not part of this Biden criminal justice agenda

            Biden promises investigations of systemic patterns of police misconduct in order to obtain consent decrees to reorganize the management of police departments. That is a good thing, but there were 992 persons fatally shot by the police in 2018, according to The Washington Post. Investigating those shootings (and the countless incidents that are not fatal shootings) is the kind of job the U.S. Department of Justice has the resources and independence to carry out.

            Again, the agenda is a very wise statement of what to do about preventing crime, and how prisoners should be properly treated while in custody. The philosophy is the right philosophy. But as a plan for managing and governing the criminal justice establishment, it’s an incomplete.

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Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement (MORE) Act won't deliver

The Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement (MORE) Act, introduced July 23, 2019 simultaneously by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerold Nadler (D-NY) and U.S. Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA), is a major step toward a just and logical marijuana policy in the United States. A central feature of the legislation is the creation of a Community Investment Grant Program to benefit those communities and individuals who have been hurt by marijuana prohibition.

Specifically, the Community Investment Grant Program would provide "eligible entities with funds to administer services for individuals most adversely impacted by the War on Drugs, including—
     (1) job training;  
     (2) reentry services;
     (3) legal aid for civil and criminal cases, including expungement of cannabis convictions;
     (4) literacy programs;
     (5) youth recreation or mentoring programs; and
     (6) health education programs."

This is good stuff, but the grant program is funded by an "Opportunity Trust Fund" that is funded by a tax on all legal cannabis products (except for medical cannabis). The tax is set at 5 percent of the price of the cannabis product is sold.

Taxing is important and hard. Mark Kleiman wrote an excellent analysis of the issues involved in drug taxation in his 1992 treatise, Against Excess, pp. 69-80. Taxes are designed primarily for revenue, but influence behavior. Taxes can reduce unwanted behaviors, but can lead to evasion. If a tax is hard to collect and easily evaded that is counterproductive. Excessively high taxes, such as the infamous 1937 tax of $100 per ounce of marijuana if transferred to a person who was not registered as a physician, etc. was intended as a prohibition. (For comparison, a new Ford sedan cost $850.)

Taxing the price seems stupid to me, completely aside from the question of whether this percentage is the right amount.

First, we have seen that in the states, such as Washington and Colorado, that have first legalized retail sales of marijuana, that the retail price has been steadily dropping. Once this law takes effect, it is likely that the source of funds for the program is going to start shrinking. If we believe that the Community Investment Grant program is a good idea and needs to be funded, relying on a tax that is going to produce less revenue over time is not a good idea. Relying on the price of marijuana that is going to be declining means that the remedial effects of this program will shrink, not grow. 

Second, we need to think about the impact of the taxation on behavior, i.e., on the consumption of THC and how high people are getting. As a public health matter, using the tax to reduce the amount of intoxication is a good idea.  For the millions of recreational users -- once a week or so -- the amount of the tax will be negligible. But for those who use many times a day, the taxation becomes a more serious way to influence behavior by both depressing use or encouraging entry into treatment if use is problematic. Taxing the volume of THC being sold is the best public health approach.

Of course higher taxes are not "free." A tax that is easily and widely evaded is a problem, and collection can be challenging.  If there is wide disparity in the state tax rates on cannabis products, interstate smuggling of cannabis will become like the interstate smuggling of low-taxed cigarettes.

Thus, third, the tax should be imposed at the point of production, not at the retail level, where evasion is easy.

There is extensive evasion of high state and city taxes. In Chicago, according to a 2010 paper, as much as 3/4 of the cigarettes consumed in Chicago were obtained outside the city to avoid paying a $2.68 per pack tax. 

In New York City, the current combined city and state tax on a package of 20 cigarettes is $5.85. Last year, the Mackinac Center for Public Policy estimated that 56% of the cigarettes consumed in New York State were smuggled and the state lost $1.5 billion in tax revenue.

And, as we saw with Eric Garner, who was killed by New York police officer Daniel Pantaleo on the suspicion of selling "loosies" (single, untaxed cigarettes), the enforcement of these taxes can range from erratic to catastrophic.

Taxing at the retail level is counterproductive and potentially dangerous.

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"Equal Justice Under Law" -- Abandoned by President Donald J. Trump

For most of us, "equal justice under law," is a national promise and ideal that is supremely important. Yes, many of us feel justice as applied is not equal and this promise is hollow. But we subscribe to the ideal, we hold it up!

