AMERICAN INDICATORS The Drug War
-- Number of Americans in prison: 2,000,000 -- Number there for non-violent drug offenses: c. 400,000 -- Number of arrests last year for drug possession: 1,400,000 -- Number of arrests last year for drug trafficking: 300,000 -- Annual cost of drug war when Nixon kicked off his version of it: $100 million -- Annual cost of drug war today: $18 billion -- Amount older Americans would be receiving today if Social Security had increased during this period at the same rate: $30,000 a month.
DRUG REFORM COORDINATION NETWORK http://www.drcn.org LINDESMITH CENTER http://www.lindesmith.org.
DRUG BUSTS
NORML: The California State Assembly's Public Safety Committee approved a bill this week to reimpose the state's expired "Smoke a Joint, Lose Your License" law. [The bill] would impose an automatic six month drivers' license suspension for all drug offenses, regardless of whether the drug offense is driving related. Under federal law, the state stands to lose $100 million in highway funds unless the legislature either passes the bill, or the governor agrees to sign an "opt-out" statement. Thirty-two other states have adopted the "opt out" statement. A California poll by David Binder found that voters oppose the legislation by a 2-1 margin. The American Civil Liberties Union, the California AFL-CIO, the Teamsters, the California School Employees Association and the Service Employees International Union all oppose the bill.
CALIFORNIA NORML (415) 563-5858. BILL http://www.leginfo.ca.gov.
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MOTHER JONES: A bill banning Internet sites that publish or even link to drug-making information looks set to sail through Congress -- to the dismay of free-speech advocates . . . The bill, by Sen. John Ashcroft, R-Mo., is aimed at stopping the spread of crank. But it also has publishers, civil libertarians, and drug reformers arming for battle over free-speech rights. "There's just no question there's a First Amendment issue," said Richard Boire, a California attorney and director of the Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics. "You're essentially getting into mind-policing" . . . The language banning the distribution of information intended to help someone break federal law was copied from an earlier Feinstein bill targeting Internet bomb-making instructions. But the meth bill goes a step further than the bomb-making law, barring people from distributing drug manufacturing information if they know somebody else intends to use it to break federal law, even if the provider doesn't intend for them to do so.
MOTHER JONES http://www.motherjones.com/news_wire/methweb.html