USA

Parents: End the War on Drugs - for Your Kids

As a person in long-term recovery and a drug treatment professional, I know a thing or two about drugs, addiction and the drug war. As a mother and a grandmother, I know more than I care to about how all of those things affect families - including my own. Addiction is a particularly painful health issue for any family to struggle with. Like most other chronic health conditions, like cancer and diabetes, it can be treated and managed. But unlike other chronic health conditions, our government is at war with it.

    An Interview with Cocaine Unwrapped Director - Rachel Seifert.

     

    Levent Akbulut from the Students for Sensible Drug Policy UK interviews Rachel Seifert the Director of Cocaine Unwrapped.

     

    Rachel, can you tell TalkingDrugs readers what Cocaine Unwrapped is all about?

      American Massing incarceration related to the Drug War

      Submitted by yorvatsi on Thu, 17/02/2011 - 16:51

      The New Jim Crow is a 2010 book and a name given to a category of race-related social and political phenomena in the United States by Michelle Alexander, a civil rights litigator and legal scholar.

        Anti-psychotic drugs given to incarcerated juveniles

        There has been a rapid increase in the use of anti-psychotic drugs being prescribed to incarcerated juveniles, an investigation from Youth Today has uncovered. This increase has taken place despite the well documented health risks it poses towards young people. This has lead to claims that juvenile institutions are using the drugs to keep the juveniles docile, helping them refrain from disruptive and hyper-active behaviour.

          A retired US Major General has proposed a US invasion of Mexico

          A retired army general has said that the US military should invade Mexico “to protect and secure the American people.” Major General Paul E. Vallely’s blinkered response to the increase in violence in Mexico, fuelled by US demands for illegal drugs, seems to overlook the failure that a military response has had to curb drug use in the past. He states “now if I were the Commander-in-Chief, I would be on a war-footing and I would have my military commanders planning and executing a strategy that will defeat swiftly and decisively these cancerous enemies.”

            Interview with Michelle Alexander

            Michelle Alexander, the author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness answers some questions from TalkingDrugs.

            Q1. Outside the US mass incarceration appears to be a monumental social injustice, why do you think the problem has existed for such a long period of time and received so little media exposure both inside and outside the country?

              Parents treat kids' autism with medical marijuana

              See video

              Raising a kid with autism can be a real challenge at times and legal drugs frequently seem to have little or no effect on the kids' behaviour. That is why some parents have decided to treat their children's condition with a drug that is destined to spark controversies: medical marijuana.

              As the mum in the short news segment above reveals, medical marijuana baked in brownies helped her son at a crucial moment in his life, as he was fighting severe weight problems and violent outbursts, a symptom that is relatively common for people with autism.

                Racial bias, prisoners and the American Census for 2010

                The upcoming census in United States has created a big controversy as rural and urban areas battle to hold prison inmates as their own.

                The problem lies in the way that the Census considers residence for people who are incarcerated. Even though the Census uses the residence rule which consistently results in counting people at their homes, prisoners are not given that right and are instead considered as residents of the community that contains the prison.

                  Can America be Cured of a Prison Addiction?

                   

                  Give me your BLACK, your SPANISH, your poor,

                  Your INCARCERATED masses yearning to breathe free,

                  I lift my lamp beside the PRISON door

                  - The Statue of Liberty 

                  "Gimme some more!" you can hear her screaming from across the atlantic, "just a few more... I need more convicts! please, I am begging you..." 

                    Lifting the U.S. Ban on Federal Funding for Syringe  

                    In a major change to the country's drug policy, the United States Congress has reversed a ban on federal funding of needle exchange that was first enacted 21 years ago. Within days the legislation is expected to be signed into law by President Obama and will allow funding of needle exchange programmes domestically, as well as internationally through United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), the world's largest single source of HIV/AIDS‐related funding.

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