Panel Says Easing Of Sentences Should Apply Retroactively

WASHINGTON (AP) - The U.S. Sentencing Commission voted unanimously Tuesday to allow some 19,500 federal prison inmates, most of them black, to seek reductions in their crack cocaine sentences.

The commission, which sets guidelines for federal prison sentences, decided to make retroactive its recent easing of recommended sentences for crack offenses.

Most of those eligible could receive no more than a two-year cut in their prison terms, but roughly 3,800 inmates could be released from prison within a year after the March 3 effective date of Tuesday's decision. Federal judges will have the final say whether to reduce sentences.

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Study finds overall decline, but painkillers' popularity is constant WASHINGTON (AP) - Illicit drug use by teens continued to gradually decline overall this year, but the use of prescription painkillers remains popular among young people, according to a federally financed study released Tuesday at the White House.

The survey, by the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research, looked at the behavior of 8th, 10th and 12th graders nationwide. The study, in its 33rd year, found that overall drug use is falling, thanks to a drop in the popularity of marijuana and methamphetamines.

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These holiday candles smelled more like weed than pine. A drug-sniffing dog found about 30 pounds of marijuana hidden inside six holiday candles at the Mexican border during the weekend.

Customs and Border Protection agents arrested a 17-year-old boy Saturday who said he was bringing the candles as a gift from his grandmother in Mexico to his mother in the U.S.

The boy, who has not been identified by border agents, was turned over to El Paso police.

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The Last Of The Defendants Arrested In A Drug-Trafficking Roundup In May 2006 In Southeast Fort Worth Was Sentenced Wednesday.

FORT WORTH -- He called himself Tee.

He was a dealer from the west side of Fort Worth who sold dope near Texas Christian University. He could foot the bill for big purchases if need be. But his supplier had just been taken down by the cops, so he needed a new source. That was April 2005, when he started hanging around a tightly knit east Fort Worth neighborhood controlled by the Crips, talking to the crack dealers on the street.

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Blacks with drugs, Do make me gloat; 'Cause once in jail, They'll never vote.

Every country relishes its own destructive obsessions. Japan, for example, craves whale meat; France tortures geese to improve the flavor of their livers; Zimbabwe and Myanmar just torture people; certain African nations genitally mutilate little girls to prevent them from later enjoying sex. Thoughtful, that. And Saudi Arabia doesn't let women drive, cleverly keeping them at home to do the work.

In this country we prohibit drugs. Just this year our governor vetoed a bill that would have allowed hopeless pain sufferers to smoke marijuana when all else fails. Still, even if she'd signed it, the feds could have come in and pinched patients, docs, growers, and anyone else actually involved in treatment.

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Re: "The Drug, Not Its Form - Time for Congress to fix cocaine-crack disparity," Wednesday Editorials.

Mandatory minimum prison sentences have done little other than give the land of the free the highest incarceration rate in the world. The deterrent value of tough drug laws is grossly overrated.

During the crack epidemic of the '80s, New York City chose the zero-tolerance approach, opting to arrest and prosecute as many offenders as possible. Meanwhile, Washington, D.C., Mayor Marion Barry was smoking crack, and America's capital had the highest per capita murder rate in the country. Yet crack use declined in both cities simultaneously.

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Re: "The Drug, Not Its Form - Time for Congress to fix cocaine-crack disparity," Wednesday Editorials.

Your position on racial disparity in sentencing is exactly right. The vast difference in crack and powder cocaine sentences is only one of the reasons for the excessive incarceration of black Americans, but it is starkly unfair.

The latest Center for Disease Control survey, covering 1999-2002, reported that 23.5 percent of white adults had ever used street drugs (excluding marijuana) while only 18 percent of black adults had.

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Blow, snow, star dust, coke.

Crack.

Whether whacked up on a mirror and snorted through a rolled-up dollar bill or cut with baking soda into rocks for smoking, it's cocaine - an addictive, illegal drug by any name. However delivered, it's not something we would wish for our kids, family or even our worst enemies.

Yet Congress, proving again that good intentions can yield bad policy, passed with great fanfare the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act (and reinforced it with a 1988 measure) that effectively separated powder and crack cocaine, with different punishments for possession.

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And so Barack Obama tells high school kids in New Hampshire that he "made some bad decisions" at their age. He "experimented" with pot and cocaine. This is old news -- but even if it were new news, it would be ho-hum in today's politics.

After all, drug use has proven no bar to high office -- at least for those who evaded arrest. Vice President Al Gore, ex-House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas have all admitted to smoking pot. President Bush refuses to deny that he snorted cocaine. And no one believes that Bill Clinton "didn't inhale" on that joint.

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At least one Weatherford resident is fed up with the availability of drug paraphernalia, specifically glass pipes, within the city.

James Hamilton wrote an e-mail to city council members and the mayor earlier this week suggesting a law be placed on the books making it illegal to purchase the pipes under what he calls "the laughable disclaimer, ‘for recreational use only.'"

Hamilton lives with his family in the Clear Lake area of Weatherford and frequently purchases gasoline, ice and other incidentals at a convenience store at the intersection of Clear Lake Road and Interstate 20.

