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(NaturalNews) It is as if we are living in total “idiocracy” – that any human being would even consider any medication advertised on television with all those crazy side effects, like internal bleeding, loss of vision, coma, feelings of suicide and death. It’s literally insulting to intelligence, yet millions of Americans still run to their doctors with health problems and take whatever the doctor prescribes, without question, and then wonder what went wrong. If food commercials had to list the side effects, including the short- and long-term adverse health effects of eating the “garbage” that’s served up like it’s actual food with nutritive value, then maybe people would start waking up and realize that the medicine they take is prescribed to cover up the symptoms of the disorders and diseases that they get from eating “idiotic” junk science food and synthetic, processed, genetically mutated trash.
This is the true story of ordinary people who are taken into a top-secret junk-food-science experiment that goes awry, and awaken to disease and disorder just decades later, in present-day America. They discover that the world has degenerated into a dystopia where advertising, commercialism and cultural anti-intellectualism run rampant on all the major networks, on billboards, in magazine ads and all over the place. This dysgenic “pressure” has resulted in a uniformly “tardo” human society devoid of individual responsibility for the food being consumed and the medicine that quells the symptoms of pesticide, insecticide and hormone-laden GM food. A country that lives off of sugar and cheap animal grease has woken up to chronic ailments but can’t figure out where it’s all coming from.
Example of fast food commercial: Did you get your burger, fries and cola today? Side effects include constipation, irritable bowels, anal leakage, congestive heart failure, Alzheimer’s and loss of will to exercise.
Typical corporate cereal commercial: Have you had your GM whole grain flakes today? Side effects include loss of immunity and cell mutation. Daily consumption may lead to nervous system disorders and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Addiction to processed, refined grains and sugars can alter memory and cause diabetes. Ask your doctor if those disorders are right for you.
Typical Big Pharma commercial: Does your skin itch constantly? Do you have numb and dull pains in your body? Do you suffer from migraine headaches that come on all of the sudden? Do you have joint pain or back pain? Is your vision blurred, and do you have insomnia? Ask your doctor about Toxi-food-ikol, the new medication for eating toxic food! You can keep eating anything you want to and “get rid of the symptoms!” Side effects include internal bleeding, loss of muscle control and loss of vision, hearing, taste and smell. Some patients experience periods of coma and forget who their relatives are. Do not mix your medication with any vitamins or minerals. Only drink tap water when taking Toxi-food-ikol. Some people experience loss of bone marrow, hair loss and loss of touch, and others simply can’t breathe properly. Do not take Toxi-food-ikol and read at the same time.
There’s a cure for idiocracy. Do not ever take Toxi-food-ikol. Do not eat cancer. Do not drink cancer. Don’t put cancer on your skin. Most disease and disorder comes from toxic food consumption. If you see a lot of advertisements on television for any given products, chances are that the corporations paying for that air time also support toxic food and toxic medicine. That’s where the real profits are, but that’s also where the idiots foster negligence and suffer the long-term “side effects.” Go 100% organic and get healthy before the GMO vultures find you. (http://www.amazon.com)
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1 of 4. Toronto Mayor Rob Ford talks during council at City Hall in Toronto, November 13, 2013.
Credit: Reuters/Mark Blinch
TORONTO (Reuters) – Toronto’s embattled mayor, Rob Ford, professed a zero-tolerance policy for drugs and gangs on Wednesday, but he also admitted he has bought illegal drugs in the past two years.
Speaking after Toronto City Council almost unanimously urged Ford to take a break from his duties, Ford said he could not change the past and would continue his efforts as mayor to save Toronto money.
Asked if he had bought illegal drugs in the past two years, he replied somberly: “Yes, I have.”
Ford last week admitted that he smoked crack cocaine “while in a drunken stupor”, and Wednesday’s call from council came in its first meeting since that admission.
An Ipsos-Reid poll conducted for several TV and radio stations and published on Wednesday showed that 76 percent of Toronto voters believe Ford should step down or take leave of absence.
