About 90% of those sentenced to prison for a drug offense in Illinois are african-american. White drug users and dealers are rarely arrested, and when they are, they are treated more favorably at every stage of the criminal justice process, including plea-bargaining and sentencing. Whites are consistently more likely to avoid prison and felony charges, even when they are repeatedly caught with drugs.
Oregon’s #Drug Decriminalization Aimed to Make #Cops a Gateway to Rehab, Not Jail. State Leaders Failed to Make It Work.
Just over three years since #Oregon voters passed Ballot Measure 110, elected officials want to repeal key elements, blaming the law for open drug use and soaring overdoses.
But it’s their own hands-off approach that isn’t working, advocates say.
Why haven't we learned better lessons from decades of hopeless violence at the #border?
In our magazine, author Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera looks at #Mexico's war on drugs, and uncovers its real goals: land ownership and the control of natural resources such as oil, natural gas, #water, lithium, and more. https://www.texasobserver.org/unwinnable-drug-war/
Prison journalist Jason Walker won't stop reporting, even if it costs him his safety or his life. Since his groundbreaking reporting on K2 #drugs behind bars, he's been transferred more than 10 times.
One of the reasons I will believe just about any story of cop bad behavior is that the ones I don't know firsthand tend to be cut from the same cloth as the ones I do know at close range
A very trivial example is a story from a friend who was a public defender in Philly who had a client, who was denying the charge. His alibi was that he was smoking crack with on-duty cops at the time, and he'd admit the wrongdoing if he had done it. She was like, ok but we can't use this in court.
New report: "Americans funded the development of all ten #drugs up for #price negotiations with #Medicare, but [#pharma companies] still want to keep prices for those publicly funded drugs sky high…#NIH funding on the ten Medicare medications up for price negotiations ranged from $228 million to $6.5 billion per drug…This public funding saved the drug industry billions in research and development costs. Now those drugs are making pharmaceutical companies billions." https://jacobin.com/2024/02/big-pharma-drug-price-negotiation-public-funding/
The potential Massachusetts ballot measure — which supporters are eyeing for 2024 or 2026 — would create “access” to natural psychedelics and remove criminal penalties for personal possession across the state.
Scottish Government calls for decriminalisation of drugs for personal use and for supervised drug consumption rooms.
"We want to create a society where problematic drug use is treated as a health, not a criminal matter, reducing stigma and discrimination and enabling the person to recover and contribute positively to society." - @scotgov Minister Elena Whitham.
These dark racial disparities cannot be explained by rates of drug crime. Studies show that people of all colors use and sell illegal drugs at remarkably similar rates. [...] That is not what one would guess, however, when entering our nation's prisons and jails, which are overflowing with black and brown people convicted of drug crimes.
With thousands of the country’s youths becoming walking zombies, unkempt and with sores all over their bodies-all manifesting the frightening symptoms of addiction to the drug Kush, Stakeholders have emphasized the urgent need for a rehabilitation facility to house them, and be managed by experts....
Utah lawmakers rejected a bill this year that would have allowed a few thousand people with chronic, untreatable depression to try psilocybin — the Schedule 1 drug many know as magic mushrooms....
#youtube streamers have literally discovered the media equivalent of #drugs:
An influencer reading other people’s semi-funny tweets on repeat. Hundreds and hundreds. Endlessly.
It keeps giving you little hits of dopamine over and over, keeps you hooked, wastes your time & doesn’t get you anywhere even if you feel something like a real feeling.
I call these ”brain rot”. My kid agreees, and keeps watching.
The race to the bottom of the brain stem is painful to watch sometimes. 🙁
"In letters sent Thursday to the five largest health insurers and four largest pharmacy benefit managers first shared with The Hill, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) asked for information on how the companies plan to respond to federal guidance designed to improve no-cost access to birth control."
Drug donanemab seen as turning point in dementia fight (www.bbc.com)
The antibody treatment donanemab slows clinical decline by around a third, a large trial confirms.
Drugs rule
Tranq Dope Deaths In the U.S. Are Skyrocketing (www.vice.com)
Overdoses linked to tranq, the street drug that can cause horrific wounds, have spiked 276 percent, according to the CDC.
Coming soon? Psychedelics on the ballot in Massachusetts (www.wbur.org)
The potential Massachusetts ballot measure — which supporters are eyeing for 2024 or 2026 — would create “access” to natural psychedelics and remove criminal penalties for personal possession across the state.
Calls for rehab centers in Sierra Leone as synthetic drug Kush addiction spirals out of control (politicosl.com)
With thousands of the country’s youths becoming walking zombies, unkempt and with sores all over their bodies-all manifesting the frightening symptoms of addiction to the drug Kush, Stakeholders have emphasized the urgent need for a rehabilitation facility to house them, and be managed by experts....
Utah failed to legalize psilocybin — but local research, and an underground scene, is booming (www.sltrib.com)
Utah lawmakers rejected a bill this year that would have allowed a few thousand people with chronic, untreatable depression to try psilocybin — the Schedule 1 drug many know as magic mushrooms....