On a Sunday morning in late July, in a small town in southwest Alabama, Barbara Moore Knight gave her fellow church members news that brought spontaneous applause and murmurs of "Amen!" She told them that her son, James LaRon Knight, was among the drug felons whose sentences had been commuted by President Barack Obama the week before. In 2004, Knight was convicted of conspiracy to sell cocaine. Although the crime was nonviolent, he was sentenced to more than 24 years in a federal prison. The sentence was a travesty, an unduly harsh punishment for a family man never accused of running a substantial criminal enterprise. [continues 507 words]
On a Sunday morning in late July, in a small town in southwest Alabama, Barbara Moore Knight gave her fellow church members news that brought spontaneous applause and murmurs of "Amen!" She told them that her son, James LaRon Knight, was among the drug felons whose sentences had been commuted by President Barack Obama the week before. In 2004, Knight was convicted of conspiracy to sell cocaine. Although the crime was nonviolent, he was sentenced to more than 24 years in a federal prison. The sentence was a travesty, an unduly harsh punishment for a family man never accused of running a substantial criminal enterprise. [continues 535 words]
Five Republican presidential contenders this week addressed a New Hampshire forum concerned with a crisis swamping certain regions of the country, including New England: heroin addiction. The candidates spoke passionately, some sharing personal experiences. Jeb Bush spoke of his family's turmoil as his daughter Noelle, now 38 and in recovery, struggled with an addiction to prescription drugs and cocaine. "What I learned was that the pain that you feel when you have a loved one who has addiction challenges and kind of spirals out of control is something that is shared with a whole lot of people," he said. [continues 571 words]
By the time my 5-year-old daughter leaves for college, it's quite likely that marijuana use will be broadly decriminalized. Alaska has become the most recent state to move toward legalization, placing an initiative on the ballot for an August vote. If it passes, Alaska would join Washington and Colorado, which have already made recreational use legal for adults. The trend will probably continue, since 52 percent of Americans support legalization, according to the Pew Research Center. That's good news - and not because I want my daughter to indulge. [continues 519 words]
By the time my 5-year-old daughter leaves for college, it's quite likely that marijuana use will be broadly decriminalized. Alaska has become the most recent state to move toward legalization, placing an initiative on the ballot for an August vote. If it passes, Alaska would join Washington and Colorado, which have already made recreational use legal for adults. The trend will probably continue, since 52 percent of Americans support legalization, according to the Pew Research Center. That's good news - and not because I want my daughter to indulge. [continues 622 words]
Since his first year in office, President Barack Obama has drawn scathing critiques from a handful of prominent black critics, mostly for his failure to pursue an explicit "black" agenda aimed at ameliorating the legacy of racism. Usually, I disagree with those critics, who are unrealistic about the limits of the presidency, unfair in their assessments of Obama's broader agenda and, most important, bizarrely naive about the tightrope he walks as the first black man to win the office. If he announced a "black" agenda, the rest of his presidency would be swallowed up by the ensuing controversy. [continues 615 words]
Since his first year in office, President Obama has drawn scathing critiques from a handful of prominent black critics, mostly for his failure to pursue an explicit =93black=94 agenda aimed at ameliorating the legacy of racism. Usually, I disagree with those critics, who are unrealistic about the limits of the presidency, unfair in their assessments of Obama's broader agenda and, most important, bizarrely naive about the tightrope he walks as the first black man to win the office. If he announced a =93black=94 agenda, the rest of his presidency would be swallowed up by the ensuing controversy. [continues 592 words]
WASHINGTON -- In 2000, Hollywood released a critically-acclaimed and (I thought) important movie, "Traffic," about the futility of the so-called war on drugs. I was naive enough to believe it would spark a national conversation about the stupidity of our generations-long policy of drug prohibition. It didn't. We continued as we had since the 1960s -- locking up drug offenders, spending countless billions on police and prisons and abetting the devastating violence that attends the market in illegal narcotics. The United States, with about five percent of the world's population, accounts for nearly 25 percent of its prisoners -- largely as a consequence of draconian drug laws. [continues 572 words]
WASHINGTON -- In 2000, Hollywood released a critically acclaimed and (I thought) important movie, "Traffic," about the futility of the so-called war on drugs. I was naive enough to believe it would spark a national conversation about the stupidity of our generations-long policy of drug prohibition. It didn't. We continued as we had since the 1960s: locking up drug offenders, spending countless billions on police and prisons, and abetting the devastating violence that attends the market in illegal narcotics. The United States, with about 5 percent of the world's population, accounts for nearly 25 percent of its prisoners -- many of them drug offenders. [continues 573 words]
In 2000, Hollywood released a critically acclaimed and (I thought) important movie, Traffic, about the futility of the so-called war on drugs. I was naive enough to believe it would spark a national conversation about the stupidity of our generations-long policy of drug prohibition. It didn't. We continued as we had since the 1960s: locking up drug offenders, spending countless billions on police and prisons, and abetting the devastating violence that attends the market in illegal narcotics. The United States, with about 5 percent of the world's population, accounts for nearly 25 percent of its prisoners - largely as a consequence of draconian drug laws. [continues 574 words]