“Over the last six months and especially the last few weeks we have grown increasingly concerned by the seemingly endless cycle of allegations, denials and belated admissions about your behavior,” City Councillor Jaye Robinson read from a nonbinding petition signed by 30 of the city’s 44 councilors, and passed by a vote of 41 to two.
That petition is separate from a motion, that has yet to be voted on, that asks Ford to take a leave of absence and apologize for “misleading” Toronto residents. Council has no power to force the mayor to step down or take a break unless he is convicted of a crime.
“Our city’s reputation has been damaged and continues to suffer,” Robinson said. “Together we stand to ask you to step aside and take a leave of absence to address your challenges privately outside of the public eye.”
The scandal, reminiscent of the one which enveloped former Washington, D.C., mayor Marion Barry after he was filmed smoking crack in 1990, has made Ford the target of late night-talk show jokes and drawn international media interest to Toronto.
Six months ago, the Toronto Star newspaper and media blog Gawker said they had seen a video of the mayor smoking the drug, and Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair has since confirmed the video exists.
Last week, the Star bought a separate video that showed Ford in an expletive-laden rant, making unspecified threats and pounding his hands together. Ford apologized and admitted he was “extremely inebriated”.
While council has no mechanism to remove Ford, the Ontario provincial government could unseat him through new legislation or an amendment to the City of Toronto Act, a risky move that the province’s Liberal government says would set a dangerous precedent.
While Ford has admitted to moments of heavy drinking and drug use, he has said he does not need to seek treatment.
(The headline and text of this story has been corrected to say Ford admitted to buying illegal drugs, not that he admitted to buying crack))
(Reporting by Cameron French, additional reporting by David Ljunggren; Editing by Janet Guttsman; and Peter Galloway)
(Newser) – Another day in the exciting life of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford: Today, he had the pleasure of standing before city council and ‘fessing up to buying illegal drugs while serving as mayor over the last two years, reports the Toronto Sun. “Yes, I have,” Ford admitted, after a long pause, under questioning from a council member. At another point, he added, “There might be a coat hanger in my closet,” reports the Toronto Star. “I don’t know what’s left.” What’s decidedly not left: His previous confession to smoking crack.
He spoke before the same council that is trying to figure out a way to run the city without any interference from Ford, who continues to rebuff their pleas to at least take a leave of absence. (Here is the transcript of a letter councilors unveiled today, citing “the seemingly endless cycle of allegations, denials, and belated admissions about your behaviour.”) Ford also told the council that, on the advice of his attorney, he will not be cooperating with the police investigation into his actions, reports CNN.
(NaturalNews) Following the release of several reports in recent years highlighting the presence of pharmaceutical contaminants in many of the nation’s drinking water supplies, a new study published in the Elsevier journal Chemosphere reveals that pharmaceuticals are now turning up in large quantities in the Great Lakes as well. A summary of this new research recently put out by Environmental Health News reveals disturbing levels of undiluted pharmaceuticals just two miles from Milwaukee’s main wastewater outfalls.
For their study, researchers from the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee’s School of Freshwater Sciences and the University of Wisconsin – Madison’s State Laboratory of Hygiene conducted tests on water samples collected from various spots in Lake Michigan, both close to shore and out to deeper waters. The team looked specifically for the presence of 54 pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) in these samples, which came from both surface water and sediment that was sampled over the course of two years.
Upon analysis, it was determined that 32 different PPCPs were present in Lake Michigan water, and 30 in Lake Michigan sediment. Several of these PPCPs were also identified up to 3.2 kilometers, or about two miles, away from the city. Among these were metformin, a popular oral anti-diabetic drug; caffeine; the antibiotic sulfamethoxazole; and triclosan, a toxic antibacterial and antibiotic compound found in many conventional hand soap and toothpaste brands.
