As strange as its sounds, American history repeatedly shows that legalization of certain drugs leads to expanded, not reduced, “wars on drugs”: In the late 1800s, the crisis of middle-Americans’ addiction to new, legal patent medicines saturated with opiates, cocaine, and alcohol was buried under vicious official crusades vilifying the Chinese and opium and black men and cocaine. After the repeal of Prohibition in 1933, the explosion in drunk driving and abuse of newly legalized alcohol by…
Blog Mar 19, 2009
Marijuana bill is wrong vehicle for legalization
At first glance, AB 390 by Assembly Member Tom Ammiano (D‑San Francisco) to legalize the cultivation, sale, and use of marijuana under a regulation and taxation system similar to that applied to alcoholic beverages would seem to epitomize the sensible, humane policies for which he is known. By nearly every standard, marijuana is less troublesome than alcohol, better use can be made of law enforcement resources than to arrest and prosecute 70,000-plus Californians for marijuana every year, and…
For the past 20 years the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice has critically examined the control exercised by special interests group over California’s prison policy — especially the state’s prison guards union. With their ability to spend millions of dollars to defeat political enemies, the guards union has achieved unprecedented success in promoting their agenda and resisting reform efforts. In her recent editorial, Sacramento Bee editor, Pia Lopez, analyzes the historical influence…
Blog Jan 21, 2009
Another troubling juvenile court case
Statements by prosecutors following the January 16 ruling by a San Francisco Juvenile Court judge that four “Potrero Hill gang members” committed first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder, attempted murder, and gang-related crimes in the 2007 shooting death of a 17-year-old woman and wounding of another teen outside a community center raise troubling questions about juvenile justice. According to prosecutors and the judge’s ruling, one of the youths, now an adult, used a gun to murder…
Blog Jan 21, 2009
Will Obama confront 21st Century crime realities?
Barack Obama ascends to the presidency today to be greeted by yet another little-mentioned paradox (detailed more in future blogs) of keen interest to criminal justice groups: he inherits record-high levels of drug abuse and imprisonment and record-low levels of serious crime. If any president has an eye for complexity and contradiction, it’s the student and community-activist Obama revealed in the first half of his first book, Dreams for My Father. That Obama amiably chatted with city boys…