Last week, Josh Hamilton became the new golden boy of baseball. His record-breaking performance in Major League Baseball's All-Star Home Run Derby at Yankee Stadium was a living testament to the fact that people who struggled with drugs in the past can change their lives in a positive way. A few years ago, Hamilton, who developed an addiction to alcohol and drugs - primarily crack cocaine - was at a lowest point of his life when he was suspended from baseball for three years. [continues 524 words]
Last week, Josh Hamilton became the new golden boy of baseball. His record-breaking performance in Major League Baseball's All-Star Home Run Derby at Yankee Stadium was a living testament to the fact that people who struggled with drugs in the past can change their lives in a positive way. A few years ago, Hamilton, who developed an addiction to alcohol and drugs - primarily crack cocaine - was at a lowest point of his life when he was suspended from baseball for three years. [continues 502 words]
Fame Buys a Free Pass While Others Bear Brunt of Harsh Laws To the Editor: A celebrity is arrested and charged with fourth-degree criminal possession of a controlled substance, a Class C felony. If you pick up People magazine, watch "E.T." or have friends who follow celebrity gossip, you know how this story is going to end. Steven Page will, according to the band's Web site, be "heading into the studio later this year to record a new album." [continues 179 words]
Where does a junkie's time go? Mostly in 15-minute increments, like a bug-eyed Tarzan, swinging from hit to hit. For months on end in 1988, I sat inside a house in north Minneapolis, doing coke and listening to Tracy Chapman's "Fast Car" and finding my own pathetic resonance in the lyrics. "Any place is better," she sang. "Starting from zero, got nothing to lose." After shooting or smoking a large dose, there would be the tweaking and a vigil at the front window, pulling up the corner of the blinds to look for the squads I was always convinced were on their way. All day. All night. A frantic kind of boring. End-stage addiction is mostly about waiting for the police, or someone, to come and bury you in your shame. [continues 7778 words]
Court Documents; Tumultuous Night Detailed In Deposition The trio look haggard and worn. Mascara stains one woman's cheeks; the other stares into the camera with a half-smile. Steven Page, the Barenaked Ladies frontman now charged with cocaine possession, is unshaven. His trademark glasses are missing and he stares blankly into the camera for his mug shot in New York state, after a long night of allegedly fighting with his girlfriend and snorting cocaine. According to documents filed with Fayetteville Village Court, Mr. Page, 38, admitted to a police officer that a white powder he was snorting at an apartment in a suburb of Syracuse, N. Y., late last week was cocaine. "Yeah, it's cocaine," the court documents quote Mr. Page as saying. [continues 626 words]
Despite a decline in overall drug use, the rate at which young Americans between the ages of 15 and 24 have been dying from drug overdoses has jumped dramatically -- more than doubling between 1999 and 2005. In the same period, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, "accidental poisoning deaths" in this age group, mostly drug overdoses, have jumped from 849 to 2,355. Instead of rushing to save these young people, state governments are actually shortchanging them. Only a tiny fraction of the money that Washington sends to the states under the Substance Abuse and Prevention and Treatment Block Grant program is aimed at young drug abusers. This cannot go on. [continues 283 words]
IN the months to come, John McCain and Barack Obama will be vying for the support of various voting blocs. It is safe to say, however, that one group won't get much attention: economists. The American Economic Association represents only a small fraction of 1 percent of the electorate. In every election season, we economists expect to be largely ignored, and, unlike many of our other forecasts, that one often turns out to be right. But suppose it were otherwise. Imagine that those running for office tailored their economic positions to attract the experts in the field. What would it take to put the nation's economists solidly behind a candidate? [continues 811 words]
New York State Court of Appeals judges recently made an ignorant and short-sighted ruling that a small amount of marijuana in prison is not considered dangerous contraband, and reduced the sentences of both inmates and visitors caught introducing contraband into state correction facilities. Contrary to the court's ruling, any illegal substance smuggled into a correctional facility is dangerous and causes major security, death or injury threats to both staff and inmates. This is a court creating the law rather than merely interpreting what legislatures enacted. [continues 378 words]
Regarding John Stossel's article, there is a middle ground between drug prohibition and blanket legalization [Oped, "Legalize All Drugs," June 18, 2008]. Switzerland's heroin maintenance program has been shown to reduce disease, death and crime among chronic users. Providing addicts with standardized doses in a clinical setting eliminates many of the problems associated with heroin use. Heroin maintenance pilot projects are underway in Canada, Germany, Spain, and the Netherlands. If expanded, prescription heroin maintenance would deprive organized crime of a core client base. This would render illegal heroin trafficking unprofitable and spare future generations addiction. [continues 97 words]
Ten weeks after her 18th birthday, Natalie Ciappa spent an evening with friends before returning to Massapequa and the safety of her bed. The Plainedge High School senior even made curfew, which, in recognition of her recently conferred adulthood, had been moved back one hour, to 2:30 a.m. At 9 a.m., in a room adjacent to her own, Natalie's parents woke to an alarm clock. They had planned a family outing to Jones Beach to watch the Blue Angels in celebration of Memorial Day. [continues 1628 words]