According to the study’s abstract, the team determined the ecological risk of these substances by measuring their maximum environmental concentrations as detected in the lake and comparing them to the predicted “no-effect” concentrations. From this, they determined that 14 PPCPs present in the lake are currently of “medium or high ecological risk,” meaning they are a threat to both animal life and humans. And the greatest concentrations of these chemicals were found near the shore, where people wade at beaches and algae and other aquatic life abounds.
“In a body of water like the Great Lakes, you’d expect dilution would kick in and decrease concentrations,” says Dana Kolpin, a U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) research hydrologist based out of Iowa, as quoted by Environmental Health News. “That was not the case here,” she adds, noting that these new discoveries contradict previously held assumptions.
While the immediate effects of this widespread pollution problem are still largely unknown, we do know that many of these drug compounds have already been shown to change the behaviors and hormone profiles of various animals, as evidenced by previous studies. This implies that humans may also be at risk, especially as the sheer volume of pharmaceutical runoff increases over time.
“You’re not going to see fish die-offs [from pharmaceuticals] but subtle changes in how the fish eat and socialize that can have a big impact down the road,” adds Kolpin. “With behavior changes and endocrine disruption, reproduction and survival problems may not rear their ugly head for generations.”
Since federal regulations for PPCPs in water are currently non-existent, the problem will most likely persist until proactive solutions are eventually implemented. It is also important to note that most PPCPs are not filtered out by wastewater treatment plants, as the filtration systems currently used by most of them were not designed to capture these pervasive compounds. This means that these toxins end up being dumped right back into waterways unchanged.
“People should reconsider the notion that the Great Lakes are so large that this stuff cannot hurt us,” adds Olga Lyandres, a research manager with the Alliance for the Great Lakes organization. “The stuff you excrete and wash down the drain ends up in the same bodies of water that you drink out of.”
In a recent interview with TV Week Australia, Lea Michele opened up about the loss of her boyfriend and co-star, Cory Monteith. The part Spanish actress tells the mag “I feel like, for me personally, I’ve lost two people, Cory and Finn.” The Glee star says that she has not yet seen the tribute episode dedicated to Cory. Lea adds that the cast had “a beautiful memorial for Cory in the auditorium and some of the cast members sang and people spoke about him, and it only felt right that we do the same thing for Finn, so I felt it was very therapeutic.” Lea wants Cory to be remembered for much more than his death, and said that “there was no greater man than Cory, so for the time we spent together I consider myself lucky.”
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The Pearlisan Gulf, a lake located in Lechuguilla Cave, in New Mexico.
Photo by Max Wisshak (www.speleo-foto.de)
Inaccessible to normal modes of transport and the global view of human technology, there are few places on Earth of which we remain oblivious—perhaps the deep ocean, or the remote, ice-capped mountains of Central Asia? In most cases, access to these areas is a tremendous logistical challenge, requiring the support of governments or a generous donor. But there is one realm in exploration that remains open to the weekend warrior, that needs little more than a helmet, a light, and a willingness to endure a little risk: caves. And as I have learned, the rewards of cave exploration go far beyond the personal adrenaline rush. The depths of the Earth are rich in amazing materials that may help us solve one of the most pressing concerns in medicine today.
Carved by chemistry and the action of water on rock, caves form over geologic time scales of millennia to eons. Underground, hidden from the vision of satellites and inaccessible to GPS signals, the only way to find a cave and map it, is to explore it. And explore caves, we do. While modern technologies cannot let us see inside caves, they can help us detect that enormous sinkhole in the middle of China, or a massive river suddenly disappearing into a Laos mountain, or telltale geologic scars across the surface of a tepuimountain in Venezuela. We are in the middle of a golden age of cave exploration, as expeditions uncover the largest, longest, and deepest caves on Earth hidden, for the most part, from the public eye.
