[deep toke]

Canada warned to avoid U.S. drug laws

By GREG JOYCE


https://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2...561407-cp.html

VANCOUVER (CP) - Governments in Canada should steer completely clear from adopting or emulating any current drug policies in the United States, an outspoken New York state prosecutor said Tuesday.

"My advice to Canada is stay as completely far away from U.S. drug law policy as possible," said David Soares, the district attorney for Albany County in the state of New York. "You (Canada) are headed in the right direction." In a blunt and scathing condemnation of his state and country's ineffective drug war, Soares said lawmakers, judges and prosecutors in the U.S. know their system is ineffective.

But they support it anyway because it provides law enforcement officials with lucrative jobs.

The vast majority of people incarcerated as a result of drug laws in the U.S. are young African-American and Hispanic males, he said after a speech at the 17th International Conference on the Reduction of Drug-Related Harm.

Harm reduction has been a movement developed over the past two decades as a complement to the harsher but ineffective abstinence-only policy. It essentially recognizes that drug use won't be eliminated and tries to find methods to reduce negative consequences.

Soares was elected in his state on a ticket to fight what he termed the "draconian" drug laws that call for long prison sentences for drug crimes that in Canada would be considered minor.

Lawmakers in the U.S. lack the willpower to reform drug laws despite their ineffectiveness at curbing drug use and crime because "reform is scary."

"We understand enforcement, that we do well. Harm reduction forces a person to think and it forces you to question your law enforcement philosophical approach."

He suggested that the heavy-handed drug fight in the U.S. is perpetuated by authorities' need to "give people a wonderful living" by hiring more police, more judges and more prosecutors.

He said, not sarcastically, that the U.S.'s well-known penchant for building more and more prisons was an accepted "economic development strategy."

Legislators who believe in harm reduction will have their futures in politics threatened by taking any kind of progressive stance on harm reduction, he said.

He noted that often in the United States, authorities speak out only after they have retired.

Soares defeated the Republican candidate in Albany County in November 2004, completing what some observers in the state said was one of the most stunning political upset in New York political history.

In Canada, a harm-reduction experiment known as the North American Opiate Medication Initiative - NAOMI - is underway in Montreal and Vancouver.

The controlled clinical trial that began in February 2005 distributes heroin to addicts who can't or won't use methadone.

There are an estimated 60,000 to 90,000 heroin addicts in Canada.

Investigator David Marsh refused to speculate on whether the current Conservative government would maintain the project's funding.

"At this point we don't need any additional funding to conduct research or get regulatory approval.," Marsh told reporters after speaking at a session on NAOMI. "There is no imperative to convince people of anything."

"But we have to finish the study and analyze data to inform policy-makers' decisions."

The NAOMI project hopes to help addicts stabilize their addiction so they can get other aspects of their lives back on track.

Similar studies have been done in Switzerland, the Netherlands and Germany. They have resulted in a drop in drug use and crime, and improved physical and mental health, and employment prospects, say proponents.

But will they listen .... all indications say no. I feel for you guys and gals up there if you all adopt similar drug laws. 100's of thousands of illeagal's can march for thier cause but we can't seem to organize with the same passion for our cause. What a shame it is.

Be Safe.

Mo,

[I.M. Boggled]

Volume 5, Number 25 |
June 22 - 28, 2006
https://www.gaycitynews.com/gcn_525/a...daanddrug.html

PERSPECTIVE/ HARM REDUCTION

A Crusading DA and Drug Reform

Rather than focus on the whipping that Congressional Democrats took on the pro-war resolution in Washington, let us go instead upstate to Albany and look at a Democrat who fought back when set upon by the right-wing attack dogs.

David Soares, the Albany district attorney, attracted attention when he became the first law enforcement official in decades to win an election by charging that his opponent was too tough on crime.
He ran against the Rockefeller drug laws.
The incumbent, an old-line Albany Democrat, Paul Clyne, had a reputation as a tough DA. ...
At 35, Soares, a former junior member of the DA’s office, was given no chance of winning, but he carried the primary with a whooping 62 percent of the vote.

Since he was elected in 2004, he’s had run-ins with the police over investigations of excessive force and raised anxiety levels when he started an official corruption unit, but these brouhahas were minor compared to the one that started after his a speech at a harm reduction conference in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Harm reduction is the name for the public health approach to drug control. It’s most famous programs in New York City are needle exchanges which increase the supply of sterile needles and reduced needle sharing to Staunch the spread of the AIDS virus.

Harm reduction is a general rubric that describes a multitude of approaches to drug use and abuse and the spread of disease.
Clean needle exchanges and over-the-counter sale of sterile needles give injection drug users access to safe equipment.
Club drugs and dancing lead to dehydration and heat stroke, and in response some European countries require that nightclubs have an ample and free supply of water.
Drug overdose deaths are preventable if treated promptly, so in Australian cities needle injectors are taught to identify the signs of an overdose and often given a medicine that restores normal breathing.
Drug users and ambulance drivers met in an effort to encourage needle users and their friends to promptly call 911.

