Law and order is also a priority for this Government. In a number of areas, the need for extra resourcing was becoming urgent.
The Budget provides more than $900 million in operating and capital funding over the next four years for initiatives across the justice sector.
Police will receive $183 million to provide 600 more Police by 2011. Half of them will be in Counties-Manukau, with the others spread across the rest of New Zealand.
The Budget also funds tougher anti-money laundering measures, so that New Zealand will meet its international commitments.
Some funding will address more local problems, notably profits from cannabis and methamphetamine sales.
We need to address many downstream pressures within the Justice and Corrections systems. Community Probation and Psychological services will receive an additional $256 million to manage the increased number of offenders serving community sentences and improve the quality of parole and home detention management.
We also know that our prisons are under pressure.
The Budget provides $3 million in 2008/09 and $385 million over the next four years for increased prison capacity and planning for further potential expansion.
(shall we all pretend this is not a severe case of deviancy amplification, created under warrant of the Minister of Health, Tony Ryall! /Blair)
Is this an ideological crime/gang patch we should ban? Image via Wikipedia
A large part of Napier Hill and surrounding areas have been cordoned off by police, bringing parts of the city to a standstill.
With the Hawke’s Bay AOS stretched, back-up was called for, with Gisborne AOS members and a dog unit flown in by the Lion Foundation rescue helicopter around 10.30am.
It is understood the elite Special Tactics Group is en route from Wellington.
By Norm Stamper, Huffington Post Posted on April 22, 2009, Printed on April 23, 2009
As 5:00 p.m. rolls around my interior clock starts chiming. I’ll have an ice-cold, bone-dry martini, thank you. Jalapeno olives and a twist. If the occasion calls for it (temperatures in the twenties, a hot political debate on the tube) I may substitute two fingers of Kentucky sour mash. Four-twenty? Doesn’t resonate. But with the Waldos of the world just having celebrated up their favorite day of the year, it’s not a bad time to consider, yet again, the pluses and minuses of alcohol vs. cannabis.
First, a disclaimer: I am a member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, but I don’t officially represent the organization in this forum. That said, I can’t very well check my affiliation, or beliefs, at the keyboard when I sit down to blog.
We at LEAP are current and former cops and other criminal justice practitioners who have witnessed firsthand the futility and manifold injustices of the drug war. Our professional experiences have led us to conclude that the more dangerous an illicit substance — from crack to krank — the greater the justification for its legalization, regulation, and control. It is the prohibition of drugs that leads inexorably to high rates of death, disease, crime, and addiction.
Back to booze vs. pot. How do the effects of these two drugs stack up against specific health and public safety factors?
Alcohol-related traffic accidents claim approximately 14,000 lives each year, down significantly from 20 or 30 years ago (attributed to improved education and enforcement). Figures for THC-related traffic fatalities are elusive, especially since alcohol is almost always present in the blood as well, and since the numbers of “marijuana-only” traffic fatalities are so small. But evidence from studies, including laboratory simulations, feeds the stereotype that those under the influence of canniboids tend to (1) be more aware of their impaired psychomotor skills, and (2) drive well below the speed limit. Those under the influence of alcohol are much more likely to be clueless or defiant about their condition, and to speed up and drive recklessly. Hundreds of alcohol overdose deaths occur annually. There has never been a single recorded marijuana OD fatality.
There have been no documented cases of lung cancer in a marijuana-only smoker, nor has pot been scientifically linked to any type of cancer. (Don’t trust an advocate’s take on this? Try the fair and balanced coverage over at Fox.) Alcohol abuse contributes to a multitude of long-term negative health consequences, notably cirrhosis of the liver and a variety of cancers.
While a small quantity, taken daily, is being touted for its salutary health effects, alcohol is one of the worst drugs one can take for pain management, marijuana one of the best.
Alcohol contributes to acts of violence; marijuana reduces aggression. In approximately three million cases of reported violent crimes last year, the offender had been drinking. This is particularly true in cases of domestic violence, sexual assault, and date rape. Marijuana use, in and of itself, is absent from both crime reports and the scientific literature. There is simply no link to be made.
Over the past four years I’ve asked police officers throughout the U.S. (and in Canada) two questions. When’s the last time you had to fight someone under the influence of marijuana? (I’m talking marijuana only, not pot plus a six-pack or a fifth of tequila.) My colleagues pause, they reflect. Their eyes widen as they realize that in their five or fifteen or thirty years on the job they have never had to fight a marijuana user. I then ask: When’s the last time you had to fight a drunk? They look at their watches.
All of which begs the question. If one of these two drugs is implicated in dire health effects, high mortality rates, and physical violence — and the other is not — what are we to make of our nation’s marijuana laws? Or alcohol laws, for that matter.
Anybody out there want to launch a campaign for the re-prohibition of alcohol? Didn’t think so. The answer, of course, is responsible drinking. Marijuana smokers, for their part, have already shown (apart from that little matter known as the law) greater responsibility in their choice of drugs than those of us who choose alcohol.
Drug offences rose slightly between 2007 and 2008 from 18,908 in 2007 (year ending 30 June) to 19,259 in 2008. Within this overall rise there was a shift in the composition of these offences with more Cannabis related offences (14,449 to 15,288) and fewer offences for other and most often harder, drugs (4,450 to 3,971). Overall the level drug related crime is 13% lower in 2008 than in 2004 when there were 22,249 drug offences of which 18,271 were Cannabis related.
see FIGURE 20: Convictions for drug offences 2004-2008
Notably the Salvation Army says in its summary (Report Card)
For the available data it is difficult to know if the war on illicit drugs is being won or lost. The recent rise in cannabis related offences may indicate a changing emphasis by Police.