The recently discovered Son Doong Cave in Vietnam has a passageway that barrels straight into a mountainside for a whopping five miles, with dimensions that could comfortably fit a 747 in flight. Sarawak Chamber in Gua Nasib Bagus Cave, Borneo, could accommodate the Superdome, its 72,000 visitors, and if parked New York garage-style, most of their cars. I myself was involved in the discovery of the massive Cloud Ladder Hall in China; the 16-acre room named because its enormous, 1,200-foot-high ceiling is large enough to accommodate its own cloud system. We continue to find new parts of the longest caves in the world, Mammoth Cave, Ky. (400 miles long); Jewel (168 miles) and Wind Caves, S.D.; and Lechuguilla Cave, N.M. (138 miles). An additional three miles have been found in Lechuguilla (or Lech to its explorers) this year alone. Yet these long caves are rapidly being matched by new discoveries, such as the 193-mile Nohoch Nah Chich (The Birdcage) Cave in the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico, which is mostly underwater and has been explored through hundreds of cave dives.
I have been exploring caves for more than 20 years. In that time I’ve gotten hurt. I’ve gotten scarred. I’ve lost friends. In these years of exploration, I’ve also learned what things look like when they’re average and when they are different. And as a professor of microbiology, those differences cause me to stop, think, and sometimes sample. Based on that sampling and the subsequent research, those differences, imperceptible to someone not familiar with this dark world, turn out to be as exciting as the exploration itself.
Hazel Barton admiring aragonite bushes and trees in an area called Land of the Lost.
Photo by Max Wisshak (www.speleo-foto.de)
Antibiotics are chemical keys—constructed to mimic cellular patterns to block, bind, and even collapse critical structures within the microbial cell. They are also remarkably specific, able to find and kill one bacterial cell in a sea of human cells, a magic bullet. Chemically, antibiotics are much more complex than anti-cancer or anti-viral drugs. Their complex structural nature and high specificity make them almost impossible for chemists to build from scratch or even synthesize. We therefore rely on nature to design these molecules for us, and the majority of antibiotics come from other microbes.
But we are beginning to see the emergence of infectious bacteria resistant to virtually all known antibiotics. Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), named sequentially after the antibiotics it is resistant to (methicillin is No. 7), is responsible for thousands of deaths annually. Other names, less familiar, are emerging threats, such as carbapenem-resistant Enterococci (CRE), vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus (VRE) and Clostridium difficile (C. diff). In March, Dame Sally Davies, the United Kingdom’s Chief Medical Officer, warned that microbial antibiotic resistance was a ticking time bomb, on par with global warming and terrorist attacks. In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention just released its annual threat report, which states that 23,000 Americans die every year from complications directly due to antibiotic resistance. Unfortunately, a combination of exhausted potential and market forces means we are limited in new antibiotics. The last novel drug that came to the market was discovered in 1984, and it took nearly 20 years to enter the market as Cubicin.
That’s where caves come in. Most of our antibiotics come from organisms in the soil, although the potential of this environment has been exhausted using traditional techniques. Instead, researchers are turning to remote, unexplored environments: Cubicin was discovered on the side of a volcano, and the recently discovered anthracimycin was found in deep ocean sediments. Caves, with their environmental extremes, lack of sunlight, and scant resources, make an ideal place to hunt for antibiotics. The work of my lab shows that microbes in caves fight for these scarce resources, and they fight mean. One bacterium alone, isolated from Lecuhguilla Cave, produced 38 anti-microbial compounds.
There are, of course, the challenges of negotiating the cave environment. In many pictures my team in the field, we’re wearing hard-hats and the climbing hardware necessary to rappel and ascend ropes, or traverse deep pits on tiny ledges. (When you come into my lab, I really do teach you the ropes.) But the lab is remarkably different. The hunt for antibiotics involves a collaborative team of researchers, across the disciplines of biology, chemistry, and computer science, along with the building of new kinds of academia/industry relationships. New techniques in biology, such as high-throughput screening, pyrosequencing, and bioinformatics, help us to screen the genetic code of thousands of microorganisms for novelty. We pass this information onto the analytical chemists, who use technologies such as liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry and ion mobility-mass spectrometry to hone in on novel and unusual compounds. Industry provides access to the necessary technologies and clinical trials that can turn novel compounds into life-saving drugs.