Historically, our national leadership affirms "equal justice under law" -- indeed it must affirm this -- as our common objective, and a guiding principle of the Executive and Judicial branches of the government -- federal and state.

I have hesitated to begin to identify the problems that President Donald Trump creates by his various statements that have revealed a disrespect for the law and the norms that the President should uphold as a matter of custom and decorum. They are simply too numerous and frequent to spend the time.

But his tweets on September 3 criticizing U.S. Attorneys (actually criticizing the U.S. Department of Justice and Attorney General Jeff Sessions)  in bringing criminal charges on behalf of the United States against two Members of Congress because this prosecution might effect the outcome of the November 2018 elections were especially shocking.

Of course the accused Members of Congress are entitled to a presumption of innocence, but they are not entitled to impunity.

The President's tweets create the impression that he believes that his political supporters ought to not be prosecuted, even if there is probable cause to charge them with felony conduct. This is different than his pardon of former Sheriff Joe Arpaio (who lost his attempt to be a Republican nominee to the U.S. Senate from Arizona). In the exercise of his pardon authority, it is his authority in Article II, section 2. But to attack the Justice Department, which is responsible for operating under the "Equal Justice Under Law" principle in every case, demonstrates his belief that his personal moral values ought to prevail in the management and administration of the Department of Justice.

The President's cronies must never be immune from prosecution, and that President Donald J. Trump does not agree demonstrates that he does not understand the key feature of his oath of office, "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." (Article II, Section 1, last clause).

This should trouble all of us.

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Prison Strike 2018 -- Stop slave wages and amend the 13th Amendment

The Intercept reported on the summer 2018 prison strike. It will be very interesting to see what attention it generates and what the outcomes will be. Among the shocking features of our incarceration policies are the very low wages paid to inmates for their labor. A year and half ago, Prison Policy compiled prison wages, state by state.

For prisoners, having the opportunity work is a good idea, but it must be compensated at the prevailing scale to be fair and meaningful.  There are many problems with the U.S. Constitution -- the electoral college system and the equal representation of each state in the U.S. Senate are two that come quickly to mind -- but one of the worst is the continued authorization of slavery as punishment for the conviction of a crime in the 13th Amendment as slavery is being outlawed in general.

"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." (Ratified Dec. 18, 1865 by 27 states)

This provision of the Constitution sanctifies slavery as a status for being convicted of a crime

This provision of the Constitution authorizes "slave wages" for inmates working in the nation's correctional system. This is a provision that should be amended by Congress and the States.

The continuation of the Constitutional protection of slavery has terrible consequences. As provided by the Constitution, this status of protected slavery is not limited only to the serving of a sentence, but can be understood a lifetime second-class status that helps undermine the rehabilitation of the formerly incarcerated. It helps to maintain the reluctance to fully reintegrate those who have offended back into the economy and the community.

Today, prisoners are paid a few cents per hour for their labor, justified by this provision of the Constitution.  Work is a valued distraction from the boredom of imprisonment. Prisoners want to work. Meaningful work in prison is a valuable experience for transitioning to employment at the end of a sentence. Work in prison should be encouraged! But as long as prison labor can be equated as slavery and involuntary servitude it is tainted. Prison work, often hazardous -- working on farms, working with power tools and machinery, working in risky environments -- should be subject to OSHA. And prison employees should be subject to workplace protections against injury (worker's compensation, protection against hazardous materials, and from harassment and discrimination, etc.)

But as a matter of policy,  slave labor wages, due to the 13th Amendment, pervert the valuable experience of work for prisoners.

By failing to adequately compensate prison labor:

     * work becomes associated with exploitation and fosters resentment against employers and increases alienation about our economic system;

     * the labor undercuts wages paid to people employed in the regular labor market whose products and services compete with those of the prison employer;

     * prisoners cannot send meaningful funds home to families, helping to support children, which provides a stronger basis for family re-integration at the conclusion of a sentence (a strong family connection being an important factor in reducing the risk of recidivism);

     * prisoners cannot purchase telephone time to stay in communication with family;

     * families of prisoners have to subsidize their loved ones in prison, creating additional stresses on families that have lost a bread winner;

     * prisoners cannot save money to serve as a first and lost month rent for housing when they are released from incarceration increasing the likelihood that they will immediately become homeless and at high risk to use illegal drugs and return to criminal conduct.

