Crime & Consequences

Category: Drugs

Results on Drug Votes

by · Nov 8, 2024 11:31 am

Magic mushrooms didn’t have enough ballot magic to be legalized in Massachusetts, David Ovalle reports for the WaPo.

In three red states, voters opted not to legalize recreational marijuana.

In blue Massachusetts, residents rejected a plan making therapeutic use of psychedelics plants legal.

And in liberal California, voters embraced stiffer penalties for certain drug crimes.

The state ballot decisions Tuesday signal voter concerns that drug policies across the United States have drifted too far to the left, according to some policy experts and political analysts. Each ballot question featured nuances specific to their states.

Continue reading . . .

Drugs, Treatment, Jail, and Indirect Consequences

by · Oct 18, 2024 11:58 am

The folks in favor of so-called criminal justice “reform” are fond of simplistic slogans such as “treatment, not jail” for drug offenders. However, as this story by Julie Watts at Sacramento’s CBS 13 indicates, “reform” measures can sometimes undermine treatment rather than promote it. This is one more example of a primary cause of bad policy — failure to consider the indirect consequences and considering only the direct consequences.

Once upon a time, drug courts were a key element of criminal justice reform. These specialized courts provide an alternative to people arrested for drug crimes, either possession or low-level dealing. If they agree to treatment and follow through to completion of the program, the criminal charges will be dropped. As described in the story, many people credit these programs with savings their lives.

But what happens when the criminal penalties for low-level drug offenses are lowered so far that the incentive vanishes? Continue reading . . .

Prop. 47 Damage Control Initiative on Cal. Ballot as Prop. 36

by · Jul 4, 2024 8:58 am

The Homelessness, Drug Addiction & Theft Reduction Act, a California ballot initiative to limit the damage from 2014’s disastrous, Soros-funded, Proposition 47, among other things, will be on the November ballot as Proposition 36. The Cal. Secretary of State released the ballot measure number list yesterday.

The initiative’s provisions are summarized in Section 2: Continue reading . . .

SCOTUS Unties ACCA Hemp Knot

by · May 23, 2024 11:19 am

In the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA), Congress prescribed severe punishment for people with extensive criminal records who violate federal gun laws. The priors are generally state offenses, so there is a problem matching up criminal laws from different jurisdictions. Under the “categorical” approach the Supreme Court has developed, mismatches often spring loose criminals whose actual conduct meets the definition of the crime that Congress sought to include, frustrating the intent of the law. The Supreme Court has had to decide many cases on this topic, and today’s decision in Brown v. United States is the latest installment.

This decision involves two cases, one from Florida and one from Pennsylvania. In both cases, the drug dealers in question dealt in drugs that remain illegal under federal law. Between the times of their state drug-dealing crimes and their federal weapons sentencing, though, the federal government narrowed its definitions of controlled substances so that the state and federal laws were no longer a perfect match. Should that get them off? Three justices voted for that undeserved escape on a technicality, but the majority of six did not. Continue reading . . .

Flying Under the Influence

by · Mar 20, 2024 3:04 pm

Gareth Vipers reports for the WSJ:

A Delta Air Lines pilot was sentenced to 10 months in jail for turning up for a flight more than two-times over the aviation alcohol limit.

Lawrence Russell Jr. was caught trying to board a plane with two bottles of Jägermeister in his carry-on luggage, one of which was half empty, according to court filings released Tuesday. Continue reading . . .

Walking Back Drug Decriminalization

by · Jan 23, 2024 2:23 pm

A common source of error in public policy is finding something wrong and “fixing” it by going too far in the other direction. The Oregon Legislature appears to be waking up to the reality that the state went too far in decriminalizing drugs, according to this report by AP.

SALEM, Ore. (AP) — Democratic lawmakers in Oregon on Tuesday unveiled a sweeping new bill that would undo a key part of the state’s first-in-the-nation drug decriminalization law, a recognition that public opinion has soured on the measure amid rampant public drug use during the fentanyl crisis.

Continue reading . . .

Cannabis Field Sobriety Tests

by · Aug 3, 2023 5:26 am

As cannabis use becomes more commonplace, given state legalization efforts, a pressing issue is enforcement of impaired driving laws.  A new study published in JAMA Psychiatry, however, suggests high false positives rates are a problem with field sobriety tests for cannabis intoxication.  From an accompanying commentary:

In this issue of JAMA Psychiatry, Marcotte et al1 report that field sobriety tests (FSTs) as administered by highly trained police officers are insufficient to detect cannabis-induced impairment in a double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel randomized clinical trial involving a large sample of 184 cannabis users. Although the group receiving active doses of Δ-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the active ingredient in cannabis, performed worse on the FSTs as compared with the placebo group; about half of the participants in the placebo group were classified as impaired. These findings are in line with previous placebo-controlled studies that also reported high false-positive FST rates under placebo. The legal implication of these findings can be major given that FSTs are currently part of the evaluation protocol in North America to detect drivers who are cannabis impaired. Yet, the lack of sensitivity of FSTs to detect THC-impaired individuals does not come as a big surprise, as FSTs have primarily been validated to detect gross alcohol impairment at high (more than 0.10%) blood alcohol concentrations. To add to this problem, there is no cannabis equivalent of a breathalyzer to verify exposure induced impairment, as trace amounts of THC in biomarkers correlate poorly with cannabis-induced behavioral impairment.

The need for a reliable method to assess cannabis intoxication is desperately needed.

 

NY Drug Dealer Convicted of Killing Three

by · Jan 31, 2023 1:55 pm

A New York City drug dealer who distributed fentanyl-laced cocaine out of his mother’s Manhattan apartment has been convicted of the 2021 poisoning deaths of three people.  Aaron Katersky of CBS News reports that Billy Ortega faces 25 years-to -life in federal prison for selling the laced cocaine to stockbroker Ross Mitangi, lawyer Amanda Scher and social worker Julia Ghahramari on the same day in March of 2021.  All three died of fentanyl poisoning.  Federal prosecutors proved that Ortega knew that the drugs he was selling were causing overdoses.  He even gave some of the cocaine to another dealer and suggested he test it’s potency telling him, “give it some girls and you let me know…”  In 2021 18,000 American fatally overdosed on fentanyl-laced cocaine.  Fortunately federal law provides a stiff mandatory minimum sentence for this type of crime.