It’s an unusual combination, to have the desire to explore and self-motivation to organize an expedition to remote locations, along with the academic chops to carry out research on what you find at the very highest level. Yet it mirrors a long tradition of academic exploration, from Charles Darwin to the ill-fated Robert Scott. But with less glamor, more mud—more Édouard-Alfred Martel meets Star Trek.
MSNBC: Sen. Rand Paul testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee on the cruelty and unfairness of federal mandatory minimum sentences in the War on Drugs and made an extraordinary comment about President Barack Obama. MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell explains how it could help rewrite Republican party politics in the Rewrite.
“We’re not going to need pseudoephedrine,” Walter White mutters through clenched teeth. “We’re going to make phenylacetone in a tube furnace, then we’re going to use reductive amination to yield methamphetamine.”
The chemistry lab is the heart of AMC’s Breaking Bad. Although this lab may have had scrappy beginnings, it is still a lab, a home of science. And that’s fitting: Many illicit drugs today have their origins in formal laboratories, though ones that were much more above board than that of Walter White’s.
This points to an interesting and unexplored dichotomy in the history of drugs: There’s a huge gap, temporally and culturally, between the inventors of illicit drugs — usually rather austere, cerebral, and disciplined — and their consumers, whoever they may be.
An early depiction of cannabis from Jean Vigier’s Historia das Plantas (1718), originally published in French in 1670 (The John Carter Brown Library at Brown University)
1. Cannabis In the fall of 1689, the scientist Robert Hooke ducked into a London coffee shop to purchase the drug from an East Indies merchant and proceeded to test it on an unnamed “friend.” It was evidently a large dose. “The Patient understands not, nor remembereth any Thing that he seeth, heareth, or doth,” Hooke reported. “Yet he is very merry, and laughs, and sings… and sheweth many odd Tricks.” Hooke observed that the drug eased stomach pains, provoked hunger, and could potentially “prove useful in the Treatment of Lunaticks.”
Hooke strongly hinted that he’d personally sampled his coffee shop score: The drug “is so well known and experimented by Thousands,” he wrote, that “there is no Cause of Fear, tho’ possibly there may be of Laughter.” (Hooke’s readers would have had good reason to be afraid of a new drug: This was a world in which pharmacies sold ground up skulls and Egyptian mummy feet).
“The Beggars” by Pieter Breugel the Elder, a painting believed to show victims of ergotism.
2. LSD During the time of the Roman empire, physicians described a painful disease called the sacred fire (sacer ignis), which by the Middle Ages came to be known as St. Anthony’s Fire — “an ulcerous Eruption, reddish, or mix’d of pale and red,” as one 1714 text put it. Sufferers of this gruesome illness, which could also cause hallucinations, were actually being poisoned by ergot, a fungus that grows on wheat. Several authors, most recently Oliver Sacks in his excellent book Hallucinations, have noted a potential link between ergot poisoning and cases of dancing mania and other forms of mass hysteria in premodern Europe.
By the 1920s, pharmaceutical firms began investigating the compounds in ergot, which showed potential as migraine treatments. A Swiss chemist at the Sandoz Corporation named Albert Hoffman grew especially intrigued, and in November 1938 (the week after Kristallnacht) he synthesized an ergot derivative: lysergic acid diethalyamide, or LSD for short.
It was not until five years later, however, that Hoffman experienced the drug. Immersed in his work, Hoffman accidentally allowed a tiny droplet of LSD to dissolve onto his skin. He thought nothing of it: Hardly any drugs are psychoactive in such minute doses. Later that day, however, Hoffmann went home sick, lay on his couch, and:
sank into a not unpleasant intoxicated-like condition, characterized by an extremely stimulated imagination. In a dreamlike state, with eyes closed (I found the daylight to be unpleasantly glaring), I perceived an uninterrupted stream of fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes with intense, kaleidoscopic play of colors. After some two hours this condition faded away.
