http://www.inthesetimes.com/archives/tags/drugs/ In These Times features award-winning investigative reporting about corporate malfeasance and government wrongdoing, insightful analysis of national and international affairs, and sharp cultural criticism about events and ideas that matter. en-us Expression Engine jessica@inthesetimes.com seamus@inthesetimes.com Mon, 05 Jun 2006 05:30:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2680/convict_nation/ Let me tell you what hurts the most I'm a convicted felon and I can't workNo matter where I go to try to get paid ... That's the everyday life of a convictTrying to make it while they're saying to me: The judge said, "Don't trouble nobody," Probation said, "Don't trouble nobody," "Stay out of trouble, don't trouble nobody," And I'm a tryin' not to trouble nobody ... Picture lookin' at your babies in the faceWhen they hungry and they need to eatTrying not to do wrong, But they won't let me do right. Even though I done change my lifeCriminal record's what they're judging me by. Akon, "Trouble Nobody." In May, I traveled to McNeil Island Corrections Center, a… Criminal Justice Drugs Judiciary Kari Lydersen Tue, 06 Jun 2006 05:00:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2657/drug_warriors_push_eye_eating_fungus/ On April 16, the New York Times ran a full-page ad from contact lens producer Bausch and Lomb, announcing the recall of its "ReNu with MoistureLoc" rewetting solution, and warning the 30 million American wearers of soft contact lenses about Fusarium keratitis. This infection, first detected in Asia, has rapidly spread across the United States. It is caused by a mold-like fungus that can penetrate the cornea of soft contact lens wearers, causing redness and pain that can lead to blindness--requiring a corneal replacement. That same week, the House of Representatives passed a provision to a bill requiring that the very same fungus be sprayed in "a major drug-producing country," such as Colombia. The bill's sponsor was Rep. Mark Souder… Drugs International Affairs Agriculture Medical and Health Kari Lydersen Thu, 05 Oct 2006 05:00:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2845/counterfeit_drugs_infected_with_greed/ Counterfeit pharmaceuticals are flooding hospitals, Web sites, pharmacies and street markets around the world. Visibly indistinguishable from life-saving medicine, the pharmafakes plague the developing world, affecting millions of people and undermining confidence in public health. Counterfeit drug sales will reach $75 billion globally in 2010, a more than 90 percent increase from 2005, according to the Center for Medicines in the Public Interest. Some pharmafakes enter the United States hidden in plain sight inside the 70,000 packages of legitimate medicines that pass through JFK and Miami airports alone, each day. But the developing world is where most fakes are manufactured, most victims live and where up to half the drugs in some countries are bogus. Feeding on desperate need and… drugs terror Kari Lydersen Tue, 10 Oct 2006 05:00:01 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2839/the_tragedy_of_gary_webb/ With Kill the Messenger (Nation Books/Avalon), Nick Schou, an editor at Orange County Weekly, provides a meticulous, balanced account of the life of Gary Webb, the former San Jose Mercury News reporter who, despite minor errors, basically got it right when he wrote the biggest story of his career. That story lifted the rug on a historical episode the mainstream media didn't want to touch: how the Central Intelligence Agency turned a blind eye to drug dealing in furtherance of its covert support for the Nicaraguan contras. For his efforts, Webb was hounded out of journalism after a ferocious assault from America's most prestigious newspapers, which Schou documents in painstaking and shameful detail. When Webb--who had once shared a Pulitzer… activism books media drugs Kari Lydersen Tue, 27 Feb 2007 05:00:00 -0600 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3057/hpv_vaccine_betting_on_a_mercky_record/ Merck launched its new cervical cancer vaccine with a major advertising and lobbying blitz, and pushed to make the drug mandatory for all 11- to 12- year-old girls. Cervical cancer, caused by the sexually transmitted human papillomavirus (HPV), affects 10,000 women in the United States every year, and kills 3,700. The toll is far greater in the developing world, where women lack diagnostic Pap tests. Gardasil may well be what Merck claims: a lifesaving vaccine that protects against key HPV strains without any significant side effects. Because the drug is most effective on unexposed populations, the FDA recommends vaccinating girls as young as nine -- before they are sexually active. Merck -- along with Women in Government (WIG), a recipient… drugs medical health Kari Lydersen Thu, 05 Apr 2007 05:00:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3084/gardasil_iraqi_superbugs_radiation/ In These Times started running "Health & Science" in January 2006. Below are three updates. Gag me with a campaign Merck's force-it-down-consumers'-throats-campaign for Gardasil proved a powerful emetic. The new vaccine protects against two of the HPV strains that cause 70 percent of cervical cancers, but consumers gagged on making vaccination mandatory for all pre-teen girls. Exposure of short drug trials and long money trails forced Merck to kill its campaign to make middle school entry contingent on vaccination. Problems with process