27 October 2016 — FAIR
Janine Jackson interviewed Tess Borden about drug criminalization for the October 14, 2016, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.
Tess Borden: “Every 25 seconds, someone is arrested for possessing drugs for their personal use, and that’s a human being every 25 seconds.
14 September 2012 — Buzzflash – Truthout
By Mark Karlin, Editor of Buzzflash at Truthout
This summer, Truthout concluded a 10-installment series called Truthout on the Border. It is a paradigm shifting analysis of the squalid underside of the so-called US war on drugs in Mexico and Latin America.
29 February 2012 — www.boilingfrogspost.com
In a highly critical black history of the United States, this episode examines the social construction of race (and racism) starting in the late 1600s as a means of social control, devised through the colonial legal system to separate white and black labour, prison labour, black education system, the developments of ghettos as a means of segregating the black population, the civil rights organizations in an attempt to steer the movement away from its natural and potentially revolutionary course to confront the entire social- economic- political system of racism, and the “war on drugs” and laws disproportionately targeting the black community.
Understanding the history of those who have been most oppressed within it, is vital to understanding the true nature of the society we live in; thus, the black history of the United States is indivisible from the total history of the United States, and the subject bears relevance to the future of poverty and class struggle in a world of enormous inequality.
Listen to the podcast show here @ Boiling Frogs Post: http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2012/02/29/empire-power-and-people-with-andrew-gavin-marshall-episode-8/
Sibel Edmonds
15 July 2011 — NACLA
NACLA subscribers should be getting the print edition of our Mexico Drug Crisis issue this week. But for those of you who have not yet subscribed, you can read the stories of four women traffickers and a 16-year-old hit man online for free.
6 June 2011 — Democracy Now
A high-level international panel has concluded the so-called “war on drugs” has failed and that governments should consider legalizing substances, including marijuana. The Global Commission on Drug Policy is comprised of 19 members, including several former heads of state. The Office of National Drug Control Policy at the White House has refuted the findings of the commission’s report. We speak to Dr. Gabor Maté, a Canadian physician and bestselling author of four books, including In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction. “On any level you care to name, the war on drugs is a failure,” Dr. Maté says. [includes rush transcript]
Transcript follows:
It is time for policymakers to acknowledge that drug prohibition is inadequate and requires immediate attention, discussion and qualification. Despite 37 years of universal cooperation pursuant to the United Nations General Assembly resolution 39/141, which has been the basis of U.S. anti-drug policy ever since; it is a statute which regularly has proven to be ineffective. It also has adversely contributed to fanning grave civil disorder and broken societies in nations across the globe.
Now that Barack Obama is several weeks into being the 44th President of the United States, expectations are running high in Latin America, where two terms of George Bush’s widely noted indifference to regional affairs have strained hemispheric relations. Obama now must address a hemisphere that has developed a substantially different profile than existed eight years before when Bush first assumed office. A highly regarded would-be superpower, an impressive collection of left-leaning governments, a concerted attempt at regional integration, and the formation of an entire array of new institutions have emerged in Latin America since Washington’s near abandonment of the region in favor of the Middle East and elsewhere in the world. Moreover, an intensifying security threat associated with drug trafficking and the demands of other, more clamorous issues have muscled their way to the forefront of the area’s concerns.
The New Dark Age 