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Attorney General Holder Announces Changes to Mandatory Minimums, Drug Charges
enlightenedbum
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Registered User regular
What it says in the title, basically.
Could be a major shift on what's probably the most destructive policy initiative our government's undertaken in the last 50+ years.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Attorney General Eric Holder is calling for major changes to the nation’s criminal justice system that would scale back the use of harsh prison sentences for certain drug-related crimes, divert people convicted of low-level offenses to drug treatment and community service programs and expand a prison program to allow for release of some elderly, non-violent offenders.
In remarks prepared for delivery Monday to the American Bar Association in San Francisco, Holder said he is mandating a change to Justice Department policy so that low-level, non-violent drug offenders with no ties to large-scale organizations, gangs or cartels won’t be charged with offenses that impose mandatory minimum sentences.
Could be a major shift on what's probably the most destructive policy initiative our government's undertaken in the last 50+ years.
The idea that your vote is a moral statement about you or who you vote for is some backwards ass libertarian nonsense. Your vote is about society. Vote to protect the vulnerable.
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Lets see if they follow through
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
It's for people without ties to larger levels of crime or groups of criminals. So that can still go on.
This is a huuuuuuuuuuuge positive step though, damn.
I think about none. This stuff is guidelines, he's got to write a memo, and people have to decide to follow it.
Elsewhere:
It could mean everything from the same sort of change on state and local levels, to legislative changes. Do where real low level drug crime gets enforces it could be quite a long time.
This may even require a sort shift in understand of what the electorate want. Like it is a sort of leading thing.
Arizona, Texas, Florida, Oklahoma. I'm looking at you.
Right. And exactly how many low level drug crimes does the justice department get involved in.
And remember all this shit is political at the state level, so if there is a backlash against the justice department, easy political points for republicans, nothing will happen on more local levels.
That said, the DoJ guidelines are a big and important step forward. I believe there is certain funding that's tied to those guidelines, giving the Fed a bit of a carrot and stick for bring states in line with the Federal policies.
Quite a few states are likely to fall in line behind the DoJ guidelines, which will give strong real-world (i know, but outside the US isn't 'real world') proof if these policies are more effective or not. That will undermine the Reaganesque mandatory minimums and harsh punishments when it's shown that more progressive policies are simply more effective and cheaper.
Keep in mind that the stupid as shit states are also dumping $TEXAS (haha, literally) into their prisons, which kinda creates a conflict with the whole 'low taxes / small government' mindset. I'm sure much won't change there, because they love their harsh punishments for black people, but it will create some pressure.
It also undermines, even in states that have those harsh guidelines, the legislative / judicial case for those laws. Which may mean lower sentences or laws getting overturned in general.
EDIT - takes off rose tinted glasses. Fuck.
Quite a lot, actually. Back when I was a reporter, the drug cops always tried to tailor cases in such a way as to get federal charges added. Federal minimum sentencing meant longer prison sentences and federal courts were more likely to convict, so the first effort in any largish bust was to see if they could get the Department of Justice prosecutors interested.
reason.com/blog/2013/08/12/holders-mandatory-minimum-announcement-a
I do see this as a positive first step, it would be great if it could also come with a reconsideration of marijuana as a schedule one drug. But this is at least a decent move with regards to the prison system.
Highly unlikely to originate from the executive or judiciary branch.
It would require an act of Congress.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
I see what you did there.
What prevents the FDA from including harm in their scheduling rubric? That would all for weed to be less highly rated and technically cone from the executive, no?
Not likely because it would be admitting they've been asshats for a few decades but is it within the realm of legality?
The DEA assigns drugs to schedules based on the criteria in the Controlled Substances Act of 1970 (and subsequent amendments to that law). They can't just change the criteria.
(BTW, the FDA doesn't assign drugs to schedules. That's done by the DEA. Technically, the DEA must request the advice of the FDA, but the FDA is not required to provide any advice, nor is the DEA required to follow it.)
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Marijuana has been demonstrated to have medical uses and little psychological or physical dependance.
Now, let's contrast that to Schedule II drugs:
So, the government considers cannabis to be a worse drug than cocaine or meth.
I think it's rather obvious that the DEA is NOT following their own definitions for drug scheduling of cannabis.
But, even talking about it is a good thing, at least.
The bolded phrase is misleading on the part of the Justice Department. There's no "severe psychological or physical dependence" criterion for Schedule I. The criteria for Schedule I are:
(1) Schedule I. -
(A) The drug or other substance has a high potential for abuse.
(B) The drug or other substance has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States.
(C) There is a lack of accepted safety for use of the drug or other substance under medical supervision.
http://www.fda.gov/regulatoryinformation/legislation/ucm148726.htm
What's important isn't that somebody somewhere has demonstrated medical use, but rather that federal agencies and/or medical professional organizations recognize that medical use.
So even though you and I and probably everybody else in this thread agrees that marijuana can be used medically, neither the FDA nor the AMA nor any other mainstream medical organization recognize that.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
lol?
I mean, you have to buy drugs off the black market, which necessarily involves interacting with a large-scale organization unless it's just your buddy down the street with a garage op, and he's not selling to anyone else (but trust me, he is).
Awfully hard to do testing when said testing is illegal. :P
This sounds like it is primarily aimed at low level addicts who become buyers and distributors. It is extremely common for drug users to sell to each other in very small amounts when they are really just end users.
Right now these people can not be offered recovery programs in many areas because of minimum sentencing for dealers.
Try reading the whole thing. Page 16:
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
I was close, it's at the University of Mississippi
http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/05/18/government.marijuana.garden/
...Of course, the low hanging fruit of the current standard being, "Did I really enjoy that handjob I got from the GS rep at the spa after we put 18 holes in?"