and tactics go deeper. According to FDA guidelines, its advisory committee members are "qualified experts with minimal conflicts of interest ... [who] provide FDA with independent advice." But at least two members of the FDA panel that approved… drugs medical health Kari Lydersen Tue, 24 Apr 2007 05:00:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3130/poisoning_pets_with_industrial_food/ In New York City's East Village, a string of Indian restaurants stretches side by side for a block along Sixth Street. The running joke is that tucked behind the row is one kitchen that dishes up the same food for all the restaurants. But while that model makes for urban myth on Sixth Street, it is nearer to corporate reality when it comes to pet foods. Until a few weeks ago, Americans might have been amused to imagine that--despite the varieties of colors and adorably shaped fishes, bones and jolly little stars--the multitudinous brands of major pet foods come from the same factory kitchen. However, a recall of possibly poisoned cat and dog food revealed that for three months ending… drugs medical health Kari Lydersen Tue, 19 Jun 2007 05:00:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3236/militarizing_mexicos_drug_war/ "In the helicopter is where they began to beat us," recalls Sara, a 17-year-old who was released on May 16 after a week in military detention. (Her name has been changed to protect her identity.) "They threw me really hard into the helicopter," she says. "They kicked me all over my body. Then one got on top of me; I could hear the other girls screaming. The soldiers said that this would take the whore out of us, that we were going to hell, that they were the law." Seven months ago, President Felipe Calderón of the conservative National Action Party took office and declared war on drug traffickers, ordering 20,000 troops into the streets to put an end to… drugs mexico military Kari Lydersen Mon, 30 Jul 2007 05:00:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3262/the_drug_wars_collateral_damage/ When a person is sent to prison for the first time on a drug-related felony charge, there is little chance that he or she will be told about the "collateral consequences" of their sentence. The severity of these residual punishments depends on the state. "Life Sentences: The Collateral Sanctions Associated with Marijuana Offenses," a report released in July by the Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics (CCLE), ranks Florida, Delaware, Alabama, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Virginia, Utah, Arizona and South Carolina as the 10 states with the worst records for continuing the punishments of people who have already served their time. "Life Sentences" author Richard Boire writes that the long-term sanctions for drug crimes, even for relatively benign drugs like… civil rights drugs Kari Lydersen Mon, 22 Oct 2007 05:00:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3377/prison_breakdown/ Halfway between Sacramento and San Francisco is Solano Correctional Facility, nestled against a series of rolling hills, on the outskirts of the small city of Vacaville. From the prison's guard towers, the view is fairly beautiful: a Mediterranean-type vista of sun-browned grass and squat trees covering green hills, underneath the endlessly deep California sky. But from the windows of the dorms and cellblocks where the inmates live, all they can see is a slender patch of sky. Inside some of the housing units at Solano, inmates take showers in rooms open to the entire dorm--including guards, both male and female. As naked men soap themselves off, other inmates go about their business in front of them. Hundreds of men share… criminal justice drugs prisons Kari Lydersen Tue, 23 Sep 2008 05:00:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3916/the_war_we_wont_talk_about/ The war on drugs has gotten little traction during this presidential campaign. The last time it was even mentioned was during the Republican debate in September 2007 at Morgan State University in Baltimore, when Republican candidate Rep. Ron Paul (Texas) spoke of its inordinate toll on the black community. "I think inner-city folks and minorities are punished unfairly in the war on drugs," Paul had said. "For instance, blacks make up 14 percent of those who use drugs, yet 36 percent of those arrested are blacks and it ends up that 63 percent of those who finally end up in prison are blacks. This has to change." Paul is right, but his sense of urgency never caught on. The social… drugs race election 2008 Kari Lydersen Thu, 25 Sep 2008 05:00:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3918/twenty_million_arrests_and_counting/ This November, moments before millions of voters flock to the polls to elect America's 44th president, law enforcement officials will make their 20 millionth marijuana arrest. Yet in the days leading up to this appalling milestone, it's unlikely either candidate will call for -- or even so much as entertain -- any change in U.S. pot policies. It's even less likely the mainstream media will care. Since the early '90s, the total number of Americans busted annually for pot has nearly tripled. In 1991, police arrested a modern low of 288,000 people for minor marijuana violations in the United States, according to the FBI's annual Uniform Crime Report. By 2006 (the last year for which data is available), a record… marijuana policy Kari Lydersen Fri, 13 Feb 2009 05:00:00 -0600 