To End the War on Drugs, a Guide for Politicians, the Press and Public PDF Download

Author: Dean Becker
Publisher: Dtn Media
ISBN: 9780615969916
Category : Drug abuse
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
A globe circling grand slam against drug prohibition. A scathing indictment of the war on drugs. Seattle Police Chief (Ret) Norm Stamper: " For decades, Dean Becker has given himself over to the cause of sane and sensible drug policies. In 'To End the War on Drugs', he explains his passion for reform, and tells us why he's been willing to make sacrifice after sacrifice to end this country's disastrous drug war. Along the way, we hear from scores of reformers (and more than a few apologists for U.S. drug policy). But it is Dean's voice that comes through loud and clear as he makes a strong, compelling case for an end to the War on Drugs." Authored by Pacifica radio host and former cop Dean Becker. This book features the thoughts of 115 experts on the subject of drug war. Included are the words of scientists, doctors, cops, wardens, prosecutors, politicians, authors, prisoners, patients, pastors, pot providers and more. 340 pages of unvarnished truth that will help bring an end to this century of lies.

Author: Eva Bertram
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520205987
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 363

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Book Description
"An important and timely book. The authors capture the dynamics of drug debate with uncanny accuracy. Too often, treatment and prevention get the short end of the stick in Congress, and this book explains why. Drug War Politics makes a compelling case for bringing public health principles to bear on the drug epidemic, and is essential reading for serious students of the drug issue."—Senator Edward M. Kennedy "A thoughtful analysis of the most fundamental and troublesome social problem in America. It reaches behind rhetoric and starts making sense about how we can go about saving ourselves from two addictions: the terrible affliction of drugs and the easy talk that makes the rest of us feel good but does not deal with the problem."—Kurt Schmoke, Mayor, City of Baltimore "This well-informed book shows how political expediency and a punitive conventional wisdom have combined over the past decades to support a national drug policy that fills our prisons, depletes our budget, and destroys our poor. This is a wonderfully sane analysis of what has become a major form of national insanity."—Frances Fox Piven, City University of New York "We've needed a new way of thinking about the drug problem for a long time. Now we have it. Drug War Politics is one of the best efforts to reconceptualize a major aspect of crime, especially victimless crime, that I have seen since Morris and Hawkins' The Honest Politician's Guide to Crime Control of nearly 30 years ago."—Theodore J. Lowi, Cornell University "A compelling analysis of our failure. The provocative public health solutions it proposes to the drug-related crime, violence, and despair that ravage many of our inner cities show that we can give people a chance—a chance to fight addiction and build better lives."—Congressman John Lewis "We will never be able to arrest, prosecute, or jail our way out of the drug problem. To understand why, read this book. The evidence is overwhelming: we need a radical change in the mission and mandate of drug control."—Nicholas Pastore, Chief of Police, New Haven "This is the smart citizens' guide to the drug policy debate—to why we spend so much time and money on things that don't work, and to where we can look for guidance for things that do."—Barbara Geller, Director, Fighting Back, New Haven

Author: Dan Baum
Publisher: Little Brown
ISBN: 9780316084123
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 396

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Book Description
Argues that despite increasing levels of government action, illicit drugs are more readily available than ever, and analyzes the failure of our drug policy

Author: Guillermo Trejo
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108899900
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 379

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Book Description
One of the most surprising developments in Mexico's transition to democracy is the outbreak of criminal wars and large-scale criminal violence. Why did Mexican drug cartels go to war as the country transitioned away from one-party rule? And why have criminal wars proliferated as democracy has consolidated and elections have become more competitive subnationally? In Votes, Drugs, and Violence, Guillermo Trejo and Sandra Ley develop a political theory of criminal violence in weak democracies that elucidates how democratic politics and the fragmentation of power fundamentally shape cartels' incentives for war and peace. Drawing on in-depth case studies and statistical analysis spanning more than two decades and multiple levels of government, Trejo and Ley show that electoral competition and partisan conflict were key drivers of the outbreak of Mexico's crime wars, the intensification of violence, and the expansion of war and violence to the spheres of local politics and civil society.

