{"id":10246,"date":"2014-10-28T12:20:04","date_gmt":"2014-10-28T12:20:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/?p=10246"},"modified":"2016-09-20T21:14:40","modified_gmt":"2016-09-20T21:14:40","slug":"the-new-civil-rights-division-head-wants-to-decriminalize-possession-of-all-drugs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/2014\/10\/the-new-civil-rights-division-head-wants-to-decriminalize-possession-of-all-drugs\/","title":{"rendered":"The New Civil Rights Division Head Wants to Decriminalize Possession of All Drugs"},"content":{"rendered":"

So who supports decriminalizing cocaine, heroin, LSD, methamphetamine, ecstasy and\u00a0<\/span>all\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/span>dangerous drugs, including marijuana?<\/span><\/p>\n

No, it\u2019s not your teenage nephew. It\u2019s President Obama\u2019s new acting head of the Justice Department\u2019s Civil Rights Division, Vanita Gupta. In 2012, Gupta\u00a0<\/span>wrote<\/a><\/span><\/span>\u00a0that \u201cstates should decriminalize simple possession of\u00a0<\/span>all<\/span><\/b><\/span>\u00a0drugs, particularly marijuana, and for small amounts of other drugs.\u201d (Emphasis mine).<\/span><\/p>\n

Last week, President Obama appointed Vanita Gupta to the position of acting head. According to the\u00a0<\/span><\/span>Washington Post<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>, the administration plans to nominate her in the next few months to become the permanent assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division. Her views on sentencing reform\u2013a bi-partisan effort in recent years\u2013have earned her qualified\u00a0<\/span><\/span>kudos<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>\u00a0from some conservatives.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

But her radical views on drug policy\u2013including her opinion that states should decriminalize possession of\u00a0<\/span><\/span>all <\/span><\/i><\/span>drugs (cocaine, heroin, LSD, ecstasy, marijuana etc.) should damper that support of those conservatives, and raise serious concerns on Capitol Hill.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

As the deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union and the director of its Center for Justice, Gupta\u2019s legal and policy positions are well documented in her long paper trail, which, no doubt, will be closely scrutinized if and when she is nominated and gets a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

To begin, she\u00a0<\/span><\/span>believes<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>\u00a0that the misnamed war on drugs \u201cis an atrocity and that it must be stopped.\u201d She has written that the war on drugs has been a \u201c<\/span><\/span>war on communities of color<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>\u201d and that the \u201cracial disparities are staggering.\u201d As the reliably-liberal Huffington Post <\/span><\/span>proclaimed<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>, she would be one of the most liberal nominees in the Obama administration.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Throughout her career, 39-year old Gupta has focused mainly on two things related to the criminal justice system: first, what she\u00a0<\/span><\/span>terms<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span> draconian \u201cmass incarceration,\u201d which has resulted in a \u201cbloated prison population, and second, the war on drugs and what she believes are its perceived failures.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

She is particularly open about her support for marijuana legalization, arguing in a recent CNN.com\u00a0op-ed<\/a><\/span><\/span>\u00a0that the \u201csolution is clear: \u2026states could follow Colorado and Washington by taxing and regulating marijuana and investing saved enforcement dollars in education, substance abuse treatment, and prevention and other health care.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet just last week the current Democratic Governor of Colorado, John Hickenlooper, said that legalizing recreational use of marijuana was a \u201creckless.\u201d And there is a growing body of evidence to prove his point: (1) pot-positive auto fatalities have gone up 100 percent in 2012, the year the state legalized pot; (2) the majority of DUI drug arrests involve marijuana and 25 to 40 percent were pot alone; (3) from 2011 through 2013 there was a 57 percent increase in marijuana-related emergency room visits\u2013and there are many other indications of failure. New <\/span><\/span>research<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>, from a 20-year study, proves the dangers of marijuana.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

But Gupta does not stop with marijuana. In calling for\u00a0<\/span><\/span>all<\/span><\/i><\/span>\u00a0drugs to be decriminalized\u2013essentially legalizing all dangerous drugs\u2013Gupta displays a gross lack of understanding of the intrinsic dangers of these drugs when consumed in any quantity.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Heroin, LSD, ecstasy, and methanqualone are Schedule I drugs, which are\u00a0<\/span><\/span>defined<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>\u00a0as \u201cthe most dangerous drugs of all the drug schedules with potentially severe psychological or physical dependence.\u201d Cocaine, methamphetamine, Demerol and other drugs are Schedule II drugs, defined as \u201cdrugs with a high potential for abuse\u2026with use potentially leading to severe psychological or physical dependence.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Sound public policy must be based on facts, not radical unsafe, and dangerous theories.<\/span><\/p>\n

Cully Stimson<\/a><\/b><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>@cullystimson<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Charles “Cully” D. Stimson is a leading expert in criminal law, military law, military commissions and detention policy at The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Legal and Judicial Studies.\u00a0<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span>Read his research.<\/a><\/span><\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Source: www.dailysignal.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So who supports decriminalizing cocaine, heroin, LSD, methamphetamine, ecstasy and\u00a0all\u00a0dangerous drugs, including marijuana? No, it\u2019s not your teenage nephew. It\u2019s President Obama\u2019s new acting head of the Justice Department\u2019s Civil Rights Division, Vanita Gupta. In 2012, Gupta\u00a0wrote\u00a0that \u201cstates should decriminalize simple possession of\u00a0all\u00a0drugs, particularly marijuana, and for small amounts of other drugs.\u201d (Emphasis mine). Last […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-legal-sector","category-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10246"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10246\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}