Shapelle Corby on LawFuel

This case exemplifies all that is wrong with the international drug covenants and conventions to which New Zealand is a signatory.

Recent hangings in South East Asia, firing squads in China, and most recently two Kiwi’s arrested (and presumed guilty) for 3.5oz of cannabis between them in India, (the home of Ganja, a plant named as sacred along with the river Ganges) all happen because we as a nation collectively give licence to kill and incarcerate cruelly and inhumanely.

Where is the legal profession on drug policy?

Or is the substantial legal aid grift and perpetual social mayhem an incentive for a silence closely resembling stupidity? NZ’s own National Drug Intelligence Bureau chief along with the BERL Drug Harm report (though much criticised) states that the revenue ‘churn’ through the legal system is a DRUG HARM.

The LEGAL profession are beneficiaries of the unintended consequences. So when are you collectively going to talk about that?

To the Law Commission? Yeah Right!

Curiously, in Christchurch’s sister city Seattle, it was the law profession that lead drug policy law reform. see King County Bar Association – http://www.kcba.org/druglaw/

“The principal objectives of this effort are: reductions in crime and public disorder; improvement of the public health; better protection of children; and wiser use of scarce public resources.”

sig Blair Anderson, Christchurch. 027 2657219
http://www.leap.cc http://mildgreens.blogspot.com

Get Blairs Brain on Newsfeed…
http://feeds.feedburner.com/BlairsBrain-CanvassingForOpinion

ENCOD: Thornton on Greed, fear and racism

Clifford Thornton (Efficacy) developed his theory on the war on drugs as being based on three pillars: greed, fear and overt racism. (as presented in Vienna, see ENCOD BULLETIN 40 – Encod.org.)

Greed is found among most people who deal in drugs, but also among those who fight them, either as doctors, policemen or politicians: in the past 4 decades, almost 1 trillion dollars have been spent on drug related law enforcement in the USA alone.

Fear is spread by those who exaggerate the dangers of drugs, but deliberately ignore the basic reasons why people wish to take them: to increase positive experiences or reduce negative ones.

And overt racism is what the war on drugs comes down to in practical terms: for instance in the US, where black people make up only 12 % of the population, they account for more than 50% of the prison population, 2/3 of whom are serving drug related sentences.

If the white population were affected by drug prohibition in the same way, it would not last long before a public outcry would demand its immediate end. But in the present situation, money is spent on repression instead of education and welfare, so a group of people are deliberately held in a corner where they have little alternative but to continue in disruptive lifestyles.

Get Blairs Brain on Newsfeed…
http://feeds.feedburner.com/BlairsBrain-CanvassingForOpinion

LTE: Tough sentencing advocate deluded

Forget the Milton Hilton. Sensible Sentencing Trust spokesman Garth McVicar has been to see prisons so bad no-one wants to come back. see http://www.stuff.co.nz/thepress/4173001a6427.html

In Arizona prisoners are put up in tents, chained together and made to work outdoors in all weather.

McVicar thinks the idea is “fantastic” and, after visiting the US state to study the regime, thinks it could work in New Zealand.

In Arizona prisoners are put up in tents, chained together and made to work outdoors in all weather.

Letter to the editor: Christchurch Press

Mr McVicar of the Sensible Sentencing Trust has visited the same US industrial estate that is releasing more than 600,000 disaffected folk this year, many of whom have crowded prisons since Nixons War on Drugs filled the penitentiaries to the gunnel’s using mandatory minimums.

McVicar’s eyes are turning selectively myopic if he thinks the USA has anything to teach us by its world record example of seven million citizens controlled by state and federal criminal justice, sixty percent of whom are non-violent drug related offenders. I fail to see McVicars vision of ‘success’ in the USA’s morality play surrounding drug use evidencing in every prison muster a disturbingly racially potentiated policy failure. Evidence of efficacy of his punitive and retributive corrections is absent from the record. He cites anecdote and political rhetoric. Crucially this distracts us from what needs to be done while taking scarce resources away from what works. Sensible Sentencing is marginalising people and expecting all to be well, making McVicar’s ideas part of the problem, and no part of the solution.

Blair Anderson

50 Wainoni Road.

Christchurch.

ph 3894065

Get Blairs Brain on Newsfeed…
http://feeds.feedburner.com/BlairsBrain-CanvassingForOpinion