Drug War Chronicle, Issue #587 -(urls + editorial)- 5/29/09
B Sellers
Drug War Chronicle, Issue #587 -- 5/29/09
Phillip S. Smith, Editor, psm...@drcnet.org
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/587
A Publication of Stop the Drug War (DRCNet)
David Borden, Executive Director, bor...@drcnet.org
"Raising Awareness of the Consequences of Drug Prohibition"
Table of Contents:
1. FEATURE: EFFORT TO BRING SAFE INJECTION FACILITY TO NEW YORK
CITY GETTING UNDERWAY
Safe injection facilities for drug users have proven effective
in Europe, Canada, and Australia. Now, harm reductionists and
public health advocates are beginning a campaign to bring one to
New York City.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/587/campaign_safe_injection_facility_new_york_city
2. FEATURE: HEALTH CANADA ADJUSTS MEDICAL MARIJUANA PROGRAM,
DOUBLES NUMBER OF PEOPLE PROVIDERS CAN GROW FOR -- FROM ONE TO
TWO
Canadian courts have repeatedly told Health Canada that not
allowing medical marijuana providers to grow for more than one
patient was unjustifiable, so the agency now says providers can
grow for two people. That's not what advocates wanted to hear.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/587/health_canada_medical_marijuana_two_patients
3. LAW ENFORCEMENT: THIS WEEK'S CORRUPT COPS STORIES
Another jail guard goes down, a California cop takes the bait,
an NYPD officer gets slapped, a Massachusetts cop gets busted, a
Massachusetts trooper cops a plea, and a Houston drug test
watcher gets greedy. Just another week in the drug war.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/587/police_drug_corruption
4. PLEASE: DON'T SHOOT!
The killing of Tarika Wilson, an unarmed mother holding her
child, and the maiming of that child, is an inevitable
consequences of the overuse of SWAT teams and the growing
paramilitarization of the drug war.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/587/please_dont_shoot
5. LAW ENFORCEMENT: SUPREME COURT HOLDS DRUG PURCHASERS CAN'T BE
CHARGED WITH "FACILITATION" FELONIES FOR CALLING DRUG DEALERS
A federal law that makes it a felony to use a communication
device to sell drugs cannot be used against personal use drug
buyers, the US Supreme Court ruled this week.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/587/Supreme_Court_rules_facilitating_drug_deal_communication_phone
6. MEDICAL MARIJUANA: BILL PASSES ILLINOIS SENATE, HEADS TO
HOUSE
The Illinois Senate has passed a medical marijuana bill. It now
heads to the House, which could act this week, or defer action
to the fall.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/587/illinois_medical_marijuana_bill_passes_senate
7. MEDICAL MARIJUANA: NEW YORK BILL WINS SENATE COMMITTEE VOTE
With Republicans in the minority, this might be the year New
York passes a medical marijuana law. It's one committee vote
closer today, but the clock is ticking.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/587/new_york_medical_marijuana_bill_wins_senate_committee_vote
8. PUBLIC OPINION: RASMUSSEN POLL FINDS 41% FAVOR LEGALIZING AND
TAXING MARIJUANA
A new Rasmussen poll shows support for marijuana legalization at
41% nationwide. That's in line with some recent polls, and
suggests that while we're not quite over the hump yet, we're
getting there.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/587/rasmussen_poll_finds_41_percent_favor_marijuana_legalization
9. EUROPE: DUTCH PLAN TO REDUCE AMSTERDAM COFFEE SHOP NUMBERS IN
BID TO CLEAN UP CITY CENTER
As part of an urban renewal and anti-crime plan for central
Amsterdam, authorities there want to cut down the number of
cannabis coffee shops in the city's famed Red Light district.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/587/amsterdam_cannabis_coffee_house_numbers_reduced
10. EUROPE: DANISH COURT SAYS CHRISTIANIA RESIDENTS HAVE NO
RIGHT TO IT
Pusher Street may be history, but the residents of Copenhagen's
Christiania are still fighting for their right to remain. They
lost a court battle this week, but the end is not here yet for
the countercultural enclave.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/587/denmark_christiania_suffers_legal_setback
11. LATIN AMERICA: ATTACKS MADE ON CANDIDATES FROM MEXICAN PARTY
THAT FAVORS DRUG LEGALIZATION
Mexico's Social Democratic Party advocates drug legalization --
and somebody doesn't want to hear it. At least four of the
party's candidates have been attacked ahead of July's elections,
and the party suspects the drug cartels.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/587/mexico_social_democratic_party_candidates_attacked_legalization
12. WEEKLY: THIS WEEK IN HISTORY
Events and quotes of note from this week's drug policy events of
years past.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/587/drug_war_history
13. STUDENTS: INTERN AT STOPTHEDRUGWAR.ORG (DRCNET) AND HELP
STOP THE DRUG WAR!
