The Chicago Sun- Times editorial ["Law needs to rein in government seizures," April 19] supporting the reform of Illinois and federal forfeiture laws regarding drugs and suspected drug proceeds was spot- on correct, and former administrator of the U. S. Drug Enforcement Administration Peter Bensinger's contrary opinion was dead wrong. ["Seize cartel assets best way to beat them," letter to the editor, April 22]. As the Chicago Sun- Times editorialized on June 22, 2010, "America's War on Drugs is over - we lost - and it's time to get real about our drug laws." [continues 288 words]
You would think that medical marijuana was contagious to hear Chicago aldermen talk about an appropriate zoning district for the location of its dispensaries. Instead of thinking so hard about where medical marijuana should not be available, aldermen should swallow hard, forget the foolish historic prohibition of marijuana and allow medical marijuana to be sold anywhere that other medicines are sold. Sick people are not benefited by making it inconvenient, if not difficult, to visit a business that will sell a substance that helps people suffering from cancer, chemotherapy, AIDS and other serious illnesses. [continues 53 words]
You would think that medical marijuana was contagious to hear Chicago aldermen talk about an appropriate zoning district for the location of medicinal pot dispensaries (News, July 30). Instead of thinking so hard about where medical marijuana should not be dispensed, aldermen should swallow hard, forget the foolish historic prohibition of the substance they formerly indulged in exchange for the reward of constituent votes cut from the fabric of fear and instead allow medical marijuana to be sold anywhere that other medicines can be sold. [continues 75 words]
"Chiraq" is the word invented by an oppressed, inner-city people suffering unspeakable and unrelenting violence in Chicago. They feel like they live in Iraq, but they fail to correctly identify the primary cause of the unnecessary violence - drug prohibition. Meanwhile, the powerful pols, the local preachers and the pundits scrupulously avoid addressing the need for drug enforcement reform. Incredibly, some of these so-called community leaders collect civic awards despite their oblivion, intransigence and uselessness in confronting the main cause of Chicago's epidemic of street violence. James Gierach Palos Park [end]
Neighborhoods beset by violence need to take the prohibition profit out of the drug business on Chicago street corners. Sure those neighborhoods need better schools and jobs, but it's all too easy for kids (and adults) to make a career choice of drugs, gangs, guns and violence when society encourages and enables that very choice by making drugs worth many times their true value, simply because drugs are prohibited. Tranquility or violence. Legalization or prohibition. The choice is ours as much as the consequences. - -- James E. Gierach Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, Palos Park [end]
Cracks in the foundation of America's worst public policy ever, the disastrous war on drugs, is further evident with the action taken by Uruguay recently to legalize marijuana for recreational purposes, not just medical purposes. This action follows the lead of Colorado and the state of Washington in the U.S. But the importance of Uruguay's action lies in the fact that it's the first nation to openly and bravely disregard the 1961 U.N. Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs that outlaws marijuana. [continues 65 words]
Cracks in the foundation of America's worst public policy ever, the disastrous war on drugs, is evident with the action taken by Uruguay Tuesday to legalize marijuana for recreational purposes, not just medical purposes. This action follows the lead of Colorado and the state of Washington in the U.S.A. But the importance of Uruguay's action lies in the fact that this South American country is the first nation to openly and bravely disregard the 1961 U.N. Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs that outlaws marijuana in Schedules I and IV. [continues 75 words]
Your Sunday editorial ["Drug testing for the good of the CHA"] is sadly mistaken, because, fundamentally, the opinion is supportive of the war on drugs. Drug testing is just another drug-war implement, a cancerous metastasizing tentacle that operates to protect intolerance, guarantee the defeat of personal freedom, strip poor and minority people of their privacy and dignity (and opportunity for low-cost housing for some), ignore differentiation between addict, patient and recreational user, and attempt the exclusion of drugs from public housing and a free society that can't keep illicit drugs out of a single U.S. prison. The entity with the CHA drug-testing contract should be happy with the editorial and policy but not another living soul. Curse the drug war and all its "paraphernalia." James E. Gierach Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), Palos Park [end]
Dear Editor: Finally, the criminal justice pendulum starts to swing back toward the middle. On Monday, Attorney General Eric Holder announced in a speech before the American Bar Association that the hallmarks and cornerstones of injustice - racial discrimination, contracting civil liberties, the tying of the hands of federal judges in the sentencing process, and the imposition of three-time-loser laws and mandatory-minimum sentencing for non-violent criminals and non-violent drug offenders with reckless abandon as if Americans were made of money to waste on prisons - are about to end. [continues 298 words]
I have spoken to former Ceasefire executive director Tio Hartiman and suggested that his September gang summit in Chicago should schedule as speakers U.S. Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), who called for the wholesale arrest, conviction and incarceration of 18,000 Gangster Disciples and me. Kirk wants to lock up the intended audience, and I want to legalize drugs to strip them of their ability to earn money in the drug business. It would be worth the price of admission to see the audience reaction. James T. Gierach Palos Park [end]