I think this is my favorite piece of literature to reference with regards to the American medical bureaucracy: they do a double blind test and find that cannabis, somehow, reduces pressure in the eye by about 25% (to this day, we do not understand the mechanism behind this action, and it is not being actively researched) for a few hours. This is comparable to any of the topical medical options available, and the drug is arguably less expensive (and unquestionably easier to produce).
Is that the conclusions offered? No. The conclusion offered foregoes the objectives facts of the discovery, opting for political weasel words instead:
"Well, there's no scientific evidence that Advil has increased benefit over Tylenol. May as well make Advil illegal."
I think the the phrase "large-scale organization" is a bit vague.
Law enforcement and reporters have a way of making any bust sound large. "Methamphetamine ring bust yields 20 kilos of methamphetamine. Three people arrested." Okay, that's a lot - but is it really a 'large-scale organization' if it's three guys cooking out of a barn?
It's not really the same as... oh, 270 kilos of opium recovered from an operation that spanned three countries and involved a separate arm just for money laundering.
Without knowing what Holder & the DOJ mean by "large-scale organization" it's hard to know what types of operations they're focusing on. And that's probably deliberate on their part.
Oh, I totally agree.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
What, so? They're saying it does, in fact, have medical uses, and they think it should be reclassified to facilitate further study. Naturally they're not going to approve of the technically illegal state programs, they've no reason (being a medical institution) to comment on is general legality for recreational use, and of course there isn't enough evidence currently for it to be properly prescribed drug, that research is what they're asking to do.
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
There's a difference between cannabinoid molecules and cannabis.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Yeah that's not how it works.
First, there's some evidence that marijuana may have some medical treatments, yes. But no national drug administrative or AMA (or equivalent) have actually gone so far to say there's an accepted medical use. You can blame politics, but even places that have effectively legalized don't prescribe it except in limited very cases - primarily end of life cases - or as thinly veiled excuses for recreational use. You can argue the harm is relatively minor or non-existent, less than booze or tobacco etc etc. People say ecstasy has clinical applications, but since they aren't established its Schedule I instead of II. But there's no credible argument regarding abuse. There's well established psychological dependence for marijuana and its the most commonly abused illegal drug.
Pot's very popularity demonstrates it belongs in Schedule I or Schedule II unless you rewrite drug regulation specifically around it. The non-high inducing(mostly) version of marijuana - Dronabinol/Marinol in the US - is Schedule III. You still can't buy it OTC, but you can be prescribed it any state in the US. People aren't up in arms about making it OTC because it doesn't get you high.
Second, what Schedule a drug is on doesn't determine the penalty for its use/transport/sale. Hillbilly heroin (schedule II) and anabolic steroids (schedule III) carry stiffer penalties than pot or ecstasy and both have universally accepted medical use.
Nope. They say it should be reviewed only to facilitate in research of derivative medicines.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
Yeah. I think anyone more interested in science than showing Teacher what a good little boy they are would want to know what cannabinoids, y'know, do. At best, we might be able to develop a treatment or drug around that new understanding, at worst we'd have some new piece of dry literature to put into a journal.
I think it's an incredible disservice the way that cannabis is basically jeered at: I mean, what if the mechanism is actually some kind of novel protein folding whose study leads to the development of treatment for terminal diseases? It's pretty unlikely, but we don't fucking know, so nobody should be laughing.
Okay?
At any rate the whole reason this paper was brought up, you said:
And here is the AMA, quite clearly stating that marijuana has medical uses and should be reclassified. Sure, they say they think it'd be better as a pharmaceutical instead of just a plant you can grow, but of course they would. Their buddies can make more money that way.
The DEA could easily reschedule it down to even III or IV without going afoul of the regulations.
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
Like cancer? Canabinoids are believed to be tied to the process by which sick cells kill themselves. This could potentially lead to better chemo, but these types of research don't actually need people to get high. They can largely be done... Uh.. 'In glass' or rats.
Shrug.. Some loosening of restrictions would be helpful but I would rather see legalization cause I like getting high.
Exactly the same argument could be made for morphine, and yet morphine isn't illegal (even though all of it's sister drugs are illegal, for reasons that would perplex anyone more interested in medicine than politics). It's an abuse-prone drug, much moreso than cannabis, with an extremely narrow range of medical applications. But if you get into a bad car wreck or have an arm chewed off by an outboard motor, you'll be extremely glad that we didn't make it illegal.
And there is not 'some evidence' that cannabis 'may' have some medical applications. We have hard evidence that it does in fact reduce eye pressure in glaucoma patients, and we have hard evidence that it does allow patients undergoing chemotherapy to, y'know, eat food (and I hear eating food is sort of important).
EDIT: I mean, we just had a vaccine thread. Did you appreciate it when vaccines were disparaged in the same way that you just dismissed cannabis?
The AMA is not clearly stating that at all :rotate:
The Council on Science and Public Health does not set AMA policy. They are a group inside the AMA. (Fallacy of composition.)
"Review of classification" =/= reclassification. (FWIW, there have been other groups within the AMA that have called for outright reclassification, like the AMA Medical Student Section.) This is a call for more research, not a call for rescheduling.
Cannabinoid compounds = marijuana. If the AMA were to accept a medical use for a constituent of marijuana, that does not imply a medical use for marijuana itself. (Again, fallacy of composition.)
You guys are taking a tiny baby step by the AMA as evidence of a giant leap.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
When I went to go have some minor eye surgery this year, I was nervous, so as part of the pre-treatment procedure they put me on a Tylenol-branded painkiller cocktail (I think it was Codeine and something else). There is no question that one point of this was to get me high, so I wouldn't be stressed during the operation. So, what, it's only a legit application if it's a brand-name medication? Give me a break.