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I'm no stranger to the drug war. I know that police officers want to do the right thing, want to put drug dealers out of business, and they look forward to the day when the dealers are gone and the cartels eliminated. And that is why the Interagency raid in Refugio (Victoria Advocate, Nov 5) with 28 arrests was celebrated by local law enforcement. Law Enforcement is a brotherhood and cooperation, and getting the job done always feels good. My experience tells me that we will never see the end of the dealers and cartels by fighting the drug war the way we have been. Drugs are in every town in the nation: lots of drugs, lots of different kinds of drugs.

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If all the people in the Texas criminal justice system lived in a single community, it would be the fourth largest city in Texas. More than 700,000 Texans are either behind bars or on probation.

By 2040, the number of incarcerated could balloon to more than 340,000, according to the state demographer. If state leaders and prison officials consciously set out to create the least effective, most destructive, fiscally unsound prison system possible, they probably couldn't match the irrationality of what we have. The system's reckless disregard for reality fails inmates and guards, and imperils every Texan.

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Now that the 2008 presidential election circus is in full swing, it's high time to see where candidates stand on the most important issues facing our society. Most of these are wars, in some fashion or another: the war in Iraq, the war on terror, the war on poverty, the war on drugs, the war against leaving children behind.

When it comes to these wars, the candidates tend to align themselves in a fairly predictable way with their party. But when they try articulating how they feel about the war on drugs, interesting things happen.

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Ticketing May Reduce Jail Overcrowding

Law enforcement agencies can reduce the strain on the overcrowded Lubbock County jail - if they begin to write tickets instead of taking some misdemeanor offenders to jail.

Legislators overwhelmingly passed a law that began Sept. 1, making possession of less than four ounces of marijuana a ticketable offense instead of making officers arrest people and take them to jail.

Six other misdemeanors are also ticketable at officer discretion.

HB 2391 could reduce jail populations across the state and save counties money without reducing the severity of punishment associated with such drug possession.

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Dear Editor,

Re: "Ex-Cop Walks the Talk in Anti-Prohibition Effort" ["Reefer Madness," News] Nov. 2 by Jordan Smith: Former Police Officer b of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition is to be commended for speaking out against the War on Drugs. Attempts to limit the supply of illegal drugs while demand remains constant only increase the profitability of drug-trafficking. For addictive drugs like heroin, a spike in street prices leads desperate addicts to increase criminal activity to feed desperate habits. The drug war doesn't fight crime; it fuels crime.

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Imbalance Has Continued Far Too Long; Right This Wrong

For years, judges, academics, defense lawyers and even the U.S. Sentencing Commission -- the federal agency charged with responsibility for developing fair sentencing guidelines -- have condemned as unfair and unfounded the laws passed by Congress in the late 1980s that punish crack cocaine offenses much more severely than crimes involving powder cocaine. Average crack sentences have been about 10 years; powder cocaine sentences, seven years. Most notoriously, the laws wallop people who deal in as few as 5 grams of crack with the same five-year mandatory minimum prison term as those caught dealing 500 grams of powder cocaine. Lawmakers have stubbornly refused to close this 100-1 ratio.

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The silence of a South Texas sunrise is broken by the sounds of shouting, fists banging on doors, and the metallic clank of handcuffs as they clamp around yet another pair of wrists.

Interagency drug raids with neighboring law enforcement departments and other agencies have become a standard practice for rounding up known drug offenders in small towns. Interagency cooperation is not a new concept, said Cuero Police Chief Glenn Mutchler, who recalled cooperative efforts 25 years ago among the Edna -- where he was an officer -- Yoakum and Cuero police departments.

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Ephedrine Laws Have Helped Reduce Number Of Domestic Labs, Officials Say

When you sign your name to buy certain cold medicines, no one might ever look through the log that pharmacies and other stores are required to keep to aid the battle against methamphetamine, a highly addictive stimulant that most law enforcement agencies consider their No. 1 drug problem.

Two years after the Texas Legislature passed a law that made it harder to buy Sudafed and other over-the-counter medicines containing ephedrine and pseudoephedrine - key ingredients of meth - many police and sheriffs' agencies said they don't have time to routinely check the logs, most of which are kept on paper.

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Drugs did not spawn Mexico's organized crime networks. Just like alcohol prohibition gave rise to Al Capone, drug prohibition created the violent drug-trafficking organizations blamed for all the killings in Mexico.

With alcohol prohibition repealed in the U.S., liquor bootleggers no longer gun each other down in drive-by shootings.

It's worth noting that Mexico's recent upsurge in violence began after an anti-drug crackdown created a power vacuum among competing cartels. From a political perspective, Mexican President Felipe Calderon stands to benefit from the violence.

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Back in March 2002, retired New Jersey State Police Lt. Jack Cole made headlines when he and four other former cops teamed up to form the drug policy reform group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. The group's message is simple: The Drug War is a lie that ruins lives and damages the reputation of and respect for police. If you want to control the market for illicit drugs, LEAP asserts, legalize them - it's the only way to regulate their distribution and use. In just five years, LEAP has grown from five founding members to about 10,000 members, including former cops, Drug Enforcement Agency agents, judges, and prosecutors. And in that time, Cole has delivered more than 600 talks to groups around the country, talking to community groups (he's big on the Rotary club circuit), academics, and public officials, and has consistently transformed skeptics into believers. Cole's intensity and passion are palpable, and his argument is unassailably logical: LEAP wants the Drug War to end - now. In town last month to speak at UT, Cole sat down with Reefer Madness to discuss the War on Drugs and the inevitability of legalization.

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