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You are here: Home / Archives for Politics / War On Drugs

War On Drugs

Saturday Evening Open Thread: An Underrated Miracle Drug

by Anne Laurie|  September 21, 20245:41 pm| 119 Comments

This post is in: Proud to Be A Democrat, Something Good Open Thread, The War on Your Neighbor, aka the War on Drugs

Overdose deaths are plummeting, thanks to Biden making Naloxone available over the counter. If you want a better country, the Democratic Party is here for you. pic.twitter.com/zyWGmvqehP

— Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) September 18, 2024

I want more people to know Joe and Kamala made an overdose stopper available to buy over the counter and overdose deaths *immediately* plummeted https://t.co/HQpjctxACx

— Isaiah Martin (@isaiahrmartin) September 19, 2024

Seriously!

An @NPR exclusive: US overdose deaths plummet by 10.6%. "The trends are definitely positive," says SHP’s @KeithNHumphreys. "This is going to be the best year we've had since all of this started." https://t.co/0AH383pmsM

— StanfordHealthPolicy (@StanfordHP) September 18, 2024

Per NPR, “U.S. overdose deaths plummet, saving thousands of lives”:

For the first time in decades, public health data shows a sudden and hopeful drop in drug overdose deaths across the U.S.

“This is exciting,” said Dr. Nora Volkow, head of the National Institute On Drug Abuse [NIDA], the federal laboratory charged with studying addiction. “This looks real. This looks very, very real.”

National surveys compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention already show an unprecedented decline in drug deaths of roughly 10.6 percent. That’s a huge reversal from recent years when fatal overdoses regularly increased by double-digit percentages.

Some researchers believe the data will show an even larger decline in drug deaths when federal surveys are updated to reflect improvements being seen at the state level, especially in the eastern U.S.

“In the states that have the most rapid data collection systems, we’re seeing declines of twenty percent, thirty percent,” said Dr. Nabarun Dasgupta, an expert on street drugs at the University of North Carolina.

According to Dasgupta’s analysis, which has sparked discussion among addiction and drug policy experts, the drop in state-level mortality numbers corresponds with similar steep declines in emergency room visits linked to overdoses…

It’s a hard stat to brag about, because every story gets bombarded with comments about ‘spending taxpayer dollars to keep worthless addicts alive’ and ‘it wouldn’t be necessary if not for Demon-crat’s open border policy.’ But fewer dead community members is a good thing. And a lot of those ‘worthless eaters’ have family and friends who are also voters, so there’s got to be ways to point that out, yes?

Here is a whole list of things they did to address the overdose epidemic:https://t.co/6KeST1ei5w

— 🪷 She persists – I dissent! (@Cantkeepquiet3) September 19, 2024

Saturday Evening Open Thread: An Underrated Miracle DrugPost + Comments (119)

Late Night Open Thread: Dark Dank Brandon Strikes Again!

by Anne Laurie|  October 7, 20221:33 am| 70 Comments

This post is in: 2022 Elections, Open Threads, President Biden, The War on Your Neighbor, aka the War on Drugs

it is pretty wild to see somebody finally stop nibbling around the edges on criminal justice reform and take a big bite out of the middle https://t.co/dm67EYLldG

— kilgore trout, death to putiner (@KT_So_It_Goes) October 6, 2022

Now this puts the Repubs in the position of either agreeing w Biden or taking another political horrible position.

— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) October 6, 2022

show full post on front page

Trump’s response could be a big deal. He could essentially agree w Biden & it would pretty much wipe away weed as a wedge issue. But it’s pretty tough for him to not oppose Biden on everything

BTW, big investor in Blake Masters, JD Vance, & legalizing & selling weed: Peter Thiel

— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) October 6, 2022

also: called it https://t.co/MUG5PHuYtp

— ??your him-boo ghost-friend ?? (@swolecialism) October 6, 2022

I’m just gonna say this again:

A lot of people on Twitter are looking at Biden’s soaring approval numbers, seeing that the election is eight weeks away, and insisting “now is the time to legalize pot.”

Those people are wrong.

