All that's left is the rock and roll. Sex? Drugs? What else can David Paterson cop to now? That he played guitar in a garage band when he was growing up in Hempstead, N.Y.? Don't bet against it. New York's new governor is the perfect age. He graduated from Hempstead High in 1971. Back in the day, he says, he smoked marijuana occasionally and, at 22 or 23, tried cocaine "a couple of times." At that point in his life, he'd have been a senior history major at Columbia -- or perhaps a recent graduate. It would be a couple of years before he decided he wanted to go to law school. [continues 553 words]
All that's left is the rock and roll. Sex? Drugs? What else can David Paterson cop to now? That he played guitar in a garage band when he was growing up in Hempstead? Don't bet against it. New York's new governor is the perfect age. He graduated from Hempstead High in 1971. Back in the day, he says, he smoked marijuana occasionally and, at 22 or 23, tried cocaine "a couple of times." At that point in his life, he'd have been a senior history major at Columbia - or perhaps a recent graduate. It would be a couple of years before he decided he wanted to go to law school. [continues 553 words]
'Marlboro," Tom Suozzi was saying yesterday. "Red." The Nassau County executive was never a heavy smoker. "I'd smoke when I'd go out drinking with my buddies," he said. "Back then, nobody really talked about how dangerous it was." For Suozzi, as for many smokers, the end didn't come all at once. "I started seeing reports about the health issues in the newspaper and on TV," Suozzi said. "But I didn't stop until my daughter was coming home from school saying 'It's so horrible to smoke.'" [continues 566 words]
What's so conservative about the war on drugs? Spending billions in taxpayer dollars with no clear progress? Inserting government agents into Americans' private lives? Holding a million men and women in prison for what are mostly nonviolent crimes? Please, how does any of that promote the values that principled conservatives hold dear? None of it does, of course. But now, seemingly all of a sudden, people on the left aren't the only ones expressing doubts about America's war on (some) drugs. Some of America's most energized conservatives - activists and intellectuals on the right - are openly asking, "Isn't there a better way to deal with drug abuse than the old lock-'em-up-forever approach?" [continues 530 words]
Robert Morgenthau is against the death penalty. Always has been. Is today. In his 30 years as Manhattan district attorney, he has never sought to have anyone killed. Not once. Leslie Crocker Snyder, the swaggering ex-judge who wants Morgenthau's job, has been a booster of capital punishment, although she rarely mentions the issue these days. Over the years, she hasn't just supported the death penalty. She's promoted it, relished in it. At times, she's seemed to enjoy the idea of putting criminals to death. [continues 674 words]
Robert Morgenthau is sitting up in his vast and cluttered office at One Hogan Place, braced for my searing questions about the death penalty, the Rockefeller drug laws, the falling murder rate, the rising sleaze on Wall Street and all the other things that veteran New York prosecutors get asked about, especially when they're running for re-election. But I don't care about any of that. Not today. I am here to ask the only question that matters as the 85-year-old Manhattan district attorney prepares to announce that, yes, he would like another four-year term. [continues 830 words]
It took a while, a whole lot longer than it should have. But Tony Papa finally got to see his painting hanging where it belonged. Thirty-five miles and 16 years from the prison cell where he painted it. Displayed in a gallery at the Whitney Museum of American Art. This wasn't the first time that Papa's self-portrait, which he titled "15 to Life," was shown at the Whitney. But the last time Papa wasn't able to make the museum show. He was otherwise detained, serving an absurdly long prison term at the Ossining Correctional Facility on a nonviolent drug conviction under the state's harsh Rockefeller laws. [continues 985 words]
Let me get this straight. Some American kid smoking pot is to blame for the World Trade Center terror attack? Apparently so. That's the message, anyway, of a glitzy new museum show that opened yesterday on the first three floors at One Times Square, sponsored by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. "Drug Traffickers, Terrorists and You," the exhibit is called, which, if I'm not mistaken, was once the official slogan for Times Square. OK, maybe not. But it probably should have been. [continues 702 words]
This was a meeting in the private office of the Manhattan district attorney, involving a proposal to amend the New York State marijuana law. So of course someone had to ask the question. That someone, yesterday, turned out to be me. "Uh, Mr. Morgenthau, in your long life, what kind of, ah, personal experience have you had with marijuana? Have you ever smoked it yourself?" The soon-to-be-85-year-old district attorney looked up sternly from his chair, then cracked half a smile. "I missed that generation," he said. [continues 715 words]
Richard Stratton knows what it's like to run a magazine with unconventional demographics. Before he took over as publisher and editor-in-chief of High Times, he ran Prison Life, a beloved but now dead journal for men and women behind bars. A fascinating subject, for sure - but not exactly the upscale population that most advertisers seek. "The readers didn't have much money to spend," Stratton conceded with a smile. "And they couldn't get out to the store." [continues 744 words]
Limbaugh May Not Want Rants From Previous Years Recalled "Let's all admit something." Rush Limbaugh was on his usual tear. "There's nothing good about drug use," he was saying. "We know it. It destroys individuals. It destroys families. Drug use destroys societies. Drug use, some might say, is destroying this country. And we have laws against selling drugs, pushing drugs, using drugs, importing drugs. And the laws are good because we know what happens to people in societies and neighborhoods which become consumed by them. And so if people are violating the law by doing drugs, they ought to be accused and they ought to be convicted and they ought to be sent up." [continues 685 words]
