The World Health Organization released a study today called “Toward a Global View of Alcohol, Tobacco, Cannabis, and Cocaine Use” that has some very interesting findings. For starters, it shows that the United States has higher levels of cocaine and marijuana consumption than any other country, despite our very stringent drug policies.  The second major point is that countries with looser drug policies, such as the Netherlands, tended to have lower usage rates.

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I know this is kind of old news, but this story needs to continue to be circulated. And that is the story of Rachel Hoffman.

Rachel Hoffman is dead now, because she acted as an informant for the Tallahassee police. Basically, the police arrested Rachel for possession of marijuana and ecstasy after raiding her apartment. They then threatened her with prison time, but offered to drop the charges if she became an informant for them. She agreed to do it, even though she did not have a lawyer present at the time.

Excellent write up at The Agitator, by Radley Balko, one of my favorite bloggers. Original story

“On Tuesday morning, San Diego State University student Randy Hencken [founder of SDSU SSDP] woke up, checked his email, saw that 75 of his fellow students had just been arrested in a massive drug bust, and realized that a national news story had just landed on his doorstep. So he rolled up his sleeves, grabbed his cell phone, and got to work. Read the rest of this entry »

I know it doesn’t seem like SSDP@UH has been doing a lot this semester, but it’s all happening behind the scenes right now.

I have been working on getting as much information as I can about the UH Drug and Alcohol Abuse Policy and should have everything I need by next week. Then we can start figuring out what the best way is to get changes to the policy implemented. I will give everyone more details as things move along a little more. It depends on how we plan on advocating for the changes on whether or not I need obvious member support. Read the rest of this entry »

So I was reading a post that Radley wrote over at The Agitator about the Colomb Family. And I noticed something in particular that really worried me.

Inmates were selling one another photos, case facts, and even grand jury testimony about pending cases, then calling up federal prosecutors offering to testify in exchange for time off of their own drug sentences. “Hey, Mr. Prosecutor, I sold that family drugs, too! What can you give me?

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I came across this article today, and it honestly made me smile. Governor Paterson, from NY, admitted to using cocaine in his 20’s, and marijuana when he was younger. This man has quite the honest streak going on, and I think it’s doing a lot of good. I think his latest confession is representative of changing beliefs in the US. Here’s a good quote from him:

“More Americans have tried a lot more during that period of time [70's] and gone on to lead responsible lives and hopefully have lived their lives to their fullest,” he said.

Exactly. Read the rest of this entry »

Now, I try and read a lot of Drug War related news and blogs whenever I can; as Chris often tells me “I bleed SSDP”. I just like to be well informed on these issues, because I care so deeply about the harm the War on Drugs causes. One topic that seems to come up with decent frequency, but isn’t always noticed by a lot of the larger medias, is civil forfeiture of private goods. There’s this article out of Cleveland that really sums up the problem with civil forfeiture quite well. Civil Injustice strikes Ohio

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Well, thanks to Chris the SSDP@UH website is finally up and running. Obviously from looking around you will find not a whole lot on the site… yet. I am working on pages for the two campaigns that we are going to be working on.

First is the Campus Change campaign, where SSDP@UH will try to get UH to change their drug policy. Right now it is filled with inaccurate drug information, and overall does little to explain the policy. I hope to write in a number of provisions designed to help students with their education, and to protect students from the real harms of drug abuse.

The second campaign is about Texas House bill 2391. The bill gives police officers the discretion on whether a suspect will be ticketed or arrested for possession of marijuana under 4 ounces. It also has provisions for other low-level, non-violent, misdemeanor crimes. Before the bill went into effect officers had to arrest suspects and take them down to the station. Now they can ticket the suspect which will allow the officers to stay on the street. Unfortunately only Travis County is actively using the provisions of the bill. SSDP@UH, along with the Marijuana Policy Project, are going to work to convince the UH Police Department along with other Houston PDs to start taking advantage of this bill.

That’s all I have for everybody right now. Have a good one.