drug abuse – praag.org

Obama’s gay pot dealer killed for flatulence

The leader of the free World, Barack Obama’s high school pot dealer who he thanked in his yearbook for the ‘good times’ was beaten to death by his lover after a series of fights over flatulence and drugs, MailOnline can reveal today.

Raymond Boyer, known as ‘Gay Ray’ to Obama and his marijuana smoking ‘Choom Gang’, was bludgeoned to death with a hammer seven years after he sold the future president and his friends drugs.

His lover Andrew Devere, a male prostitute, gave police a laundry list of reasons for the killing, including that Boyer, a surfer and unemployed chef, constantly put him down, made him beg for drugs and had a habit of breaking wind in his face.

Source: Daily Mail

Western Cape fights Coloured drug and alcohol abuse

Coloured youth smoking a substance in the Western Cape

The Western Cape provincial government has budgeted R87 million to fight drug and alcohol abuse, premier Helen Zille said on Monday.

“Our commitment in this regard has led to a doubling of our annual budget for interventions to address substance abuse over the last four years, from just R42 million when we came into office in 2009, to R87 million this year,” she said.

“This budget also includes increased allocation for public information provision and early intervention services to help prevent the onset of drug and alcohol abuse.”

She said half a billion rand would be invested in the awareness and education programme over the next five years, should the Democratic Alliance remain in office.

The provincial government was also in discussion with the health department and the Sultan Bahu treatment centre in Mitchell’s Plain, with a view to establishing South Africa’s first outpatient opiate replacement programme.

“This initiative is aimed at addressing the harms associated with shifting trends toward heroin abuse in the province.”

She said the province had made great strides in reducing drug and alcohol-related harms over the past four years. – Sapa

US to soften drug sentences

The Obama administration announced plans on Monday to reduce its use of mandatory sentences for drug offences in order to tackle a cycle of poverty and incarceration in overcrowded jails.

In remarks to the American Bar Association, Attorney General Eric Holder was to call minimum jail terms “counterproductive,” according to excerpts from his speech released in advance.

Holder says the United States should remain strict but be smarter about tackling crime.

And he warned that, while the total US population has increased by a third since 1980, the prison population has soared by 800 percent.

The United States accounts for five percent of the world population but nearly a quarter of all people imprisoned, he said.

“Today, a vicious cycle of poverty, criminality, and incarceration traps too many Americans and weakens too many communities. However, many aspects of our criminal justice system may actually exacerbate this problem, rather than alleviate it,” Holder was to say.

And of 219 000 people jailed in federal as opposed to state-run prisons, nearly half were convicted of drug-related offences.

Altogether, inmates in local, state and federal prisons cost the government $80-billion in 2010 alone, he added, saying it was time for reform.

“We can start by fundamentally rethinking the notion of mandatory minimum sentences for drug-related crimes. Some statutes that mandate inflexible sentences — regardless of the facts or conduct at issue in a particular case — reduce the discretion available to prosecutors, judges, and juries,” Holder said.

He added: “They breed disrespect for the system. When applied indiscriminately, they do not serve public safety. They have had a disabling effect on communities. And they are ultimately counterproductive.”

The mandatory minimum sentences were included in the penal code by Congress in 1986 and 1988.

Holder said he hoped Congress would pass new legislation but in the meantime he has mandated a modification of the Justice Department’s charging policies.

Holder said that under the changes certain low-level, nonviolent drug offenders who have no ties to large-scale organisations, gangs, or cartels will no longer be charged with offences that impose draconian mandatory minimum sentences.

“They now will be charged with offences for which the accompanying sentences are better suited to their individual conduct, rather than excessive prison terms more appropriate for violent criminals or drug kingpins,” he said, according to a draft of his speech.

In a further effort to ease the prison population, Holder announced a change to allow for early release of elderly inmates who did not commit violent crimes and have served significant portions of their sentences.

The American Civil Liberties Union welcomed the changes enthusiastically.