While the U.S. Senate considers background-check legislation as a means to stop gun violence, it should also do a background check on the war on drugs. The two unrelated deaths of youngsters reported in the Chicago newspapers last week were beyond the reach of gun control but were within the reach of a better drug policy. Brian Carrick, 17, died from a single punch triggered by his failure to pay a small drug debt in 2002 in McHenry County, according to testimony in the trial of his attacker. [continues 117 words]
One step forward, two steps back" is a good description of the fight to legalize and regulate drugs to stop the drug-related violence that's a routine occurrence in Chicago and every big city. In November, voters in Colorado and Washington voted to legalize marijuana, a step forward. But this month, the Sandy Hook School tragedy has the country (Cook County and Illinois included) taking two steps backward with endless discussions and proposals for gun control, some good and some bad. [continues 97 words]
Letters to the Editor July 5, 2012 Yes, gun control is no joke [Chicago Sun-Times, editorial, July 3], with Chicago kids dropping like flies in some city neighborhoods especially on weekends. Exhibit A last weekend: Nine people shot dead and 22 wounded. But with an estimated 200 million guns in private hands, the United States needs to take the profit out of drugs more than guns out of the hands of citizens to stop the killing. And selling gun-buyback programs as a violence solution is like selling lead life preservers to the drowning. [continues 92 words]
Orland Township Youth and Family Counseling sponsored a recent drug abuse symposium at Sandburg High School in reaction to a sharp rise in heroin-related use, arrests and deaths among youths in the Orland-Palos area. Concerned parents and students gathered in the gymnasium to hear lengthy presentations from mainstream speakers who included a recovered drug addict now in the treatment business, an Orland Park police commander and a spokesperson for a drug treatment consortium. All three speakers were supporters of the drug war, and all three make their living off the unintended consequences of the war on drugs - namely more crime, more drugs and more kids needing treatment. None of the speakers gave any hint of appreciation of the fact that they're on the side of the likes of Al Capone and today's drug cartels and street gangs in favoring the United Nations/U.S. costly and ineffective drug prohibition policy. [continues 493 words]
Chicago leads the nation in heroin emergency room admissions and overdose deaths. Not an unexpected result since heroin is a dangerous drug, particularly when prohibited. Drug users have no idea of the potency of the heroin in their pocket on any given day, because the substance is outlawed and, therefore, unregulated. Take the case of Melissa Best, who allegedly shared heroin with in-laws and died. She quickly passed out after injecting heroin and whatever cutting agent, but was it just "good stuff" or was it too much stuff? It's anybody's guess until the toxicologist gets to work, which is always long after the ingestion-dosage decision is made in prohibition darkness. [continues 144 words]
Mayoral candidate Rahm Emanuel hopes that a nice round number of 1,000 more cops on the street will sell like presidential candidate Bill Clinton's 100,000 more cops sold. As for me, I'd be happier if Rahm proposed to take 1,000 cops off drug-war duty by supporting drug policy reform ideas that take the profit out of the drug business. If he proposed and accomplished that, then there would be less turf-war crime, less addict crime, fewer shootings, fewer bullet holes, weaker gangs, fewer guns in drug-dealer hands, fewer crossfire innocent victims, less need for more police officers, fewer dollars going to the Cook County Jail and greater hope that Chicago, Cook County and Illinois might be able to pay the bills of government. [continues 68 words]
In their June 2 column, Dora Dixie and Peter Bensinger, two persons who earn their living tending to the drug disaster caused by zero-tolerance prohibition and its multifaceted dire consequences - including death, disease, overdose, drug contamination, addiction, gang proliferation and rampant crime - repeat a number of misleading predictions should Illinois become the 15th state to stop arresting seriously ill patients who use marijuana with their doctors' recommendations. First, they claim medical marijuana states have the highest rates of teen marijuana use, implying that somehow medical marijuana laws lead to more teen use. [continues 228 words]
Comptroller Dan Hynes opposes medical marijuana for the sick and dying. Hynes opposes the sale of the Thomson prison to the federal government to remove another unaffordable prison albatross from the backs of Illinois taxpayers while stoking a misplaced fear that "Gitmoees" represent some special risk if caged at a maximum security prison in a little Podunk, Ill., river town, a "difficult issue" for Hynes. And Hynes opposes a reduction in Illinois' burgeoning 45,000-inmate population through an early release of nonviolent offenders program, despite a remarkable increase in Illinois' prison population during the drug-war era, ignoring a state fiscal reality that gobbles tax receipts faster than taxpayers can lay golden eggs. School funding, not prison funding, is the priority, Comptroller Hynes. Hynes' financial immaturity and fear-mongering just about has me sold on Gov. Pat Quinn. James E. Gierach Palos Park [end]
A not so jolly drug-war Santa has delivered Chicago's Southwest Siders a really big lump of coal in the form of 650 pounds of that dreaded weed, America's favorite illegal and uncontrolled substance -- cannabis sativa. ["650 lbs. of pot seized in Stickney," suntimes.com.] The drugs, valued at nearly $2 million, were imported from Mexico, despite a really big fence partially constructed along the 1,952-mile border. The DEA isn't saying whether the drugs got over, under, around or through the really big fence, but chances are, given the season, the drugs were stowed, unbeknownst to Santa, inside one of his really big sleighs that regularly evade radar in the Caribbean. [continues 134 words]