Forty years ago, President Nixon used the unfortunate phrase "War on Drugs," launching a misguided crusade that has encouraged street violence, eaten away at state budgets and packed our prisons with non-violent offenders. The nation's punitive approach to drugs has turned us into a penal colony. We lock up more of our citizens per capita than brutal dictators like Robert Mugabe and Fidel Castro. There's an old saying about seeing the opportunity in a crisis. Perhaps the multiple crises caused by the Great Recession -- which has bled state and local treasuries and swelled the federal deficit - -- will prompt lawmakers to end this futile era of prohibition, which has been costly far beyond the money spent. [continues 546 words]
Forty years ago, President Richard Nixon used the unfortunate phrase "War on Drugs," launching a misguided crusade that has encouraged street violence, eaten away at state budgets and packed our prisons with nonviolent offenders. The nation's punitive approach to drugs has turned us into a penal colony. We lock up more of our citizens per capita than brutal dictators like Robert Mugabe and Fidel Castro. There's an old saying about seeing the opportunity in a crisis. Perhaps the multiple crises caused by the Great Recession - which has bled state and local treasuries and swelled the federal deficit - will prompt lawmakers to end this futile era of prohibition, which has been costly far beyond the money spent. [continues 514 words]
Mexico has a point: Americans have contributed mightily to the creation of the violent drug cartels now wreaking havoc on the border. We are major consumers of their illegal products. In addition, we supply many of the weapons they use against rivals, law enforcement officials and innocents caught in the crossfire. Federal agents estimate that 90 percent of the pistols and rifles confiscated from Mexican drug traffickers last year and subjected to traces were traced back to gun dealers in the U.S., according to The New York Times. [continues 652 words]
In several speeches, Barack Obama has used an easy, if imprecise, formulation to express his despair over the high incarceration rate of young black men. "I don't want to wake up four years from now and discover that we still have more young black men in prison than in college," he said at a rally last year, repeating, more or less, a line used frequently by critics of the criminal justice system. But it's not accurate. If you were to check with academic and criminal justice sources, you'd find, happily, that there are far more young black men in college -- about 530,000, ages 18 to 24 -- than in prison -- about 106,000 in the same age group. [continues 630 words]
You don't hear much about the nation's "war on drugs" these days. It's a has-been, a glamourless geezer. Its glitz has been stolen by the "war on terror," which gets the media hype and campaign trail rhetoric. Railing against recreational drug use and demanding that offenders be locked away is so '90s. But the drug war proceeds, mostly away from news cameras and photo-ops, still chewing up federal and state resources and casting criminal sanctions over entire neighborhoods. Some four or so decades into an intensive effort to stamp out recreational drug use, billions of dollars have been spent; thousands of criminals, many of them foreigners, have been enriched; and hundreds of thousands of Americans have been imprisoned. And the use of illegal substances continues unabated. [continues 495 words]
ATLANTA - You don't hear much about the nation's "war on drugs" these days. It's a has-been, a glamourless geezer, a holdover from bygone days. Its glitz has been stolen by the "war on terror," which gets the news media hype and campaign trail rhetoric. Railing against recreational drug use and demanding that offenders be locked away is so '90s. But the drug war proceeds, mostly away from news cameras and photo-ops, still chewing up federal and state resources and casting criminal sanctions over entire neighborhoods. [continues 564 words]
Doing the Same Thing Over and Over and Expecting a Different Result. You don't hear much about the nation's "war on drugs" these days. It's a has-been, a holdover from bygone days. Its glitz has been stolen by the "war on terror," which gets the news media hype and campaign trail rhetoric. Railing against recreational drug use and demanding that offenders be locked away is so '90s. But the drug war proceeds, mostly away from news cameras, still chewing up federal and state resources and casting criminal sanctions over entire neighborhoods. Some four decades into an intensive effort to stamp out recreational drug use, billions of dollars have been spent; thousands of criminals, many of them foreigners, have been enriched; and hundreds of thousands of Americans have been imprisoned. And the use of illegal drugs continues unabated. [continues 485 words]
You don't hear much about the nation's "war on drugs" these days. It's a has-been, a glamourless geezer, a holdover from bygone days. Its glitz has been stolen by the "war on terror," which gets the news media hype and campaign trail rhetoric. Railing against recreational drug use and demanding that offenders be locked away is so '90s. But the drug war proceeds, mostly away from news cameras and photo-ops, still chewing up federal and state resources and casting criminal sanctions over entire neighborhoods. Some four or so decades into an intensive effort to stamp out recreational drug use, billions of dollars have been spent; thousands of criminals, many of them foreigners, have been enriched; and hundreds of thousands of Americans have been imprisoned. And the use of illegal substances continues unabated. [continues 517 words]
You don't hear much about the nation's "war on drugs" these days. It's a has-been, a glamourless geezer, a holdover from bygone days. Its glitz has been stolen by the "war on terror," which gets the news media hype and campaign trail rhetoric. Railing against recreational drug use and demanding that offenders be locked away is so '90s. But the drug war proceeds, mostly away from news cameras and photo-ops, still chewing up federal and state resources and casting criminal sanctions over entire neighborhoods. Four or so decades into an intensive effort to stamp out recreational drug use, billions of dollars have been spent; thousands of criminals, many of them foreigners, have been enriched; and hundreds of thousands of Americans have been imprisoned. And the use of illegal substances continues unabated. [continues 523 words]
