I’m speaking at my very own neighborhood book store this coming Tuesday, August 25, at 6:30pm. The new paperback edition of my book will be available (I still haven’t seen it). Seaburn Books. 33-18 Broadway, Astoria, Queens, New York. Hope to see you there (or anybody there, for that matter).
Month: August 2009
Blue-Light Cameras
I’m generally not a fan of flashing blue light police cameras. I think they’re a waste of money. So in the interest of fairness I should point out that one in Baltimore recently got a shooter convicted. Peter Hermann reports. Not surprisingly, the victim wouldn’t cooperate. In an unrelated case, Hermann talks about a brutal racist attack on a elderly…
Health Care or Prisons
Nicholas Kristof sounds offabout our absurd priorities that funds incarceration instead of school and health care. Did you know a black boy born today has a one-in-three chance of serving time in prison? That’s right, not arrested, but prison. It wasn’t that way a generation ago. It’s not crime. Crime hasn’t gone up (it’s gone down). It’s the war on…
Food (or drugs) for thought
John Tierney writes: Treating hard-core heroin addicts with their drug of choice seems to work better than treating them with methadone, according to first rigorous test of the approach performed in North America. In the study, the addicts who went to a clinic to receive injections of a heroin compound were more likely to remain in treatment and to refrain…
HUGE!!! DRUG BUST in chicagoooo….. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
The “most significant drug importation conspiracies ever charged in Chicago” says the US Attorney. Federal authorities have disrupted a massive cocaine operation that was bringing 1,500 to 2,000 kilos of cocaine a month to Chicago from the most powerful drug traffickers in Mexico, in what law enforcement is calling the most significant drug conspiracy ever to be broken up in…
Immigrants and Violence
In my gut I know that immigrants make neighborhoods safer (at least in this country). I also happen to live in and love a county where 46% of everybody is born in another country. That figure always amazes me… and when you consider the kids of immigrant parents, well, there’s just not too much else left. I get kind of…
So You’re Going to be on TV?
Today was my third time on TV. I loveradio interviews. TV? I’m still not comfortable with it. Radio is kind of like real life. TV is a bizarre and totally different creature. In case you’re going on TV, here are a few things I wish somebody had told me before my first time. 1) Make sure you’re going to be…
Conversations with Carlos Watson
Stanford Franklin and I will be on MSNBC’s Conversations with Carlos Watson tomorrow, Wednesday. We’ll be talking about drug legalization and our op-ed. The show is from 11am-12 noon, Eastern Time. I think we’ll be on from 11:15 to 11:45. Check us out!
The Failed Drug War: Overdose Deaths
Here’s a good example: The Netherlands has about 120 drug overdose deaths per year. This is a rate of 0.75 per 100,000. Meanwhile the US, with all our money and prisons and police and people who wish to “send the right message” has this problem: The mortality rates from unintentional drug overdose (not including alcohol) have risen steadily since the…