Is Congress working to eliminate the protection of slavery in the 13th Amendment which begins, "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States..."

No.

In the current 115th Congress, two Republicans in the House, Rep. Randy Weber (R-TX) and Rep. David Young (R-IA) have introduced H. Res. 936 to recognize June   19, as "Junteenth Independence Day," that notes that the 13th Amendment was adopted.

On January 29, 2018, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) introduced S. 385, "National Trafficking and Modern Slavery Prevention Month" in January 2018, noting that the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 was enacted "under the authority of Congress to enforce the 13th Amendment" and "updated the post-Civil War involuntary servitude and slavery statutes." It was approved by the Senate very quickly, but on February 7, a week after the month ended. 

But there is an opportunity for Congress to help prisoners but abolishing slavery in the U.S., period, but amending the 13th Amendment.

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End of Cole Memorandum regarding Federal-State marijuana "stand off" 1st news

Associated Press has reported that U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions is planning to suspend the 2013 U.S. Department of Justice Memorandum (known as the "Cole Memorandum") that has been interpreted to give the states the green light to legalize and regulate marijuana within their borders after Colorado and Washington voters adopted laws to legalize adult recreational use of marijuana and the growth and distribution of marijuana for that purpose.

Here is the new memorandum from A.G. Sessions issued on Jan. 4, 2018. It says that all the general criteria that U.S. Attorneys are supposed to use in deciding what cases to prosecute should be applied to marijuana cases.

U.S. Senator Cory Gardner (R-CO) has said that this move violates a pledge that Sessions made to him. Gardner is threatening to start blocking Senate confirmation of Department of Justice nominations in retaliation.

The 2013 Memorandum expanded on earlier memoranda from 2009 and 2011("Ogden Memorandum") that were limited to state medical marijuana programs.

Sessions, as a Federal prosecutor, was especially hostile to drug offenders, and as U.S. Senator, regularly spoke out against any kind of marijuana law reform.

Stay tuned to see what the actual details of the Session's new policy look like.

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Yom Kippur 1990 -- Defending Religious Liberty

September 29, 1990

U.S. Capitol, Washington, D.C.

Statement of Reuben A. Snake, Jr. (1937 - 1993)

Coordinator, Native American Religious Freedom Project

A Gathering Of Native American Religious Leaders To

Obtain Guarantees Of Religious Liberty

          BACKGROUND: In the spring 1990, the U.S. Supreme Court abandoned well-established free exercise of religion precedents in case involving a member of the Native American Church who worked for a drug treatment program that required staff to be "drug-free." He was fired because he used peyote in his worship. He sought unemployment compensation but Oregon denied it. His appeal went to the Supreme Court which upheld Oregon. The court ruled that the drug law is a law of general applicability, not designed to block religious practice. Almost all religious denominations joined to ask Congress to restore the old precedent. Members of Native American Church were alarmed about implications of this precedent. The Quaker lobby, Friends Committee on National Legislation had a long relationship with the Indians and the Native American Church. A meeting to plan a strategy was called for Washington. At the last minute, FCNL asked Eric Sterling, a Quaker and recently retired counsel to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee and expert on drug law, to join the meeting. He suggested a political and media strategy to educate Congress, the news media and other faiths about the Native American Church. The Native American Religious Freedom Project was created and based in Eric's office at the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation. The events were: (1) A press conference at a teepee erected just to the west of the Capitol on the site of the future National Museum of the American Indian including a representative of U.S. Senator Daniel Inouye (D-HI), Chair of the Senate Select Committee on Indian Affairs; and (2) A worship service of the Native American Church with the holy medicine, peyote. Eric made many calls to find a location where the worship could be held without a police raid. Finally he found that the National Park Service would be happy to host the worship and set aside an area in Greenbelt National Park for that purpose for Sept. 29-30. After the press event, and the speeches, including the one below, worship was held in three sacred fireplaces created by three different branches of the Native American Church of North America in Greenbelt. At the conclusion of the all night worship at dawn on September 30, a celebratory meal was shared by all participants.
 