"Let's all admit something." Rush Limbaugh was on his usual tear. "There's nothing good about drug use," he was saying. "We know it. It destroys individuals. It destroys families. Drug use destroys societies. Drug use, some might say, is destroying this country. And we have laws against selling drugs, pushing drugs, using drugs, importing drugs. And the laws are good because we know what happens to people in societies and neighborhoods which become consumed by them. And so if people are violating the law by doing drugs, they ought to be accused and they ought to be convicted and they ought to be sent up." [continues 680 words]
The DAs are hanging on by their fingernails. Just about everyone else in New York is convinced: The Rockefeller-era drug laws need to be reformed - and drastically. Long prison sentences for nonviolent drug offenders just don't make sense any more. We've seen the human disaster that approach has caused. The gullible girlfriends doing 15 to life. The ignorant mules sent off forever. The street-corner dime-bag boys punished far more harshly than the kingpins - - far more harshly than murderers, rapists and kidnappers. [continues 693 words]
This was almost exactly a year ago, back when a triple-murder was considered a jarring crime. "Carnegie Massacre" was still in the headlines. This was the pre-terror New York. Jennifer Stahl and two of her friends had been shot to death in her locked apartment above the world's most famous delicatessen. The crime was an especially senseless one. There was no reason these people had to die. The victims' hands and feet were bound with duct tape. They were finished off with bullets to the head. [continues 752 words]
I'm not usually big on anniversary stories, but this one is just too awful, too expensive, too pointless to ignore. Sadly, another year has passed without a repeal of the mindlessly harsh and provably ineffective Rockefeller drug laws. It's a shame ol' Nelson can't drop by and say hello at noon today, when a big crowd of decent New Yorkers will gather on Third Avenue outside the office of his latest successor, George Pataki. Mothers whose daughters are serving life in prison for nonviolent drug crimes. Fathers whose sons are doing 15-year minimums for being naive drug mules. Brothers and sisters and husbands and wives and children and friends and - well, the faces all fade together after a while. We now have 22,000 people in New York prisons on account of these cruel and senseless laws. [continues 745 words]
So we have this cool new mayor, right? Well, you should have heard all the nickel-bag grief he was getting yesterday. It wasn't just the marijuana activists, slapping his grinning face on a pro-legalization ad campaign. That's fair-game guerrilla politics, clever and cheap. But here, in the big marble lobby of City Hall, was a bunch of goofy-looking people -- reporters, City Council aides, even a couple of folks on the Bloomberg administration payroll, current and former potheads among them, I'm sure -- tossing off the stoner puns like so many dying roaches at the end of a very long night. [continues 709 words]
It's not all corporate pitchmen at this year's Super (Ad) Bowl. Joining Anheuser-Busch, Pepsi and tonight's other big-budget image buffers is one advertiser with a truly tarnished brand: White House drug czar John Walters, desperate to add some luster to the government's discredited war on drugs. Sorry, John. That'll take more than TV commercials, even during the Super Bowl. But Walters is a hard-nosed protege of tough-talking drug warrior Bill Bennett. Since being confirmed by the Senate in December, Walters has been an eager captive of the old-school lock-'em-up approach, emphasizing pointless police busts and endless prison terms instead of proven drug treatment. And now he's at it again, with a preposterous new message and plenty of money to burn. [continues 665 words]
Wanda Best is catching the early bus to Albany this morning, not that she's complaining about that. "I'd stay up all night if I had to," she said. "My husband is my world. Whatever it takes to get him home." Wanda was inside her apartment yesterday at the LaGuardia Houses near South Street Seaport. She is the mother of five good-looking and well-mannered kids. She has bad arthritis. At this time in her life, which is 50, she certainly never expected to be a single mom. [continues 632 words]
The crime was "drug-related." That's the expression the police always use in cases like this one. And here we were again. Five bloody victims, shot execution-style. Hands bound with duct tape. Bullets to the head. A couple of pounds of marijuana were still sitting in the apartment-and more cash than normal people tend to have around. What could it be but another "drug-related" crime? You read about this one, I am sure. It was a fifth-floor walk-up above the most famous delicatessen on Earth, the Carnegie. Three of the victims were dead in a hurry. Two are hanging on. And as the week gave way to the weekend, the detectives were still staring into grainy frames of videotape, trying to make out the faces of two men who hurried from the building and up Seventh Avenue toward the subway station at 57th Street. [continues 520 words]
The last time we had anything like this from Hollywood was Christmastime, 1995. The film was "Dead Man Walking." The stars were Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn. He played an inmate on death row at the Louisiana State Penitentiary. She played a Catholic nun. It wasn't obvious at the time, but that movie and those actors achieved something quite extraordinary. They took an abstract social issue, capital punishment, and turned it into a topic that was impossible to ignore. "Dead Man Walking" accomplished this the only possible way: By telling a human story that was intimate, particular and unflinching. [continues 671 words]