Apply for an internship at DRCNet and you could spend a semester
fighting the good fight!
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/587/drcnet_internships_to_stop_the_drug_war
14. WEEKLY: BLOGGING @ THE SPEAKEASY
"New Drug Czar Doesn't Care About Medical Marijuana," "If Pure
THC Pills are FDA-Approved, What's the Big Deal About Marijuana
Potency?," "Research Proves Marijuana is Not a 'Gateway Drug',"
"Drunk Reporter Debates Marijuana Legalization In a Bar,"
"Christian Science Monitor Advocates Teaching Kids to Support
the Drug War," "The Worst Argument Against Medical Marijuana,"
"Cool 'History of Weed' Video from Showtime 'Weeds' Program."
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/587/blogging_at_the_speakeasy
15. JOB OPPORTUNITY: NATIONAL FIELD COORDINATOR, AMERICANS FOR
SAFE ACCESS, OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA
Americans for Safe Access (ASA), the largest national
member-based organization of patients, medical professionals,
scientists and concerned citizens promoting safe and legal
access to cannabis for therapeutic uses and research, is seeking
a National Field Coordinator to work from its office in Oakland,
CA.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/587/asa_field_coordinator_job_opportunity
(Not subscribed? Visit http://stopthedrugwar.org to sign up
today!)
================
1. Feature: Effort to Bring Safe Injection Facility to New York
City Getting Underway
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/587/campaign_safe_injection_facility_new_york_city
Last Friday, more than 150 people gathered at John Jay College
of Criminal Justice in New York City for a daylong conference on
the science, politics, and law of safe injection facilities
(SIFs) as part of a budding movement to bring the effective but
controversial harm reduction measure to the Big Apple.
Sponsored, among others, by the college, the Harm Reduction
Coalition (http://www.harmreduction.org), and an amalgam of 17
different New York City needle exchange and harm reduction
programs known as the Injection Drug User Health Alliance
(IDUHA), the conference targeted not only harm reductionists but
public health advocates and officials, law enforcement, service
providers, and the general public.
The Safe Injection Facilities in New York
(http://www.harmreduction.org/downloads/SIF) conference aimed to
create public awareness of SIFs, provide evidence that they are
cost-effective, and start developing a plan for implementing
SIFS in New York. As the conference program
(http://www.harmreduction.org/downloads/SIF%20Conference%20Program%20.pdf)
indicates, organizers relied heavily on experts from Vancouver,
where the Downtown Eastside Insite (http://www.vch.ca/sis) SIF
has been in operation -- and under evaluation -- since 2003, to
provide the evidence base.
The first SIFs opened in Switzerland in the mid-1980s. Since
then, they have spread slowly and there are now 65 SIFS
operating in 27 cities in eight countries: Switzerland, Germany,
the Netherlands, Spain, Australia, Norway, Luxembourg, and
Canada. Although advocates have been working for the past
year-and-a-half to bring an SIF to San Francisco
(http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/507/san_francisco_ponders_safe_injection_site),
that effort has yet to bear fruit.
SIFS are credited with saving lives through overdose prevention,
reducing the spread of blood-borne disease, reducing public drug
use and attendant drug litter, and creating entryways to
treatment and other services for hard-core drug users not ready
to abstain. The results reported by the Vancouver delegation on
Insite were typical:
* No fatal overdoses at the SIF.
* No increase in local drug trafficking.
* No substantial increase in the rate of relapse into injection
drug use.
* Reductions in public drug use, publicly discarded syringes
and syringe sharing.
* SIF users 1.7 times more likely to enter detox programs.
* More than 2,000 referrals to counseling and other support
services since opening.
* Collaboration with police to meet public health and public
order objectives.
But despite such research results, the United States remains
without an operating SIF. The obstacles range from the legal,
such as the federal crack house law and its counterparts in many
states, to the political and the moral. But for harm reduction
and public health advocates, it is the failure to embrace such
proven life-saving measures that has the stench of the immoral.
"The reality is that we have people shooting up in unsafe
injection facilities as we speak," said Joyce Rivera, executive
director of St. Ann's Corner of Harm Reduction
(http://www.sachr.org) and chair of the conference. "The reality
is they are not shooting up in a safe, hygienic environment with
the possibility of a transition into a range of care. That's
what's not happening. As public health advocates, we are saying
let's recognize that reality and create those safe facilities.