Author: Isaac Campos
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807882682
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
Historian Isaac Campos combines wide-ranging archival research with the latest scholarship on the social and cultural dimensions of drug-related behavior in this telling of marijuana's remarkable history in Mexico. Introduced in the sixteenth century by the Spanish, cannabis came to Mexico as an industrial fiber and symbol of European empire. But, Campos demonstrates, as it gradually spread to indigenous pharmacopoeias, then prisons and soldiers' barracks, it took on both a Mexican name--marijuana--and identity as a quintessentially "Mexican" drug. A century ago, Mexicans believed that marijuana could instantly trigger madness and violence in its users, and the drug was outlawed nationwide in 1920. Home Grown thus traces the deep roots of the antidrug ideology and prohibitionist policies that anchor the drug-war violence that engulfs Mexico today. Campos also counters the standard narrative of modern drug wars, which casts global drug prohibition as a sort of informal American cultural colonization. Instead, he argues, Mexican ideas were the foundation for notions of "reefer madness" in the United States. This book is an indispensable guide for anyone who hopes to understand the deep and complex origins of marijuana's controversial place in North American history.

Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309439124
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 171

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Book Description
Estimates indicate that as many as 1 in 4 Americans will experience a mental health problem or will misuse alcohol or drugs in their lifetimes. These disorders are among the most highly stigmatized health conditions in the United States, and they remain barriers to full participation in society in areas as basic as education, housing, and employment. Improving the lives of people with mental health and substance abuse disorders has been a priority in the United States for more than 50 years. The Community Mental Health Act of 1963 is considered a major turning point in America's efforts to improve behavioral healthcare. It ushered in an era of optimism and hope and laid the groundwork for the consumer movement and new models of recovery. The consumer movement gave voice to people with mental and substance use disorders and brought their perspectives and experience into national discussions about mental health. However over the same 50-year period, positive change in American public attitudes and beliefs about mental and substance use disorders has lagged behind these advances. Stigma is a complex social phenomenon based on a relationship between an attribute and a stereotype that assigns undesirable labels, qualities, and behaviors to a person with that attribute. Labeled individuals are then socially devalued, which leads to inequality and discrimination. This report contributes to national efforts to understand and change attitudes, beliefs and behaviors that can lead to stigma and discrimination. Changing stigma in a lasting way will require coordinated efforts, which are based on the best possible evidence, supported at the national level with multiyear funding, and planned and implemented by an effective coalition of representative stakeholders. Ending Discrimination Against People with Mental and Substance Use Disorders: The Evidence for Stigma Change explores stigma and discrimination faced by individuals with mental or substance use disorders and recommends effective strategies for reducing stigma and encouraging people to seek treatment and other supportive services. It offers a set of conclusions and recommendations about successful stigma change strategies and the research needed to inform and evaluate these efforts in the United States.

Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309459575
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 483

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Book Description
Drug overdose, driven largely by overdose related to the use of opioids, is now the leading cause of unintentional injury death in the United States. The ongoing opioid crisis lies at the intersection of two public health challenges: reducing the burden of suffering from pain and containing the rising toll of the harms that can arise from the use of opioid medications. Chronic pain and opioid use disorder both represent complex human conditions affecting millions of Americans and causing untold disability and loss of function. In the context of the growing opioid problem, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) launched an Opioids Action Plan in early 2016. As part of this plan, the FDA asked the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to convene a committee to update the state of the science on pain research, care, and education and to identify actions the FDA and others can take to respond to the opioid epidemic, with a particular focus on informing FDA's development of a formal method for incorporating individual and societal considerations into its risk-benefit framework for opioid approval and monitoring.