“Today, the attorney general is taking crucial steps to tackle our bloated federal mass incarceration crisis, and we are thrilled by these long-awaited developments,” it said in a statement.

“While today’s announcement is an important step toward a fairer justice system, Congress must change the laws that lock up hundreds of thousands of Americans unfairly and unnecessarily,” the ACLU added.

In 2010, President Barack Obama won passage of a law establishing more equality in sentences for convictions for possessing crack and cocaine. They were stiffer for crack, and most of those convicted of this were black.

That law also did away with mandatory minimum sentences for first time crack possession offences. It was the first such minimum sentencing elimination since the 1970s. – iAfrica.com

Uruguay legalises cannabis

Uruguay’s parliament voted to be the world’s first country to license and regulate production, distribution and sale of dagga for adult consumers.

Uruguay’s lower house of Congress voted for dagga legalisation. The law now needs to pass through Senate to become effective.

The unprecedented plan to create a legal marijuana market was approved by 50 of the 96 lawmakers present in the lower house of Congress just before midnight Wednesday after more than 13 hours of passionate debate. It now needs to pass through the Senate.

Legislators in the ruling coalition said legalising marijuana would help fight organised crime. They said putting the government at the center of a legal marijuana industry was worth trying because the global war on drugs had been a costly and bloody failure, and displacing illegal dealers through licensed sales could save money and lives.

They also hope to eliminate a legal contradiction in Uruguay, where it has been legal to use dagga but against the law to sell it, buy it, produce it or possess even one marijuana plant.

President Jose Mujica had postponed voting for six months to give supporters more time to rally public opinion. However, recent polls said two-thirds of Uruguayans remained opposed despite a “responsible regulation” campaign for the bill.

National party deputy Gerardo Amarilla said the government was underestimating the risk of marijuana, which he called a “gateway drug” for other chemical addictions that foster violent crimes.

“Ninety-eight percent of those who are today destroying themselves with base cocaine began with marijuana,” Amarilla said. “I believe that we’re risking too much. I have the sensation that we’re playing with fire.”

Activists
Dozens of pro-marijuana activists followed the debate from balconies overlooking the house floor, while others outside held signs and danced to reggae music.

“This law consecrates a reality that already exists: The marijuana sales market has existed for a long time, but illegally, buying it from traffickers, and in having plants in your house for which you can be thrown in jail,” said Camilo Collazo, a 25-year-old anthropology student. “We want to put an end to this, to clean up and normalise the situation.”

Mujica, for his part, said he never consumed marijuana, but that the regulations are necessary because many other people do. “Never in my life did I try it, nor do I have any idea what it is,” he told the local radio station Carve.

The heavy toll, costs and questionable results of military responses to illegal drugs have motivated marijuana legalisation initiatives in the US states of Colorado and Washington, and inspired many world leaders to re-think drug laws.

The secretary-general of the Organization of American States, Jose Miguel Inzulza, told Mujica last week that his members had no objections. Pope Francis, however, said during his visit to Brazil that the “liberalisation of drugs, which is being discussed in several Latin American countries, is not what will reduce the spread of chemical substances.”

New legislation
Under the legislation, Uruguay’s government would license growers, sellers and consumers, and update a confidential registry to keep people from buying more than 40 grams a month.

Carrying, growing or selling dagga without a license could bring prison terms, but licensed consumers could grow up to six plants at a time at home.

Growing clubs with up to 45 members each would be encouraged, fostering enough marijuana production to drive out unlicensed dealers and draw a line between dagga smokers and users of harder drugs.

The latest proposal “has some adjustments, aimed at strengthening the educational issue and prohibiting driving under the effects of cannabis,” ruling coalition deputy Sebastian Sabini said. “There will be self-growing clubs, and it will also be possible to buy marijuana in pharmacies” that is mass-produced by private companies.

An Institute for Regulation and Control of Cannabis would be created, with the power to grant licenses for all aspects of a legal industry to produce marijuana for recreational, medicinal or industrial use. – Sapa-AP