Let these people enter through the portal of public health into
a safe environment and start to pace their own change," she
said.
"We have to acknowledge the social fact that people are shooting
up in unsafe venues," Rivera said. "It's not some esoteric or
academic argument. The question is what do we do about it?
Public health is supposed to protect the community, and SIFs are
a necessary evolution in our public health policy."
"The big issue here is that we know we have about 200,000
injection drug users in the city, and the needle exchange
programs only serve a few thousand of them," said Robert Childs
of Positive Health Project
(http://www.positivehealthproject.org), one of the members of
the IDUAH. "Most of them are getting needles from unregulated
needle exchanges, shooting galleries, from friends. That is a
large part of why New York City has the most HIV and Hepatitis C
cases in the US and one of the highest rates of infection in
North America," he said.
"The other big issue is that we're giving injectors the tools to
inject, but not a safe space to do it," Childs pointed out.
"Many shoot up in the public domain, in the bathrooms at
Starbucks or McDonalds or White Castle, in libraries, parks,
alleys, phone booths. They leave their syringes in locations
that aren't evident to a non-injector, and that's a public
health issue."
They also overdose. Drug overdose is the fourth leading cause of
death in the city. While it is a tragedy for the victim,
overdoses both lethal and non-lethal are also a burden to the
city. "Taxpayers have to pay these costs," said Childs. "For an
ambulance to respond to an overdose costs between $400 and
$1,200, and that's going on many times a day every day."
It's not just ambulances. Failing to address injection drug use
under prohibition conditions costs real dollars in other ways as
well. Each new diagnosis of HIV in the city comes with a
$648,000 price tag for life-long medications and medical care,
and even that may be on a low end estimate. A case of hepatitis
C often requires $280,000 to $380,000 for a liver transplant;
for those cases that do not warrant a liver transplant,
treatment costs anywhere from $60,000 to $100,000.
And it's not just taxpayers paying. According to Childs, local
businesses, including service providers, spend thousands of
dollars a year on plumbing repairs -- from needles disposed of
in toilets for lack of biohazard containers.
Now, said advocates, it is time to move forward. The conference
was but the opening shot in what will likely be a long and
frustrating campaign.
"The conference went very well and it will be a bit of a lift,"
said John Jay Professor Richard Curtis, who addressed the topic
of moving forward from here at the conference. "The evidence is
piling up from Sydney and Vancouver and Europe, and that is
helping us, too. But this isn't something the health departments
and the politicians aren't quickly going to jump on the
bandwagon for. We have to give them a push, and if we don't
start working on it now, it'll never happen. We didn't get where
we are today by behaving ourselves," he added, relating how his
own needle exchange effort first faced official opposition
before being accepted.
The audience included people from the city and state health
departments, Curtis said. "The health officials are all very
supportive... unofficially," he said. "They didn't want to be on
the agenda, but they say they're supportive. But this is an
election year, and that makes it hard for them."
There will be an organizing meeting in two weeks to map out
strategy, Curtis said. "We'll see who is willing and able,
whether there is an existing agency bold enough to forge ahead
or whether we will have to create some alternative
organizations. We want to put this issue on the table now."
"We're forming an action group to bring this into New Yorkers'
consciousness," said Childs. "The people who do know about --
drug users -- are one of the most stigmatized populations in the
city. We are going to a campaign similar to Vancouver about how
these people are not bogeymen, but our sons and daughters. We're
also trying to organize some media events around it. A group of
lawyers will help by challenging some codes. And we'll be trying
to work with our legislators and city councilors," he said.
But Curtis and others are not willing to wait forever. "I'm not
hopeful that federal crack house laws will end any time soon,"
he said. "But we started needle exchanges by just doing it. If
it has to come to that, we'll have to make them arrest us again.
We need to back them into a corner at the very least."
Harm Reduction Coalition Western Coordinator Hilary McQuie has
been involved in the ongoing SIF effort in San Francisco. Just
because something isn't happening officially doesn't mean it
isn't happening, she noted.
"I don't know much about shooting galleries in New York," she
said, "but out here, it's no big secret that the bathrooms of
service providers, drop-in centers, homeless shelters, soup
kitchens are used for shooting up. What people are doing to try
to make these current injection spaces safer is perhaps having
safe injection instructions, syringe disposal devices, soap and
water, things like that," she said. "Also, it's sort of
semi-supervised. If someone's in the bathroom and doesn't come
out, you can open the door and save them from an overdose. That
happens every day in San Francisco."
================
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