Author: Arthur C. Brooks
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062883771
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER To get ahead today, you have to be a jerk, right? Divisive politicians. Screaming heads on television. Angry campus activists. Twitter trolls. Today in America, there is an “outrage industrial complex” that prospers by setting American against American, creating a “culture of contempt”—the habit of seeing people who disagree with us not as merely incorrect, but as worthless and defective. Maybe, like more than nine out of ten Americans, you dislike it. But hey, either you play along, or you’ll be left behind, right? Wrong. In Love Your Enemies, social scientist and author of the #1 New York Times bestseller From Strength to Strength Arthur C. Brooks shows that abuse and outrage are not the right formula for lasting success. Brooks blends cutting-edge behavioral research, ancient wisdom, and a decade of experience leading one of America’s top policy think tanks in a work that offers a better way to lead based on bridging divides and mending relationships. Brooks’ prescriptions are unconventional. To bring America together, we shouldn’t try to agree more. There is no need for mushy moderation, because disagreement is the secret to excellence. Civility and tolerance shouldn’t be our goals, because they are hopelessly low standards. And our feelings toward our foes are irrelevant; what matters is how we choose to act. Love Your Enemies offers a clear strategy for victory for a new generation of leaders. It is a rallying cry for people hoping for a new era of American progress. Most of all, it is a roadmap to arrive at the happiness that comes when we choose to love one another, despite our differences.

Author: Mark A.R. Kleiman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199831386
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
While there have always been norms and customs around the use of drugs, explicit public policies--regulations, taxes, and prohibitions--designed to control drug abuse are a more recent phenomenon. Those policies sometimes have terrible side-effects: most prominently the development of criminal enterprises dealing in forbidden (or untaxed) drugs and the use of the profits of drug-dealing to finance insurgency and terrorism. Neither a drug-free world nor a world of free drugs seems to be on offer, leaving citizens and officials to face the age-old problem: What are we going to do about drugs? In Drugs and Drug Policy, three noted authorities survey the subject with exceptional clarity, in this addition to the acclaimed series, What Everyone Needs to Know®. They begin, by defining "drugs," examining how they work in the brain, discussing the nature of addiction, and exploring the damage they do to users. The book moves on to policy, answering questions about legalization, the role of criminal prohibitions, and the relative legal tolerance for alcohol and tobacco. The authors then dissect the illicit trade, from street dealers to the flow of money to the effect of catching kingpins, and show the precise nature of the relationship between drugs and crime. They examine treatment, both its effectiveness and the role of public policy, and discuss the beneficial effects of some abusable substances. Finally they move outward to look at the role of drugs in our foreign policy, their relationship to terrorism, and the ugly politics that surround the issue. Crisp, clear, and comprehensive, this is a handy and up-to-date overview of one of the most pressing topics in today's world. What Everyone Needs to Know® is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press.

Author: Michelle Alexander
Publisher: The New Press
ISBN: 1620971941
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 434

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Book Description
Named one of the most important nonfiction books of the 21st century by Entertainment Weekly‚ Slate‚ Chronicle of Higher Education‚ Literary Hub, Book Riot‚ and Zora A tenth-anniversary edition of the iconic bestseller—"one of the most influential books of the past 20 years," according to the Chronicle of Higher Education—with a new preface by the author "It is in no small part thanks to Alexander's account that civil rights organizations such as Black Lives Matter have focused so much of their energy on the criminal justice system." —Adam Shatz, London Review of Books Seldom does a book have the impact of Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow. Since it was first published in 2010, it has been cited in judicial decisions and has been adopted in campus-wide and community-wide reads; it helped inspire the creation of the Marshall Project and the new $100 million Art for Justice Fund; it has been the winner of numerous prizes, including the prestigious NAACP Image Award; and it has spent nearly 250 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. Most important of all, it has spawned a whole generation of criminal justice reform activists and organizations motivated by Michelle Alexander's unforgettable argument that "we have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it." As the Birmingham News proclaimed, it is "undoubtedly the most important book published in this century about the U.S." Now, ten years after it was first published, The New Press is proud to issue a tenth-anniversary edition with a new preface by Michelle Alexander that discusses the impact the book has had and the state of the criminal justice reform movement today.