*October* is the time to legalize pot. pic.twitter.com/KtpNnsCrUO

— dave karpf (@davekarpf) September 15, 2022

By Rand Paul

— Jack Thompson (@jackethomp) October 6, 2022

not even seeing lukewarm outraged takes on the timeline from the most rabid MAGA pundits about biden pardoning weed possessions, which really tells you everything there is to say about what an absolute travesty of justice the laws that put them in prison are in the first place

— kilgore trout, death to putiner (@KT_So_It_Goes) October 6, 2022

Nah, there’s always somebody in the Right-Wing Nut Job ecosphere…

oh please, get the court to 5-4 keeping marijuana illegal. fucking do it you fascist dorks, let’s redline the loss of legitimacy for that institution. https://t.co/zMIIcP7k54

— William B. Fuckley (@opinonhaver) October 6, 2022

Defense attorney rebuts Hammer (from a longer thread):

This is utter bullshit. Josh’s has no idea what he’s saying. I’ve never seen a federal case pleaded down from possession with intent to distribute (let alone a violent crime) to simple possession. Federal plea bargain guidelines would prevent it without high-level approval. /1 pic.twitter.com/wiIeNETJLP

— IfHatHadHappened (@Popehat) October 6, 2022

Oh, look, another member of the Right-Wing ‘elite’!

/2 Also: @SenTomCotton is full of shit. I’ve never in my 27 year federal criminal career seen a more serious federal drug case pleaded down to simple possession of marijuana. Simple possession cases are usually people arrested in national parks, the VA, federal property, etc. https://t.co/2dDdJAKMye

— IfHatHadHappened (@Popehat) October 6, 2022

Late Night Open Thread: <em><del>Dark</del> Dank Brandon Strikes Again! </em>Post + Comments (70)

Saturday Morning Open Thread: Be Happy!

by Anne Laurie|  April 2, 20227:33 am| 70 Comments

This post is in: Music, Open Threads, Republican Stupidity, The War on Your Neighbor, aka the War on Drugs, World Cup

Happy #SikhHeritageMonth! Celebrate with @GurdeepPandher and bhangra dancers from across Canada! https://t.co/ynGGq3xB4A pic.twitter.com/Bayr1kWhWX

— CBC Arts (@CBCArts) April 1, 2022

Get calm! (not my relaxant of choice, but neither is alcohol, and we FAFO’d prohibition for that already)

Bill to legalize marijuana passes U.S. House, but faces dim prospects in Senate https://t.co/Ns6o3sfVUS pic.twitter.com/iF9faSxHp2

— Reuters (@Reuters) April 2, 2022

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We just passed the MORE Act. It would eliminate criminal penalties for cannabis offenses.

And expunge past federal cannabis convictions – addressing the detrimental impacts of decades of misguided drug policy.

It's time we took a stand for equity in our justice system.

— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) April 1, 2022

13 states are above the national median per capita income & below the national per capita rate of violent crime

Marijuana has been decriminalized in 12 of those states https://t.co/29Y7mp9rqq

— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) April 1, 2022

Raskin: I concede our party is not for the kind of cocaine fueled orgies that a freshman Republican representative bragged about but we do understand that their marijuana prohibition laws don’t work for our people pic.twitter.com/zmisr7V5St

— Acyn (@Acyn) April 1, 2022

and the only way to treat it is with this here oxy come on over if y'all want some https://t.co/CHwc1IhkrN

— Inanimate Carbon Rod (@rod_inanimate) April 1, 2022

Sportsball! The reactions to the World Cup draw seem fairly well-balanced…

Soccer-Reaction to World Cup draw https://t.co/FGImBspZz0 pic.twitter.com/9yaOvOOzHB

— Reuters (@Reuters) April 2, 2022

Geopolitical foes Iran and U.S. to clash again at World Cup https://t.co/tND7XxA2Cq pic.twitter.com/3SxJ2ABQtV

— Reuters (@Reuters) April 2, 2022

Saturday Morning Open Thread: Be Happy!Post + Comments (70)

Late Night Open Thread: Will Nobody Think of the Fentanyl?!?

by Anne Laurie|  July 22, 202112:10 am| 70 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, Republican Stupidity, The War on Your Neighbor, aka the War on Drugs

Wow Biden's border patrol seizes lethal opioids and not first graders. https://t.co/370BPh53If

— Reinstated Doorknob Licker (@agraybee) July 19, 2021

The mockery is all over twitter, but Biggs’ ‘outrage’ is an exemplar of the current Repub problem: They’ve gotten so increasingly abstruse with their invocations that it’s become difficult for normal people to follow. Biden seizes all the fentanyl is… supposed to be a bad thing, to the GOP Death Cult?

