{"id":281786,"date":"2016-10-13T10:36:26","date_gmt":"2016-10-13T14:36:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rael.org\/?p=281786"},"modified":"2020-11-01T10:42:02","modified_gmt":"2020-11-01T15:42:02","slug":"too-broken-to-fix-civil-rights-groups-seek-to-decriminalize-possession-of-drugs-for-personal-use","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/bg\/too-broken-to-fix-civil-rights-groups-seek-to-decriminalize-possession-of-drugs-for-personal-use\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Too broken to fix\u2019: Civil rights groups seek to decriminalize possession of drugs for personal use"},"content":{"rendered":"
RAEL\u2019S COMMENT:<\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n
It should be everybody\u2019s freedom to possess any kind of drug for their personal use. Even the inquisition SS-style custom US personnel should not have the right to ask if you have a prescription for any medicine you carry.<\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Civil rights groups call on the US government to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of illicit drugs as arrests skyrocketed to 1.25 million last year. Convictions have long-lasting consequences and disproportionately targets minorities.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery 25 seconds in the United States, someone is arrested for the simple act of possessing drugs for their personal use,\u201d\u00a0stated the report titled\u00a0\u201cEvery 25 Seconds: The Human toll of criminalizing drug use in the United States\u201d\u00a0authored by Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).\u00a0\u201cAround the country police make more arrests for drug possession than for any other crime. More than one of every nine arrests by state law enforcement is for drug possession, amounting to more than 1.25 million arrests each year.\u201d<\/p>\n

The report focused on four states, Texas, Louisiana, Florida and New York, drawing on 365 interviews with people arrested, their attorneys, officials, activists and family members. Researcher found on any given day at least 137,000 men and women are behind bars for drug possession, some 48,000 in state prisons and 89,000 in jails, and each day tens of thousands or more are convicted.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen it comes to drug use, the US criminal justice system is too broken to fix,\u201d\u00a0said Human Rights Watch.<\/p>\n

The report found that injustice and harm occurred at every stage of the criminal process from interactions with law enforcement, prosecutors charging people with felonies for holding tiny, sometimes even\u00a0\u201ctrace\u201d\u00a0amounts of drugs, and pretrial detention and long sentences\u00a0\u201ccombine to coerce the overwhelming majority of drug possession defendants to plead guilty.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI met people who were prosecuted for 0.02 or even 0.007 grams of drugs,\u201d\u00a0said Amy Braunschweiger, an HRW researcher.\u00a0\u201cWe found 80 percent of people sentenced to time behind bars for felony drug possession were convicted of possession of drugs other an marijuana that weighed less than 1 gram. That\u2019s just a handful of doses of many drugs \u2013 and for the people I met, it was sometime even less than a dose because they were convicted \u2013 of a felony \u2013 for possessing a hundredth or even thousandth of a gram.\u201d<\/p>\n

It has been 40 years since the Nixon administration launched the\u00a0\u201cWar on Drugs,\u201d\u00a0which the report argues has failed, with rates of drug abuse still high.<\/p>\n

The majority of Americans report using illicit drugs at least once in their lives, and white and black people use drugs at roughly the same rate, but drug laws are enforced in a way that disproportionately affect black communities, according to the report.<\/p>\n

\u201cAround the country, black adults are 2.5 times more likely to be arrested for drug possession as white adults. A black adult is nearly four times as likely to be arrested for marijuana possession as a white adult,\u201d\u00a0stated the report.<\/p>\n

The report found drug possession laws are a major part of the way police interact with black communities.<\/p>\n

\u201cPart of it may be that drug possession arrests are relatively easier to make than arrest for violence crimes. It can\u2019t be that all police really think people who use drugs are the number one public safety concern, and yet drug possession is the number 1 arrested crime,\u201d\u00a0said HRW.<\/p>\n

The report found that convictions for drug possession can have harmful long-term consequences for families, welfare assistance, public housing, voting and employment opportunities.<\/p>\n

The report also argued that most people who do drugs don\u2019t become dependent on them but when they do, locking them up isn\u2019t helping.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.rt.com\/usa\/362692-civil-rights-drug-report\/<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RAEL\u2019S COMMENT: It should be everybody\u2019s freedom to possess any kind of drug for their personal use. Even the inquisition SS-style custom US personnel should not have the right to ask if you have a prescription for any medicine you carry.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":71,"featured_media":281787,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-281786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/bg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/bg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/bg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/bg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/71"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/bg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=281786"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/bg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281786\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/bg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/281787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/bg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/bg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/bg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}