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/4216/fake_outrage_junkies/ I'm not sure if it's because we're strung out on "Lost" episodes, or if it's because we're still suffering from a post-9/11 stress disorder that makes us crave "breaking news" alerts, or if it's because the economy has turned us into distraction junkies. But one thing is painfully obvious after Michael Phelps' marijuana "scandal" erupted last week: Our society is addicted to fake outrage -- and to break our dependence, we're going to need far more potent medicine than the herb Phelps was smoking. If you haven't heard (and I'm guessing you have), the Olympic gold medalist was recently photographed taking a toke of weed. The moment the picture hit the Internet, the media blew the story up, pumping out… drug policy media culture Kari Lydersen Mon, 02 Mar 2009 22:03:39 -0600 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/4272/ending_the_war_on_drugs/ President Obama faces a heap of crises: a major economic recession, crumbling national infrastructure, and ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Buried in that heap is another war, one less present in public discourse but no less toxic: the drug war. The concentrated battleground of the drug war has been on domestic soil, with America's so-called interdiction efforts spreading the fight across the world, from poppy-rich Afghanistan to the coca-nurturing Andes to the most brutal battlefield of them all, Mexico, which saw more than 5,600 drug-related murders last year, including several that involved publicly displayed decapitations With the Obama administration, many see an unprecedented opportunity for meaningful criminal justice/drug war reform. Much of that hope stems from Obama's seven-year track… obama drugs criminal justice Kari Lydersen Fri, 13 Mar 2009 20:00:49 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/4299/de-escalating_the_drug_war/ President Obama caught even close observers off-guard with his mid-February nomination for the nation's new drug czar, R. Gil Kerlikowske. Kerlikowske, 59, Seattle's police chief, with nearly 40 years in law enforcement behind his badge, will direct the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), pending Senate approval. But Kerlikowske isn't just any urban police chief. He's the top cop of a city with a progressive reputation on several drug-related matters, including needle-exchange programs and marijuana possession laws. Kerlikowske has a reputation as a levelheaded and effective leader, having served as police chief in three other cities--Buffalo, N.Y., Port St. Lucie and Fort Pierce, Fla.--all of which recorded decreases in serious and violent crime during his tenure. Although… obama drugs Kari Lydersen Fri, 03 Apr 2009 10:00:46 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/4342/this_is_the_truth_on_drugsany_questions/ Finally, a little honesty. Finally, after America has frittered away billions of taxpayer dollars arming Latin American death squads, airdropping toxic herbicide on equatorial farmland, and incarcerating more of its own citizens on nonviolent drug charges than any other industrialized nation, two political leaders last week tried to begin taming the most wildly out of control beast in the government zoo: federal narcotics policy. It started with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stating an embarrassingly obvious truth that politicians almost never discuss. In a speech about rising violence in Mexico, she said, "Our insatiable demand for illegal drugs fuels the drug trade," and then added that "we have co-responsibility" for the cartel-driven carnage plaguing our southern border. She's right, of… drugs Kari Lydersen Sun, 12 Apr 2009 10:00:27 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/4370/an_end_to_the_war_on_weed/ As a medley of border violence, recessionary pressure, international criticism and popular acceptance steadily undermines America's decades-long effort to eliminate drugs and drug use, the U.S. movement to legalize marijuana is gaining unprecedented momentum. Once derided and dismissed by lawmakers, law enforcers and the law-abiding alike, marijuana reform is sweeping the nation, although the federal government appears committed--at least for the time being--to largely maintaining the status quo. A week after Attorney General Eric Holder announced in March that raids on state law-abiding medical marijuana dispensaries would end, the Drug Enforcement Agency effectively shut down a San Francisco dispensary, claiming it violated both state and federal laws. But to paraphrase Victor Hugo, not even the strongest government in the world… drugs Kari Lydersen Thu, 14 May 2009 09:59:57 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/4418/antidote_to_drug_war_madness/ So I was making dinner, and on NPR I hear, to my amazement, a report by Robert Siegel and Michele Norris marking April 20 as Marijuana Observance Day. "We're hearing more talk about legalizing marijuana," noted Norris, "and not just from those who are lighting up." I, myself, lit up --metaphorically--over this. Aside from the fact that this is a policy change that's at least 30 years overdue, the story aired at the same time we were cringing over the long-suspected yet nonetheless horrific accounts of torture under the Bush regime. Once again, the right wing of the Republican Party comes off as addicted to all forms of cruelty, just as it did when it sanctioned "extreme rendition." But maybe… drugs economy Kari Lydersen