             
            Senator Inouye, Church President Emerson Jackson, honored guests, as an American it is inspiring to stand here at the foot of the U.S. Capitol to exercise two of our basic American rights, the freedom of speech, and the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

            Native Americans have been associated with the liberty of the American people since the founding of the nation. In 1773, at the Boston tea party, the early protestors against British royal tyranny dressed as Mohawks because Indians, in England and in Europe, were a symbol of American liberty. Indians, and our way of life, were the very symbol of American liberty adopted by the earliest American revolutionaries. But four or five centuries before that dramatic event, even before Christopher Columbus sailed from Spain, the Five Nations of the Iroquois confederacy formed a government under a constitution called the Great Law of Peace. Consider some of the enlightened features of that government -- parliamentary-type government, separation of politics and religion, separation of civil and military government, the concept of checks and balances, veto, referendum, and so forth. Those governmental concepts were so remarkable, books were written about them in the European languages. These concepts became known to John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, European political philosophers, whose writings are cited in identifying the sources of the U.S. Constitution. The free exercise of religion was among the many features of that great Native American government, and the freedom of religion is one which many of us take for granted today.

            On September 15, 1620, English subjects sailed from Plymouth, England, to seek refuge from religious persecution. The story of the Puritan pilgrims landing at Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts to achieve religious freedom is one of the best-known stories in American history.

            It is tragic to say however, that we are now in a situation in the United States of America where we can no longer take such a fundamental right, the free exercise of religion, for granted. As venerable as the heritage of religious liberty has been in America, religious liberty is now in jeopardy for all minority religions.

            Last April, in the case of Employment Division of Oregon v. Smith [494 U.S. 872, 110 S. Ct. 1595, 108 L. Ed. 2d 876, 1990 U.S. Lexis 2021 (1990)], a case involving Native American religious liberty, the U.S. Supreme court threw out its long standing precedents and declared that no longer does the government have to show that laws which burden and restrict religious liberty must be justified by a compelling government interest. Even very large religious organizations issued protests and sought a rehearing in the court. The Baptists, the Methodists, Jewish groups, dozens of religious groups, and over 50 of America's most distinguished constitutional law professors sought a rehearing of the court's decision.

            But consider the implications of this case from our perspective. The U.S. Supreme court reversed a long line of settled cases in order to rule that the use of the sacrament of Native American worship, the holy medicine, peyote, is not protected under the First Amendment of the constitution. They said, in our case, our religious exercises, our form of worship, the use of our holy sacrament, is not protected by the constitution. The court said that Native Americans, who have enjoyed religious liberty on this land since before the pilgrims fled here, are no longer entitled to religious liberty. This trampling of Native American religious liberty is intolerable. Our people have been using the holy medicine, peyote, for thousands of years, thousands of years.

            For the last twenty years, the American people have been suffering an epidemic of abuse of refined chemical drugs like cocaine, heroin, amphetamines, PCP, and so forth. American cities are crawling with violence and crime. This is a terrible tragedy, and this kind of drug abuse is also a problem for some Indian youth. But there is no peyote drug abuse problem. I defy the justices of the Supreme Court to find newspaper reports of drive-by shootings in connection with the holy medicine. I challenge anyone concerned about the problem of drug abuse to find examples of dope peddlers selling the holy medicine in America's school yards and play grounds. The idea is preposterous.

            We don't have a peyote abuse problem in this nation. Yet the widespread fear, bordering on panic, about the tragedy of drug abuse has clouded the minds of the justices. In the name of the war on drugs, our use of our holy medicine is restricted. In the name of the war on drugs, our guarantee of free exercise of religion has been violated. In the name of the war on drugs, the religious freedom of every American has been placed in jeopardy.

            The consequences are outrageous. For decades Native Americans have endured the harassment and persecution of law enforcement authorities ignorant of, or indifferent to, our ancient ways of worship. The law reports are filled with tragic cases of our men and women dragged from worship, or from their homes, to jail cells and to courtrooms, forced to defend themselves, to justify themselves to the ignorant and the callous. But in those degrading circumstances, we could always point, confidently, to the First Amendment's guarantees of free exercise of religion, and know that ultimately we would prevail. Now, unbelievably, we are no longer assured that we will prevail.

            This has been intolerable to us, this is intolerable to us, and it is intolerable to every American who treasures their right to worship God without government interference.