Cannabis Harm Reduction Squad on route to saving someone from themselves. Image via Wikipedia
[Actually the heading is perverse, there was a significant reduction in drug crime (13% lower) but the figures demonstrate that ‘Policing Success’ is entirely dependent on measuring cannabis convictions and thus policing practice, not prevalence of use or relative harm. The BERL Drug Harm Index report is all the more sillier! /Blair ]
The recovery of stolen property and firearms showed that cannabis offending was linked to other crimes, Mr Savage said. (why? because it said so in the Drug Harm Index?)
The seven-day operation saw teams of between 14 and 17 police officers search properties, carry out land searches, and conduct aerial searches using an Air Force Iroquois helicopter.
Mr McGurk said the scale of the problem of cannabis being grown in the region meant police would continue to target growers through similar operations. (and the cost/benefit is? Oh that’s right, Drug Harm Index again… )
Survey Reveals Majority Want Marijuana Legalized(the zee gives it away, of course this survey is USA based but…. it is the home of the drug war and if politics earnestly represented community consensus this war on people would be over… yesterday! /Blair)
An over-whelming majority favor the legalization of marijuana, according to a new Headline Press survey. The new poll found that 86% of all those surveyed favor the decriminalization of pot. ( see American Chronicle )
The online survey, conducted over the last two weeks of October, found that only 14% of those surveyed do not want the use of marijuana legalized. Studies indicate that the medicinal use of marijuana aids in the healing or prevention of cataracts, broken bones, a variety of cancers and other ailments.
Opponents of the legalization of marijuana argue that since the use of alcohol is already legal in all states the usage of marijuana should continue to be outlawed. Controversy surrounds the usage of marijuana, despite increasing scientific evidence that its long term damage effects are limited. A state law in California allows the legal dispensing of marijuana for medical purposes.
Those who favor its legalization point to the lack of law enforcement in many other areas, criticizing lawmakers and other government leaders for allowing the growth of white collar crime, which helped to damage the national economy with the credit crisis through actions on Wall Street.
Enforcing marijuana prohibition costs American taxpayers roughly US$10 billion annually and results in more than 829,000 arrests a year, far more than the total number of arrests for all violent crimes combined. The arrests are much easier to obtain by police than the time and effort required to produce arrests in many other areas of law enforcement.
Image by #_Gwen_# Crime is an issue that often seeps into Presidential elections in one form or another. Indeed, the Bush Administration has rolled back or undermined the two primary crime-fighting initiatives of the Clinton Administration by allowing the 1994 federal ban on assault weapons to lapse, and by eliminating Clinton’s COPS program, which put tens of thousands of new police on the streets of American cities. Gun control is largely a dead letter, since the NRA has shown that it has the power to keep any type of gun in the hands of anyone who wants them, as well as the power to punish any Democrat who seeks greater gun control legislation.
One area that could bring large dividends in terms of crime reduction would be to change tactics in the quagmire of the American war on drugs. With blind fidelity to a failed policy, we continue to fritter away scarce law enforcement resources fighting sale and possession of drugs and to put hundreds of thousands in prison at enormous cost to taxpayers and to inmates and their families.
Many substances from alcohol and nicotine to marijuana, cocaine, and heroin impose high social costs on American society, but only the illegal drugs lead to mass incarceration, corruption of police, street killings, and other acts of violence in the effort to market them to a desirous American population.
Just as the end of Prohibition generated enormous crime reductions, legalization of the above drugs would likely bring about similar crime drops, while risking increases in the high costs attending the likely increase in consumption and abuse.
The proper way to deal with all of these addictive substances is to legalize, tax heavily, ban all forms of marketing, and fund efforts to restrain consumption and provide treatment for abusers. Instead, we have pursued a policy that either puts hundreds of thousands of Americans in prison when a coordinated and aggressive regulatory posture could likely restrain demand in a far less costly manner, or gives far too much freedom to stimulate demand and sales by aggressive marketing and advertising.
One potential obstacle to a regime of legalization coupled with discouraging regulation and taxation is that the suppliers of addictive substances will use constitutional arguments to advance their objectives (one can imagine the briefs by sellers of marijuana insisting on their first amendment rights to peddle the drug should legalization occur) or enlist the support of compliant legislators to help stimulate demand (note the activities of the gambling industry for an unwholesome example).
This might suggest that constitutionally enshrined restrictions on the ability to market harmful substances might be an important antecedent to an effort to reduce crime by eliminating the staggering social costs of the war on drugs.
Rethink the “War on Drugs” John J. Donohue III, Leighton Homer Surbeck Professor of Law
“His life was taken as he was working hard and undercover to protect our families and the wider community from that nasty element we have all become so familiar with – illegal drug traffickers and drug users,” – Papakura Mayor Calum Penrose (Locals honour slain police officer, Papakura Courier, 24 September 2008)
Police and Media are still parroting the ‘suspected P-lab’ line – as if they haven’t checked the house yet.
The kind of prejudice expressed in Calum Penrose ill-informed rant serves only to entrench the worst attributes of our drug policy… that of prejudice and hatred. Their is no evidence yet produced that demonstrates that Don died from Methamphetamine or any other drug. He died of “Prohibition“.
We can best support and protect our Police by ridding ourselves of the dysfunctional prohibitionist paradigm that delivers us the very tragic outcomes – ‘the unintended consequences’ that politicians and public servants commissioned with ‘a duty of care’ set out to solve.
Image by Getty Images via Daylife
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