On Tuesday, President Obama commuted the sentences of 111 federal drug offenders. In his first term, Obama endured the sting of critics like me who called him one of the stingiest modern presidents when it comes to the presidential pardon power. In his second term, Obama is making up for lost time. With 673 commutations , the Washington Post reports , Obama has approached 690, the number of commutations issued by the previous 11 presidents. Obama deserves credit for doing the right thing. [continues 480 words]
For the first time since 1988, both major parties' nominees - Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump - say that they have never smoked or experimented with marijuana (without inhaling). President Obama has been open about having used marijuana and other drugs in his youth, yet his administration has taken insufficient steps to inject some sanity into the federal government's approach to marijuana policy. In 2008, the Obama campaign talked about keeping federal prosecutors from going after medical marijuana dispensaries in states that have legalized medical use such as California. To the contrary, in his first term especially, Obama's Department of Justice was merciless on medical marijuana providers, as well as users. If you hoped for big change, get over it. Wednesday, the Drug Enforcement Administration announced it would not change marijuana's classification from the Schedule I drug status it has held since 1970. [continues 531 words]
Republican political consultant Mike Madrid isn't used to getting calls from the ACLU, and yet he has found himself working with the civil liberties group because some practices are so egregious that Republicans and Democrats should have no trouble finding common cause. The issue is civil asset forfeiture - also known as "policing for profit." The federal government can seize your property, and the only way you can get it back is to prove you are not guilty of a crime. California law prohibits local authorities from permanently seizing most property without a conviction, but there's a loophole in the law - called "equitable sharing." Local police can seize your property, hand jurisdiction over the feds, and get rewarded with up to 80 percent of the goodies even if prosecutors fail to convict - or even charge - an offender. [continues 774 words]
The death of Prince, who apparently had a Percocet problem, and a 2016 presidential primary peppered with New England town halls that delved into increased heroin overdoses and prescription drug abuse have converged to create what CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta calls "a public health epidemic." Drug addiction is 2016's big nonpolitical story. CNN aired a special, "Prescription Addiction: Dead in the USA." The Senate passed the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act to provide grants for treatment and improved monitoring. The House also is working on legislation , with funding expected later in the year. [continues 771 words]
In 1997, I went to a "needle exchange" in San Francisco to see firsthand how the "harm reduction program" prevented the spread of HIV among addicts. Exchange staff offered vitamins, treatment for sores and referrals to kick the habit; addicts handed over carefully bundled needles in a one-dirty-for-one-clean exchange. Users' participation demonstrated that they had not given up on themselves. The needle program began with good intentions. In the 1990s, addicts often shared needles - and HIV. The pioneer program promised to save lives make users responsible for syringe disposal. Little did I know that over the next two decades, in San Francisco and other U.S. cities, "needle exchange" would morph into "syringe access." [continues 486 words]
The Senate Appropriations Committee did something last week the Senate has never done - it passed a marijuana reform measure. It was the narrowest of proposals, an amendment co-authored by Sens. Steve Daines, R-Mont., and Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., to a military spending bill that would prohibit the Department of Veterans Affairs from using federal money to prosecute doctors who recommend medical marijuana to veterans in states where the drug is legal. Last year, the House passed five measures that supported states' rights on marijuana. [continues 456 words]
In commuting the sentences of 22 federal drug offenders Tuesday, President Obama has begun to take the unfettered power of executive clemency embedded in the Constitution to the place where it belongs. "I've been a cynic on the Obama administration for a while," University of St. Thomas School of Law Professor Mark Osler told me, but with these commutations, which doubled the president's total, "it's hard for me to be cynical about what's happening today." Finally, the administration is demonstrating how pardon power should be used, with, as Osler put it, "the most powerful person in the world freeing the least powerful person in the world." [continues 441 words]
Last year, Congress passed an amendment that barred the Department of Justice from using federal dollars to prosecute medical-marijuana dispensaries in states that have legalized them. Last week, three senators have proposed a measure to clean up the federal-state medical-marijuana mess once and for all. Sens. Cory Booker, D-N.J.; Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y.; and Rand Paul, R-Ky., introduced their Carers (Compassionate Access, Research Expansion and Respect States) Act, which should draw support from the right and left. Why? First, it would reclassify marijuana from a Schedule I to a Schedule II drug, granting recognition that marijuana has legitimate medical uses, a sop to the left. Second, it would direct the federal government to stop prosecuting dispensers in states that have legalized marijuana for medical use - a states' rights emphasis that should draw GOP votes. [continues 491 words]
I can't tell you how many times I've had out-of-towners tell me they think San Francisco is a breathtakingly beautiful city - so why is it that City Hall hasn't done more about baseball pitchers chewing tobacco at city ballparks? No wait, I can tell you. I've never heard that. I have heard countless complaints from tourists and locals about homeless people sprawled on sidewalks, the stink of the city and the creepiness of walking downtown while navigating around urine puddles, feces and used hypodermic needles. [continues 463 words]
Practically everyone expects Attorney General Kamala Harris to win re-election handily in November. The Democrat won 53 percent of the vote in a crowded June primary. Arising star expected to ascend someday to the governorship, or perhaps a U.S. Senate seat, Harris has won the endorsement of major newspapers. She's such an attractive candidate that, even though it was true, President Obama had to apologize last year for calling her "by far the best-looking attorney general" in the country. [continues 750 words]