            In the Native American Church every day is a holy day, but today is special. In the Hebrew calendar, today is Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the most solemn day of Jewish worship. Many Jewish friends of Native Americans invited to join us this morning explained that they could not worship with us here, for they would be in their own temples in prayer.

            For many of the 5741 years of the Hebrew calendar, the Jewish people have suffered oppression on account of their religion. Today, 199 years after the American Bill of Eights was adopted, we are thankful that the Jewish people feel free to worship without fearing government harassment. But ladies and gentlemen, today the 250,000 members of the Native American Church are not free to worship God without fear of government harassment.

            Church President Emerson Jackson has declared tomorrow a day of prayer for peace. Today, hundreds of our people are preparing for a night-long Native American Church service and prayer for peace. But many of our elders, who have traveled thousands of miles to be here to worship in our nation's capital, who have experienced the indignities of religious persecution, expressed to the organizers of this worship service a great fear -- will we be arrested? Will we be arrested? We have had to call law enforcement authorities -- attorneys general, prosecutors, assistant state's attorneys, narcotics units -- around the region to assure ourselves that our worship will proceed undisturbed by the hideous specter of a police raid.

            I ask my brothers and sisters who are Christians, my brothers and sisters who are Moslem, my brothers and sisters who are Hindus, my brothers and sisters who are Buddhists, my brothers and sisters who are Jewish, do any of you worry that your worship services will be raided by the police? Do any of you feel it necessary to call the police in order to set up a worship service? Do any of you have to explain to law enforcement officers that you have a right to worship your God in your own manner?

            I ask my brothers and sisters who are Christians, do you need permission from your state alcoholic beverage control commission to give sacramental wine to communicants under the age of 21? Do your priests need licenses from the government to perform a mass? Of course not, but under the Smith decision, that shocking possibility may yet come to pass.

            I ask my brothers and sisters, when they tell their children about their religious rites, do they have to warn their little ones about the police? Do they have to explain that they should not be ashamed because of the special police "interest" in their worship? I ask the American people, does this sound like the religious life we expect to live in the United States of America? Well my brothers and sisters, this unbelievable condition burdens our worship. This relic of prejudice burdens our worship. This government involvement in our religion burdens our worship, and it is intolerable.

            Today, at the highest point in Washington, overlooking our little press conference, the National Cathedral is being dedicated. Today the last stone is being placed in that beautiful monument to the central importance of God and prayer in American life. It is profoundly ironic that just as that glorious cathedral is being completed and dedicated in our nation's capital, the U.S. Supreme court has jeopardized the status of every minority religion, and it has done so in a case involving Native American Church members using the holy sacrament of our church.

            We are here today with one simple message -- we demand that our use of our sacrament, the holy medicine peyote, be fully protected by law without qualification. We ask no more, we expect no more, and we are entitled to nothing less!

            Why must we stand here and defend our religion? Why must we tell you that our church is a good church? Why must we tell you that we do not tolerate drug abusers or alcoholics in our church? We are reduced to this posture because of laws passed and enforced in an atmosphere of almost total ignorance about Native Americans.

            Perhaps we should not be surprised. Like most Americans we like to go about our business quietly and without drawing attention to ourselves. One of the central teachings of our church is humility. We have never held a press conference before. We have never drawn attention to ourselves before. We are uncomfortable this morning, but to protect ourselves, we have a duty. We are here today to tell the American people that our worship is sacred, it is legitimate, it is profound, it is good, it is wonderful in the eyes of God, it is wonderful for our people, and we must, we must pray the way God has taught us.

            Americans, you have taken much from us. You have benefited from us in many ways. You have left us little land, you have taken away our traditional livelihoods. Do not allow the government to take our religious freedom away. We urge you to join us in supporting the "Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1990," H.R. 5377. But this is only a first step. The bill does not go far enough. It does not specifically protect our worship, the one that the Supreme Court chose to disregard and deny protection. We urge that the bill be amended to specifically protect Native American religious freedom. That is not too much to ask.

            Soon we will be returning to our homes across America and to our children and grandchildren. We will say we engaged in the political process, we spoke to the American people and to the national news media. We went to Washington, and we told our story. Can we tell our children, "we succeeded, you are now safe"? Can we tell our children, "we have brought back for you the security, the safety, the certainty that you, our children, and your children can worship God as we have been taught"? It is our prayer that we can!

