The Crime Report (https://thecrimereport.org/category/drugs/)
The standard PR “spin” from prison authorities around the U.S. blames ingenious schemes by prisoners for drug smuggling into facilities, but recent arrests of guards in Georgia offer a clue to where the biggest problem lies, writes a former inmate.
Canada’s start of legal marijuana sales may lead the way to a global cannabis revolution, unleashing high-quality medical research that could bolster pot’s reputation as a healthier alternative to alcohol and tobacco.
As governors in the hardest-hit New England, Mid-Atlantic and Midwestern states call for intensified law enforcement and stiffer penalties for fentanyl dealers, public health officials say this latest drug scourge underscores the urgent need to get more people into treatment.
Massachusetts’ Supreme Judicial Court agreed to throw out nearly a decade’s worth of meth convictions plus all cases from a disgraced chemist’s last four years on the job. the number of cases involved is uncertain but it is well over 8,000.
Federal drug agent Patrick Trainor calls the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia the largest open-air narcotics market for heroin on the East Coast. The police realize they can’t arrest the problem away, and officers spend many calls reviving drug addicts with Narcan.
Defying threats from the Justice Department, public health advocates in Philadelphia have launched a nonprofit to run a facility to allow people to use illegal drugs under medical supervision. Board member Ed Rendell, a former Pennsylvania governor, says something needs to be done about the opioid epidemic.
As the Trump Administration pushed its “zero tolerance” campaign on illegal immigration, drug-trafficking cases dropped by 30 percent along the Mexican border. Serious felony cases are being declined because of more attention to immigration, says a former Justice Department official.
A new program that provides opioid-dependent inmates with small drug doses to help ease their withdrawal when they leave prison shows promising results in Philadelphia. So why do so many U.S. corrections authorities resist medication-assisted treatment?
Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, running for re-election, calls the amount of drugs seized at the border “staggering” and credits them to a law-enforcement tactic he has declined to describe. There is no way to determine whether the amount of drugs interdicted by the border task force is larger than what state personnel would have seized in their regular duties.,
Despite the growing cultural acceptance of marijuana use, arrests have ticked up significantly in the New Jersey and Pennsylvania counties adjacent to Philadelphia. Experts cite several factors, including opiate enforcement and court rulings that relaxed police search protocols.