In the United States, where harm reduction is often ridiculed and even condemned as encouraging, in various contexts, illegal behavior and risky sex, a potent new combination of heroin has led to hundreds of deaths. Conferences like the one in Vancouver are invaluable to policymakers because there they have a chance to learn about innovations in public health and drug control policy.

By going to Vancouver, Soares was keeping a campaign promise.
The International Conference on the Reduction of Drug Related Harm is held every two years, and brings together academics, activists, and government officials from all over the world.
There Soares met government officials and experts who told him how polices worked in practice as opposed to the way they are caricatured by critics. The conference in turn honored Soares by having him address a plenary session.

The speech unleashed the wrath of the right wing.
Playing on the similarity of the last names of Soares and George Soros, the wealthy investor who is the biggest contributor to drug reform causes and a strident crusader against President George W. Bush, the New York Post went on the offensive with its May 4 headline:
$OROS’ D.A. DRUG OUTRAGE—UPSTATER RIPS U.S. POLICY AS A RACKET.

Soares’ speech included a commonplace assertion among drug reformers— that the drug war continues “because it provides law enforcement officials with lucrative jobs.”
The Post wouldn’t let go of that statement and the Albany County sheriff and the city’s mayor and police chief reacted in fury. Sheriff James Campbell said, “All the police agencies work together. It’s not I, it’s we,” and asked if Soares thought “the law enforcement agencies weren’t going to respond to his statements?”

Soares wisely chose not to fight over the issue of “lucrative jobs,” and quickly apologized for that statement.
But this isn’t the tale of a wimp, but of a fighter.
Soares didn’t go away, he had a point to make, and he was not going to let the focus fall on the apology.

Instead, he slammed home his most basic point—Albany can’t stop drug abuse by arresting people with $20 bags of dope.
And then he re-upped the ante by charging, “We are dealing with people whose hate for me is vicious. And I will not let them drive me out.”
And he turned a hearing where he was supposed to be censured into a pep rally, filled with banner-wielding citizens and politicians who back his call for the end of Rockefeller drugs laws.

On TV, the battle clearly pitted those aiming to end draconian drug laws against opponents of reform.
Soares won the war of the message.

In a telephone interview, the DA exuded a sense of calm.
The dust-up exposed the weakness of the opposition to reform—their numbers aren’t growing.

“My critics in Albany County are the same critics who were there when I announced my candidacy,” he said. “They have stayed in the background and have worked hard to thwart my reforms.”

“It’s the same drill, in essence, that plays out any time a public official or public figure is candid enough [to make] his or her critics uncomfortable,” concluded the Times Union, in writing that Soares had the better of the debate’s substance.
“The opposition jumps on a few select words and, perhaps, some of the more inelegant or less politically nuanced phrases.”

Soares’ opponents failed, in the view of the Times Union, because they can’t satisfactorily answer the bottom line question:
How have “draconian laws” stopped drug abuse?
The primary result of get-tough policies has been the “disproportionate” imposition of “excessively long prison sentences” on blacks and Latinos.
Drug abuse and “all the problems that come with it” continue to fester.
...

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

"Safety First:
A Reality-Based Approach to Teens, Drugs, and Drug Education"
was written to provide parents with the tools needed to evaluate and discuss strategies for protecting their teenagers from drug abuse.
https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=17435

[N.O.G.]

If we allow emery to be extridited to USA , it wont matter weather or not we adopt their laws, soon we will all be extridited

[naga_sadu]

I seriously wonder- why isin't there a half decent leftist movement/ political group in the United States of America...? Or Canada? I've lived through all kinds of regimes here- from autocratic (during emergency times) to leftist democratic to conservative democratic etc. And I kinda see that the leftist democratic regimes usually are the most sensible. It was them who reversed the draconian '89 laws here for starters.

North America needs one big time. Politics out there (N. America) is way too white collar for comfort. Something blue collar and something leftist democratic is needed there as urgently as a sadhu needs bhang. I guess the legacy of the 50s and McCarthyism still looms large in North America today...or is it something else?

[Verite]

Originally Posted by N.O.G.

If we allow emery to be extridited to USA , it wont matter weather or not we adopt their laws, soon we will all be extridited

Sorry dude but he asked for it and got it. If you do the same shit he did then expect to be extradited. If you dont then I wouldnt worry cause they could care less.

[Verite]

I like the misleading thread title too but what do you expect from tabloid journalism?

[kid creole]

wh-wh-wh-what? weed be illegal??is that a king cake baby inviting me into a pussy??what?