* * * * *

            Mr. Snake was assisted in the preparation of these remarks by Eric E. Sterling, Executive Director of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation. The Native American Religious Freedom Project was housed and supported by the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation in Washington, DC. Please contact Eric Sterling if you would like more information about the occasion on which these remarks were made. Eric Sterling was introduced to Mr. Snake by Jay C. Fikes, then with the Friends Committee on National Legislation.

            The Religious Freedom Restoration Act, reversing Employment Division ofOregon v. Smith (494 U.S. 872, 110 S. Ct. 1595, 108 L. Ed. 2d 876, 1990 U.S. Lexis 2021 (1990)), passed Congress overwhelmingly and was signed on November 16, 1993 by President Clinton (P.L. 103-141). It had no provision specifically addressing the religious use of peyote. The Act prohibited any unit ofgovernment from substantially burdening a person's exercise of religion unlessthe government demonstrates that the application of the burden to the person isin the furtherance of a compelling governmental interest and is the leastrestrictive means of furthering that governmental interest. (The law can be found at 107 Statutes at Large 1488. It was H.R. 1308, 103rd Cong., House Report 103-88, and Senate Report 103-111). On June 25, 1997, the U.S. Supreme court held the Religious Freedom Restoration Act unconstitutional as applied to the states. City of Boerne, Texas v. P.F. Flores,Archbishop of San Antonio (521 U.S. 507, 117 S. Ct. 2157, 138 L. Ed. 2d 624, 1997 U.S. Lexis 4035, (1997).

            On October 6, 1994, President Clinton signed Public Law 103-344, the "American Indian Religious Freedom Act Amendments of 1994," to protect the traditional use of peyote by Indians for religious purposes throughout the United States. (108 Statutes at Large 3125). The billpassed the U.S. House of Representatives on August 8, 1994, and passed the U.S.Senate on September 26, 1995. (H.R. 4230, 103rd Cong., House Report 103-675). The Native American Rights Fund (NARF) played a major role in enacting this legislation. Robert M. Peregoy, Esq. (1947-2015) was senior counsel for NARF, 1514 P Street, NW, Washington, DC 20005, tel. 202-785-4166; and Walter Echo Hawk, Esq., then at NARF's Boulder, CO office, 303-447-8760

            A book about the religious use of peyote and the political struggle that this speech was a part of was published in 1996 by Prof. Huston Smith (1919-2016) with the collaboration of Mr. Snake, One Nation Under God, The Triumph of theNative American Church (1996).

            The autobiography of Reuben Snake was published in 1996, Reuben Snake, Your Humble Serpent, Indian Visionary and Activist, as told to Jay C. Fikes. Both books were published by Clear Light Publishers, 823 Don Diego, Santa Fe, NM 87505 (800-253-2747).

            Two documentary movies were made in the course of the lobbying for this law.  “The Peyote Road" and "YourHumble Serpent” by film maker Gary Rhine, (1951-2006), Kifaru Productions.

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Nicholas Kristoff (New York Times) on Portugal's effective and humane drug policy

Published on September 24, 2017, "How to Win A War on Drugs," the lead story in the Sunday Review section of The New York Times.

The heart of this report is how Portugal's decriminalization drug policy, adopted in 2001, focusing on public health outreach and not using criminal justice resources against drug users, has dramatically reduced deaths, HIV, and the number of heroin users.

Concludes Kristoff, "The lesson that Portugal offers the world is that while we can't eradicate heroin, it's possible to save the lives of drug users -- if we're willing to treat them not as criminals but as sick, suffering human beings who need helping hands, not handcuffs."

Exactly, treat drug users as human beings, and if when they are suffering, help them.

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Pot Prisoners Profiled in Rolling Stone -- Victims of the flawed goals of the "war on drugs" approach

Rolling Stone magazine (Sep. 13, 2017) has profiled five prisoners serving incredibly long sentences even though marijuana cultivation and sales are now legal in eight states.
I provide the background and a critique. Take a few minutes and click on this link.
You can go to Life for Pot to learn even more about these injustices.


It is clear that the nation is thinking differently about how to handle "the drug problem" than it did in 1986. Then, the goal of drug policy was the cessation of distribution and use of drugs, and reliance upon punishment to achieve it.  Today we know that policy has failed.

However, many of us struggle to clearly articulate our objective. Most urgently, our goal must be to save the lives of drug users. We witnessed over 60,000 drug poisonings and overdoses in 2016, up from less than 8,000 when Ronald Reagan was declaring drug war.