To the Editor: Re "Not Winning the War on Drugs" (editorial, July 2): You say that "some experts argue that the rising price of cocaine on American streets is mostly the result of a strong euro and fast-growing demand in Europe." But this argument doesn't take into account the even greater disruption for methamphetamine, which no one is diverting to Europe. You selectively slice the Monitoring the Future data, citing 12th graders' annual use of cocaine in 2007, to claim that teenagers are using "more" cocaine than they did in 2001. But examination of that data shows a decrease in use by 12th graders from the previous year, to 5.2 percent in 2007 from 5.7 percent in 2006. And this is far below the peak of 6.2 percent in 1999. [continues 99 words]
On June 30, there was a letter from Dr. Nicholas Pace of New York University expressing concern about young people thinking marijuana harmless if a medical marijuana bill is enacted. Doctors prescribe methamphetamine, cocaine and morphine. Do teens think those drugs are harmless? Moreover, a study by Mitch Earleywine, Ph.D, associate professor of psychology at the State University at Albany, and others reviewed all public data about teen use of marijuana before and after the enactment of the medical marijuana law in 10 states. In every state there was a decrease, more than 50 percent in some cases, in youthful use after implementation of the law. [continues 200 words]
Several years ago I was walking home to my Manhattan apartment from Columbia University, just having delivered a lecture on New York state's notorious "Rockefeller Drug Laws." The state's mandatory-minimum sentencing laws had thrown tens of thousands of nonviolent drug offenders into state prisons with violent convicts. In my lecture I had called for more generous prisoner reentry programs, the restoration of felons' voting rights, increased educational programs inside prisons, and a restoration of judges' sentencing authority. A white administrator from another local university, a woman, who I had always judged to be fairly conservative and probably a Republican, had attended my lecture and was walking along with me to go to the subway. She told me that my lecture about the "prison industrial complex" had been a real "eye opener." The fact that two million Americans were imprisoned, she expressed, was a "real scandal." [continues 943 words]
Tatum O'Neal, the Oscar-winning actress, took a plea deal last week stemming from her June 1 arrest while supposedly trying to score some crack cocaine on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. She was initially charged with possession of a controlled substance and faced a year in prison if convicted. The court allowed her to plead out to a disorderly conduct charge and ordered her to attend two half-day drug treatment sessions. If she follows the court's orders, the cocaine possession charges will be dismissed. [continues 508 words]
To the Editor: "Not Winning the War on Drugs," your July 2 editorial about the importance of treating drug addicts and recognizing that drug abuse is a public health problem and not just a criminal problem, is on the mark. The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University has done analyses of the nation's prison population that show that 80 percent of felony inmates and juvenile arrestees either committed their crime while high on alcohol or drugs, stole money to buy drugs, have a history of drug and/or alcohol abuse and addiction, violated the alcohol or drug laws, or share some combination of those characteristics. [continues 102 words]
To the Editor: It is time to recognize that the war on drugs is simply not winnable. Prohibition didn't stop people from consuming alcohol, and the war on drugs will never stop them from using drugs. Until our policy makers come to grips with that reality, we will continue to suffer from a drug policy that creates a vicious black market economy and wastes billions of dollars on futile interdiction efforts. Jerry Wallingford San Diego [end]
To the Editor: Your editorial, while accurate, misses the overarching point. Prohibition failed in the past, and it is not working now. The scarce tax dollars currently being wasted by the White House on quixotic interdiction adventures pale in comparison to the decades of tax revenues we haven't been collecting because of prohibition. These funds could help pay for honest drug education, free drug treatment on demand and better health care -- all things we need right now. Instead of flawed government hype, we need policy alternatives to the drug war that uphold the sovereignty of individuals over their minds and bodies and are grounded in science, compassion, health and human rights. Anthony Papa Communications Specialist Drug Policy Alliance [end]
To the Editor: Your editorial includes powerful information on the futility of the United States war on drugs but then makes the fatuous recommendation that the next administration should provide funds to reform Mexico's judicial system -- a process that is already under way. Mexico faces a killing spree affecting thousands of innocent people that is financed by American money going to the drug cartels that fight for dominance of the lucrative United States market for illegal drugs. The earnings from this trade amount to at least $15 billion a year -- enough to buy arms to outgun the Mexican police and bribe underpaid security officials. [continues 77 words]
To the Editor: Your editorial made an important point about the need for more effort to reduce the demand for drugs. The United States should devote more resources to preventing and treating substance abuse and dependence. But these resources should be allocated based on need. Alcohol is the drug of choice for the overwhelming majority of people suffering from a substance use disorder. According to the 2006 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, nearly 16 million Americans were dependent on or abusing alcohol. That's five times greater than the number of people who were dependent on or abusing illicit drugs and almost 15 times greater than the number of people dependent on or abusing cocaine. [continues 61 words]
CAPITAL REGION -- An aggressive new campaign seeks to educate Capital Region residents -- and gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgendered people, in particular -- about the dangers of crystal meth. A new website, www.crystalfree.org, provides information on crystal meth and where to seek treatment for an addiction. Billboards on the campaign were displayed for over a month in Albany, Troy, Schenectady, Montgomery and Saratoga counties, and another round is scheduled to go up in late July. Advertisements have also run in local newspapers, and a brochure on the risks of crystal meth has been created. [continues 764 words]
Inside New York