Three days later, the chemist decided to self-administer what he assumed was a tiny dose to further test the drug’s effects. He took 250 micrograms, roughly 10 times higher than the threshold dose. Within an hour, Hoffman asked his lab assistant to escort him home by bicycle. Cycling through the Swiss countryside, Hoffman was shocked to observe that “everything in my field of vision wavered and was distorted as if seen in a curved mirror.”
By the time he arrived home, Hoffman decided to call a doctor. However, the physician reported no abnormal physical symptoms besides dilated pupils, and Hoffmann began to enjoy himself:
Kaleidoscopic, fantastic images surged in on me, alternating, variegated, opening and then closing themselves in circles and spirals, exploding in colored fountains, rearranging and hybridizing themselves in constant flux.
Hoffman awoke the next morning “refreshed, with a clear head,” and with “a sensation of well-being and renewed life.” In an echo of Hooke’s report about his friend’s cannabis experience, which left him “Refreshed…and exceeding hungry,” Hoffman recalled that “Breakfast tasted delicious and gave me extraordinary pleasure.”
An elder statesman of Japanese science and medicine Nagayoshi Nagai. He and his wife hosted Albert Einstein in 1923. (Wikimedia Commons)
3. Meth A member of the Meiji Japanese elite, Nagayoshi devoted much of his energy to the chemical analysis of traditional Japanese and Chinese medicines using the tools of Western science. In 1885, Nagai isolated the stimulant ephedrine from Ephedra sinica, a plant long used in Ayurvedic and Chinese medicine.
The year before, in July 1884, Sigmund Freud had published his widely-read encomium to the wonders of cocaine, Über Coca. Cocaine was radically more potent than coca leaves, and chemists the world over were on the lookout for other wonder drugs. It’s likely that Nagai hoped to work the same magic with ephedra, and in many ways he did. Ephedrine is a mild stimulant, notable nowadays as an ingredient in shady weight-loss supplements and as one of the few drugs that Mormons are allowed to indulge in.
In 1893 Nagai tried something new, using ephedrine to synthesize meth. It took the world a couple decades to catch on. In 1919, a younger protégé of Nagai named Akira Ogata discovered a new method of synthesizing the crystalline form of the new stimulant, giving the world crystal meth.
It wasn’t until World War II, however, that meth became widespread as a handy tool for keeping tank and bomber crews awake. By 1942, Adolf Hitler was receiving regular IV injections of meth from his physician, Theodor Morell. Two years later the American pharmaceutical company Abbott Laboratories won FDA approval for meth as a prescription treatment for a host of ills ranging from alcoholism to weight gain.
(Reuters) – Avanir Pharmaceuticals Inc said it signed a three-year agreement with Merck & Co Inc to co-promote Merck’s multibillion-dollar drugs to treat Type 2 diabetes.
Avanir shares rose 11 percent in extended trading after closing at $ 4.50 on the Nasdaq.
The company said its salesforce will promote Januvia, Janumet and Janumet XR in long-term care facilities such as nursing homes and skilled nursing facilities in the United States from October.
Avanir said in a regulatory filing that it could get up to $ 60 million from Merck over the three years, from a fixed monthly fee and performance fee.
“I think it’s impressive to sign a deal with Merck and obviously, it’s not going to cost them very much and it’s going to help them get to profitability,” Summer Street Research analyst Carol Werther told Reuters.
“The agreement is just for long-term care centers, which is where a lot of their sales force is right now and where they’ve been most successful.”
Merck recorded $ 4.09 billion in sales from Januvia and $ 1.66 billion from Janumet in 2012, according to a regulatory filing dated February 28.
Eric Holder, America’s first African-American attorney general, and his boss, Barack Obama, the first black president, haven’t been shy about pointing out racial disparities in the criminal justice system. Racial profiling?