If we are going to save the lives of drug users then we need new policies, founded on the belief that drug users lives matters. What is killing drug users?

1. Forced abstinence. Arresting drug users and putting them in jail reduces their tolerance. When they get out, we know that many will return to drug use. With their reduced tolerance their risk of overdose skyrockets.  We coerce drug users into treatment. Treatment works, when you are ready and convinced. But there is always the risk of relapse. Again, tolerance has gone down and risk of overdose death is huge! Our good intentions are killing drug users. Methadone treatment does not reduce tolerance and even though there are overdoses with clandestine and diverted use, it is a relatively safe and highly effective treatment modality.

2. Poisoned drugs.  Many drug dealers want to supply drugs to their friends and community, and make some money in the process. Most distributors of drugs are not vicious fiends. They know they are breaking the law and they want to be rewarded for taking the risks of law-breaking and doing business with other criminals who may be highly dangerous. They are providing a highly desired product to very desperate people. They often use drugs with their customers. Their customers are frequently family, friends, neighbors, and school mates. They don't want them to be hurt or to die. But they have no ability to know the quality of what they get from the traffickers above them.

Higher level traffickers are often indifferent to human life. They often have killed rivals to their leadership, killed underlings to discipline their employees, and perhaps killed officials, law enforcement officers or journalists who threatened their business. They have no product liability insurance, indeed they can't be sued for defectively lethal products. For many traffickers, the reputation they want is not about pure product or honorable dealing, but about their lethality and their willingness to use violence against any threat. To add dangerous ingredients that adulterate their drugs is perfectly okay if that enables them to boost their profits.

Our current drug policy is designed to keep the drug manufacturing and distribution in the hands of dangerous criminals, not well managed pharmaceutical companies. Our policy is designed to keep drugs dangerous and threaten users with death. These tens of thousands of deaths each year are not merely the "collateral damage" of a smart strategy, they are the foreseeable result of a stupid drug policy that does not put the lives of drug users in the center of the strategy. Under the old policy, a dead drug user is not a dead child or dead sibling or parent -- a drug user has no value except as an object lesson to others who are not yet drug users. Under the old strategy a drug user's life is not worth saving. Indeed, a dead drug user allows a prosecutor to seek a homicide indictment against a distributor, and do what prosecutors do best.

For a sane and compassionate society, our drug policy should be to minimize the suffering of drug users. That means get clean drugs to drug users and keep the drugs affordable to minimize the hassle to obtain them. It means helping drug users get housing, jobs, education and counseling.

Under our current policy drug users are kicked out of housing, kicked out of school, fired from their jobs, and removed from treatment programs.  Imagine hospitals that only admitted people with the simplest symptoms and least serious diseases, and kicked out those who got sicker because they "failed" treatment.

Certainly, as a minimum as we legalize marijuana, we must not leave behind in prison those whose conduct today would no longer be criminal.

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Guns, gun control, gun violence, etc. and drug legalization

There was a very smart commentary by Richard Feldman, head of the Independent Firearms Owners Association (IFOA), in USAToday (Dec. 12, 2013) about the largely pointless debate about "guns" after the Newtown, CT.

Among Feldman's conclusions: "It's time we remove incentives encouraging criminals to use, rather than avoid, guns."

In a Dec. 15 email to the Executive Directors of Drug Policy Alliance, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, NORML, and the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation on Dec. 15, Feldman elaborated:

"It's time we remove incentives encouraging criminals to use, rather than avoid, guns" The incentives I refer to are of course that guns are the main only option when dealing in black market goods - no call to 911 if stolen, no use of the courts for product distribution or supply dislocation - only the ability to use force, and that force is mainly from the barrel of a gun.
 
Let me be blunt: The organized firearm community has a vested interest in this [drug legalization] movement even if many of the established organizations don't!  IFOA supports [drug] legalization because it makes sense and lowers harm.

 
A key point of Feldman's was confirmed -- without any acknowledgement of the significance of the data -- in The Washington Post, (Dec. 14, 2013). Twenty-four percent of all the children under 10 deliberately shot and killed with a firearm in 2012 was  killed due to "random violence, drive-by shootings, and neighborhood gun battles." That sounds like killings associated with the drug trade!

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