I am glad somebody in our government is standing up to the Biden administration's blatant disregard for fentanyl's Fourth Amendment rights. https://t.co/sHuG4NpBZJ

— Slava Malamud (@SlavaMalamud) July 19, 2021

is he….mad that people were denied all that fentanyl? https://t.co/PtzDWRy26R

— zeddy (@Zeddary) July 19, 2021

Which reminds me of how Trump raided the Coast Guard budget to pay for his border stunts. A service…that does genuinely important work at stopping high-level, cartel-controlled trafficking…gutted so he could take kids away from parents. https://t.co/JbJktWwpex

— zeddy (@Zeddary) July 19, 2021

Horrors to be followed, come the midterms, by statements like Biden cuts child poverty in half! and Under Biden, new infrastructure in every state!

The Base will be duly horrified, but what about the rest of the voting public?

Late Night Open Thread: <em>Will Nobody Think of the Fentanyl?!?</em>Post + Comments (70)

Fetterman

by @heymistermix.com|  December 4, 20201:02 pm| 156 Comments

This post is in: The War on Your Neighbor, aka the War on Drugs

Here’s a good writeup of PA Lt. Gov. Fetterman’s effort to legalize marijuana at, of all places, the tech site The Verge.  I’ve been following him for a while, and he’s quite good.  Example:

“I find the Democrats’ platform on it cowardly, and, on the wrong side of history,” he said. “So the Democratic Party is to the right of South Dakota on legal weed, and it’s like, ‘what the hell is wrong with you?’” Fetterman says. “The Democratic Party owes its electoral success in this election to Black and brown communities. And they are disgustingly, disproportionately impacted by weed prohibition more than anybody.”

Apparently, he’s thinking about a run against Toomey in 2022 — that would be a good flip. He’s good on social media, too — authentic, frank, fun, and not just about politics:

Boom. pic.twitter.com/AA6t1e9UYl

— John Fetterman (@JohnFetterman) December 4, 2020


Update: Forgot to mention that his wife is also really impressive.

FettermanPost + Comments (156)

Justice Done? Or Derided?

by Tom Levenson|  January 24, 20207:37 pm| 53 Comments

This post is in: Free Markets Solve Everything, Open Threads, Show Us on the Doll Where the Invisible Hand Touched You, War On Drugs

A verdict came down yesterday for execs at Insys Therapeutics for their roles in a scheme that–the prosecution argued–poured gasoline on the opioid crisis fire:

I believe we wildly overincarcerate. I don’t thing the US prison system is effective at pretty much anything but serving as a kind of low-rent industrial policy for deindustrialized rural and exurban zones. I don’t generally argue that anyone should be left to rot simply to satisfy my sense of balancing the cosmic scales of justice.

John Kapoor, 76, the former chairman of Insys Therapeutics, was sentenced in Boston’s federal court after a jury found him guilty of racketeering conspiracy last May. The 10-week trial revealed sensational details about the company’s marketing tactics, including testimony that a sales executive once gave a lap dance to a doctor the company was wooing. Kapoor was also ordered to pay a $250,000 fine.

Kapoor was preceded into his conviction by four other Insys employees, along with three more who pled out and testified.  Kapoor earned the most prison time of the bunch, five and a half years, while his underlings face shorter terms, from one to almost three years behind bars.

But we inhabit in the America that actually exists, not the one we’re trying to build, and in these United States, prison is exemplary…and lots of folks who didn’t eat in the executive dining room end up serving much more for crimes–even violent ones–that on the face of them would seem much less heinous than this:

Kapoor and others were accused of paying millions of dollars in bribes to doctors across the United States to prescribe the company’s highly addictive oral fentanyl spray, known as Subsys. The bribes were paid in the form of fees for sham speaking engagements that were billed as educational opportunities for other doctors…

During his trial, jurors heard from former employees who testified that Insys made a habit of hiring attractive women as representatives to boost sales of the drug. One former sales representative testified that a regional sales manager once gave a lap dance at a Chicago nightclub to a doctor Insys was pushing to write more prescriptions.