It’s real, they say. State “stand your ground” laws? Obama says they don’t work for minorities. Yet both have been conspicuously absent when it comes to redressing racial disparities in their own home turf, the federal government’s ill-conceived war on drugs.
That could change when Holder addresses the American Bar Association in San Francisco on Monday.
The war on drugs has presented “a lot of unintended consequences,” Holder recently told NPR, and the federal government “can certainly change” its enforcement policies. NPR reports that Justice Department lawyers have been crafting reform proposals, which Holder may roll out at the lawyer confab.
It’s about time.
Tea party Republican Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Mike Lee of Utah have co-sponsored legislation (with Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.) to reform federal mandatory minimum sentences. Holder told NPR that the administration wants to work with legislators. Translation: Obama has been waiting for political cover, and now he has it.
Federal mandatory minimum sentencing laws were meant to deliver hard time for drug kingpins, but too often they have been used to incarcerate nonviolent low-level offenders for too long. As U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson told The New York Times, the system rewards people who know enough to inform on others, while “the small fry, the little workers who don’t have that information, get the mandatory sentences.”
Vinson was explaining how federal mandatory minimums required that he sentence Floridian Stephanie George to life without parole because her dealer boyfriend had stowed a half-kilogram of cocaine in her attic, but the boyfriend and his associates were sentenced to less than 15 years.
The Drug Policy Alliance, which opposes the drug war, has urged the administration to support the Leahy-Paul Justice Safety Valve Act and the Durbin-Lee Smarter Sentencing Act, as well as a bipartisan House bill to allow early supervised release of certain federal prisoners. The alliance’s Bill Piper believes “Holder considers sentencing reform to be a legacy issue.”
I hope Piper’s right. I still am waiting for Obama to make good on his 2008 campaign promise to “immediately” review federal sentencing “to see where we can be smarter on crime and reduce the ineffective warehousing of nonviolent drug offenders.”
Obama did sign the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 to reduce the disparity in sentencing for crack versus powder cocaine. Possession of 5 grams of crack cocaine had triggered a five-year mandatory minimum sentence, whereas the trigger for powder cocaine had been 500 grams. (In 2006, about 4 in 5 crack offenders were black, whereas 27 percent of powder cocaine offenders were black.)
Because the Fair Sentencing Act was not retroactive, law professor Douglas Berman co-wrote a piece in Slate last month in which he called on Obama to use his presidential pardon power to commute the sentences of about 5,000 crack offenders over-sentenced under the old law. “A stroke of the pen can undo vast racial disparities in criminal sentences,” the piece argued.
Whoa. Berman’s plan risks the release of some truly bad guys. It would make much more sense for Obama to name a panel to review old cases first. Over the phone, Berman agreed that there would be shrewder, safer ways for Obama to commute sentences and railed against the administration’s “inability to think you can do it shrewdly.”
To date, the president has commuted only one sentence. He has the worst pardon record of any modern president. That’s unconscionable when you consider George and Clarence Aaron, a nonviolent first-time drug offender serving life without parole.
Marijuana isn’t an issue of racial justice, but it is an issue of individual rights and states’ rights. As a candidate in 2008, Obama signaled that he was reluctant to sic the awesome power of the federal government on medical marijuana in states where voters had legalized it.
As president, however, Obama has allowed federal prosecutors to go to town on medical marijuana distributors. Piper described the Obama administration as “definitely more aggressive against medical marijuana than the Bush administration, although (its) rhetoric has been better.”
That rhetoric, Piper believes, resulted in Colorado and Washington voters approving measures to legalize the recreational use of marijuana last year. In December, Holder said the Department of Justice would announce a policy on the new laws “relatively soon.” Hasn’t happened yet.
Maybe marijuana is like same-sex marriage and Team Obama is asking: Is it safe to evolve positions now? Here’s the question: Are Obama and Holder A) equivocators who can act now because, with no re-election at stake, there’s no downside or B) cold partisans who care about race and justice only as ideological wedges?
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Hazel Barton admiring aragonite bushes and trees in an area called Land of the Lost.