If you wanted to nudge the courts to establish a right to use medical marijuana in states where it is legal, you couldn't pick a more sympathetic plaintiff than Brandon Coats of Colorado. As a teenager, Coats was in an automobile accident that left him severely disabled. Now 34, Coats is a quadriplegic who has had a state medical marijuana card since 2009. He worked as a customer service representative for Dish Network from 2007 to 2010, when Dish fired him after he tested positive for marijuana use during a random drug test. [continues 416 words]
If you wanted to nudge the courts to establish a right to use medical marijuana in states where it is legal, you couldn't pick a more sympathetic plaintiff than Brandon Coats of Colorado. As a teenager, Coats was injured in an automobile accident that left him severely disabled. Now 34, Coats is a quadriplegic who has had a state medical marijuana card since 2009. He worked as a customer service representative for Dish Network from 2007 to 2010, when Dish fired him after he tested positive for marijuana use during a random drug test. [continues 415 words]
The New York Times has seen the light. The paper editorialized in favor of an end to the federal ban on marijuana. According to Tony Newman of the Drug Policy Alliance, The Gray Lady has become the first major national newspaper to support legalizing marijuana. The Times did not celebrate marijuana use; it simply addressed the downside of prohibition - 658,000 arrests for marijuana possession in 2012, with a disproportionate representation of young black men. The editorial also laid out a rational view of marijuana. While research suggests that marijuana can have adverse affects on adolescent brains - - hence the paper's support for a ban on sales to those younger than 21 - it's not as hazardous to health as alcohol and tobacco. The paper also made this commonsense but rare assertion: "Moderate use of marijuana does not appear to pose a risk for otherwise healthy adults." [continues 439 words]
The New York Times has seen the light. On Sunday, the paper editorialized in favor of an end to the federal ban on marijuana. According to Tony Newman of the Drug Policy Alliance, the Gray Lady has become the first major national newspaper to support legalizing marijuana. The Times did not celebrate marijuana use; it simply addressed the downside of prohibition - 658,000 arrests for marijuana possession in 2012, with a disproportionate representation of young black men. The editorial also laid out a rational view of marijuana. While research suggests that marijuana can have adverse affects on adolescent brains - - hence the paper's support for a ban on sales to those under 21- it's not as hazardous to health as alcohol and tobacco. The paper also made this commonsense but rare assertion: "Moderate use of marijuana does not appear to pose a risk for otherwise healthy adults." [continues 440 words]
"Pee in a cup" is a phrase you should prepare to hear frequently this election season. A requirement that doctors be subject to random drug and alcohol testing is the curb-appeal provision in a measure that will be on the California ballot in November. The brains behind the initiative titled the Troy and Alana Pack Patient Safety Act - named after two Danville children killed by a substance-abusing driver in 2003 - clearly figured out that voters are more likely warm to the part that promises drug tests for doctors than the measure's more important provision, which would lift the state's $250,000 cap on medical malpractice awards to $1.1 million. [continues 684 words]
MOBILE, ALA. - "That situation didn't define who I was," Clarence Aaron, 45, told a group gathered for a weekend celebration at the Mobile high school he attended more than two decades ago. When at age 24 he found himself in federal prison in 1993 - after he was convicted and sentenced to life without parole for a first-time, nonviolent drug offense - he felt what he called the "stigma." But the former LeFlore High varsity football star refused to give in to the bitterness of receiving a life sentence while career drug dealers received decades' less time. He had a plan: Follow the rules. Work hard. Even in maximum security, "be the best person I can be." [continues 1012 words]
The apparent heroin overdose death of actor Philip Seymour Hoffman already has become a hockey puck in the war over the war on drugs. During a House subcommittee hearing on federal marijuana policy Tuesday, critics of the war on drugs hammered a White House drug official for putting too much emphasis on marijuana when Washington instead should focus on dangerous drugs that actually kill users. "What is more dangerous and addictive," Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., asked the White House's deputy director of drug control policy, Michael Botticelli, methamphetamine and cocaine or marijuana? [continues 452 words]
The apparent heroin overdose death of actor Philip Seymour Hoffman already has become a hockey puck in the war over the war on drugs. During a House subcommittee hearing on federal marijuana policy on Tuesday, critics of the war on drugs hammered a White House drug official for putting too much emphasis on marijuana when Washington instead should focus on dangerous drugs that actually kill users. "What is more dangerous, and what is more addictive?" Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., asked the White House deputy director of drug control policy, Michael Botticelli, methamphetamine and cocaine or marijuana? [continues 447 words]
The Department of Justice should get a new name - like the Department That Can See No Evil, the Department of Dungeons or the Department of Cover-ups. Once a bad law becomes the law of the land, it takes years of activism engaged by countless voices to force Washington to patch things up for a handful of the bad law's victims. In 1993, Clarence Aaron, a 24-year-old college student, was convicted for his role in a crack cocaine deal. Aaron neither bought nor sold drugs; he was paid $1,500 for connecting two dealers. Nonetheless a federal court sentenced him to life without parole. [continues 412 words]
President Obama commuted the sentences of eight crack cocaine offenders Thursday, including that of Clarence Aaron, who was serving a sentence of life without parole for a first-time nonviolent drug conviction when he was 23. Aaron's story represents the worst excesses of the federal criminal justice system. Aaron, of Mobile, Ala., had no criminal record. He had held jobs. In 1992, he was a college student who decided to address his money problems by acting as an intermediary between two career drug dealers. The dealers paid him $1,500 to set up two large cocaine deals. They got caught. The ringleaders knew how to game the system. They pleaded guilty and testified against Aaron. [continues 714 words]