Jurors also were shown a rap video in which Insys employees danced and rapped around a person dressed as a giant bottle of the fentanyl spray. Prosecutors said the video was shown at a national sales meeting in 2015 and was intended to motivate representatives to push Subsys to doctors.

Lots of misery flows from such “hijinks.”

So. What do you think: is a year or five in the slammer appropriate for a drug pushing scheme that was national in scope and almost certain led to the suffering and death of a lot of people whose names we will likely never know?

Or…

Hell. I know where I come down.

If nothing else, given that corporations — they’re people, remember! — can’t go to jail in toto, and that I suspect executives are among the groups most likely to be deterred by the credible threat of hard time, this is a missed opportunity to put some muscle behind the notion of the rule of law.

Your views?

Open thread!

Justice Done? Or Derided?Post + Comments (53)

Respite Open Thread: Trump {Hearts} the 80s

by Anne Laurie|  March 20, 20186:56 pm| 120 Comments

This post is in: Dolt 45, Nature & Respite, On The Road, Republican Venality, The War on Your Neighbor, aka the War on Drugs, All Too Normal, Blatant Liars and the Lies They Tell

Trump suggests America has never had a drug addiction crisis before. pic.twitter.com/hgWU0kfYNI

— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) March 19, 2018

The sniffs for emphasis are really selling the content here. https://t.co/62E84d4PRH

— Schooley (@Rschooley) March 19, 2018

That low, dishonest decade. Back when his memory and his dick both worked without so much chemical assistance — or at least that’s how the old man remembers it, now…

This rally is, of course, being touted by the usual Horse Race media hacks as “the start of the 2020 campaign.” Because Donny Dollhands isn’t the only one who prefers cheap nostalgia to real work!

Trump: "We're pouring a lot of money and a lot of talent into this horrible problem." He has announced no new funding since declaring a public health emergency.

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) March 19, 2018

(Spoiler for the Youngs, or anyone else who doesn’t remember that far back: Reagan’s people didn’t care about “the drug problem”, either. It just gave them a handy distraction from things like their Iran-Contra criminality.)

Trump telling people in New Hampshire that the source of the opioid epidemic are cities and immigrants. Real subtle stuff.

— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) March 19, 2018

New Hampshire is almost all white, so Trump has to reach across the border and complain about Lawrence, Mass. (74% Hispanic) as a driver of New Hampshire's drug problem.

— Josh Barro (@jbarro) March 19, 2018

To be fair, telling New Hampsters that all bad things come from Massachusetts is *always* a popular political go-to, because New Hampshire residents secretly resent their parasitic relationship with our Commonwealth…

Welp.

One of the solutions that Trump touted today for the opioid crisis is THE CLINTON FOUNDATION.

Some things you can't make up.https://t.co/vbb99O3t2b pic.twitter.com/WOtZkZxGni

— Jesse Ferguson (@JesseFFerguson) March 19, 2018

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Trump says the Justice Department is looking into bringing "major litigation" against drug companies that produce addictive painkillers

— Jennifer Epstein (@jeneps) March 19, 2018

And I’m looking to lose some serious weight, but not if it involves changing my diet or exercising. Or even surgery. I’m just looking, okay?

Mark your calendars: Trump says he'll have a "major news conference" at the White House "in about a month" on driving down prescription drug prices.

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) March 19, 2018

Right after Meredith McGyver does an all-networks presentation of Trump’s tax returns.

Trump calls for "great commercials" during "the right shows" that demonstrate to children "how bad" drugs are. "And we'll make them very, very bad commercials…unsavoury situations."

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) March 19, 2018

Trump’s probably thinking more like this number from Robert Evans: https://t.co/gDoN5oOIju

— Colin Hand (@colinhand) March 19, 2018

Warn kids that if they do drugs, they might turn into Trump economic advisor Larry Kudlow or administration booster Rush Limbaugh. https://t.co/rFvwutS7La

— Eric Kleefeld (@EricKleefeld) March 19, 2018

Trump has an idea for commercials to discourage children from using drugs. Maybe there could be a slogan like "Just say 'no'."

— Josh Barro (@jbarro) March 19, 2018

Trump announces opioid fighting media campaign. pic.twitter.com/6gAGluplOl

— Schooley (@Rschooley) March 19, 2018

Respite Open Thread: Trump {Hearts} the 80sPost + Comments (120)

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