Thursday, May 15, 2014
The Plain Truth: Majority of Americans Including Republicans Want T...
The Plain Truth: Majority of Americans Including Republicans Want T...: It seems unfair to lock up people struggling with addiction instead of giving them a shot at real rehabilitation. F...
Majority of Americans Including Republicans Want Treatment Instead of Prison for Drug Crime!
It seems unfair to lock up people struggling with addiction instead of giving them a shot at real rehabilitation.
For more than 16 years, Paul Carter has languished
in a New Orleans prison, sentenced to life without parole after being
convicted of possessing an amount of powdered heroin so small it
couldn’t be weighed.
The longtime addict, who hails from a poor neighborhood and whose crime was a third-strike nonviolent offense, never received substance abuse treatment until he was sentenced to live out the rest of his days in prison. “It feels like the life within you is taken away,” he has said.
The so-called war on drugs has included offenders such as Carter for decades, with about 79 percent of the 3,278 inmates currently serving life without parole in federal prisons sentenced to die there for nonviolent drug crimes, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.
When it comes to public opinion, however, the times they are a-changin'. About 67 percent of Americans say the government should focus more on providing treatment for users of illegal drugs such as heroin and cocaine, instead of incarcerating them, according to drug policy report released Wednesday by the Pew Research Center finds that surveyed 1,821 adults in February.
Even a slim majority of the Republicans polled, 51 percent, believe the government should concentrate more on treatment than on prosecution of drug users.
“What this means is that Americans are really ready to substantially reduce the role of the criminal justice system in dealing with drug policy,” said Jag Davies, publications manager of the Drug Policy Alliance, a national reform organization. “Hopefully this report will help reinforce that smart elected officials and politicians should work on this issue because it has such broad bipartisan support. Substance abuse should be treated through the health care system instead of by law enforcement professionals.”
Nearly two out of three people surveyed—63 percent—say it is a positive development that some states have moved away from mandatory sentences for nonviolent drug offenders. In 2001 Americans were evenly divided on the issue.
“These findings are completely consistent with recent polling we commissioned in California showing overwhelming public support—70 percent throughout the state—for reducing penalties for drug possession and for rehabilitative alternatives to incarceration for nonviolent crimes,” said Allen Hopper, ACLU of Northern California’s criminal justice and drug policy director. “The public is fed up with the wasteful and ineffective war-on-drugs mentality. It’s time for our political leaders to step up, or they’ll be looking for new jobs.”
Politicians have done just that, pushing for reform. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. last month endorsed a United States Sentencing Commission proposal introduced in January that would change federal guidelines to reduce the average sentence for drug dealers by close to one year. The Smarter Sentencing Act, pending in the Senate and whose sponsors include Democratic Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin and Republicans Rand Paul and Mike Lee, calls for cutting mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug crimes, some by about half.
Public support for the legalization of marijuana use is also on the rise.
Already 20 states and the District of Columbia have legalized medicinal marijuana, and Colorado and Washington have legalized it for recreational use. The Pew report finds that 75 percent of the public think the sale and use of marijuana will eventually be legal across the country, and 76 percent think those convicted of possessing small amounts of marijuana should not have to serve jail time. The public sees marijuana as less harmful than alcohol: 69 percent of those questioned view booze as worse for people’s health, while 15 percent see marijuana as more detrimental, according to the report.
“The next step is to change law enforcement practices to stop arresting people for using,” said Davies. “The rhetoric has changed a lot, but we still have a long way to go.”
The longtime addict, who hails from a poor neighborhood and whose crime was a third-strike nonviolent offense, never received substance abuse treatment until he was sentenced to live out the rest of his days in prison. “It feels like the life within you is taken away,” he has said.
The so-called war on drugs has included offenders such as Carter for decades, with about 79 percent of the 3,278 inmates currently serving life without parole in federal prisons sentenced to die there for nonviolent drug crimes, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.
When it comes to public opinion, however, the times they are a-changin'. About 67 percent of Americans say the government should focus more on providing treatment for users of illegal drugs such as heroin and cocaine, instead of incarcerating them, according to drug policy report released Wednesday by the Pew Research Center finds that surveyed 1,821 adults in February.
Even a slim majority of the Republicans polled, 51 percent, believe the government should concentrate more on treatment than on prosecution of drug users.
“What this means is that Americans are really ready to substantially reduce the role of the criminal justice system in dealing with drug policy,” said Jag Davies, publications manager of the Drug Policy Alliance, a national reform organization. “Hopefully this report will help reinforce that smart elected officials and politicians should work on this issue because it has such broad bipartisan support. Substance abuse should be treated through the health care system instead of by law enforcement professionals.”
Nearly two out of three people surveyed—63 percent—say it is a positive development that some states have moved away from mandatory sentences for nonviolent drug offenders. In 2001 Americans were evenly divided on the issue.
“These findings are completely consistent with recent polling we commissioned in California showing overwhelming public support—70 percent throughout the state—for reducing penalties for drug possession and for rehabilitative alternatives to incarceration for nonviolent crimes,” said Allen Hopper, ACLU of Northern California’s criminal justice and drug policy director. “The public is fed up with the wasteful and ineffective war-on-drugs mentality. It’s time for our political leaders to step up, or they’ll be looking for new jobs.”
Politicians have done just that, pushing for reform. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. last month endorsed a United States Sentencing Commission proposal introduced in January that would change federal guidelines to reduce the average sentence for drug dealers by close to one year. The Smarter Sentencing Act, pending in the Senate and whose sponsors include Democratic Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin and Republicans Rand Paul and Mike Lee, calls for cutting mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug crimes, some by about half.
Public support for the legalization of marijuana use is also on the rise.
Already 20 states and the District of Columbia have legalized medicinal marijuana, and Colorado and Washington have legalized it for recreational use. The Pew report finds that 75 percent of the public think the sale and use of marijuana will eventually be legal across the country, and 76 percent think those convicted of possessing small amounts of marijuana should not have to serve jail time. The public sees marijuana as less harmful than alcohol: 69 percent of those questioned view booze as worse for people’s health, while 15 percent see marijuana as more detrimental, according to the report.
“The next step is to change law enforcement practices to stop arresting people for using,” said Davies. “The rhetoric has changed a lot, but we still have a long way to go.”
Sunday, May 11, 2014
The Plain Truth: FOODSNIFFER smartphone app will allow food safety ...
The Plain Truth: FOODSNIFFER smartphone app will allow food safety ...: European researchers are working on deve...
FOODSNIFFER smartphone app will allow food safety testing by consumers everywhere!
European researchers are working on developing a smartphone-embedded
sensor that would allow consumers to scan food for the presence of
contaminants -- from pesticides and allergens to foodborne infectious
agents.The sensor is being developed under the name FOODSNIFFER (FOOD Safety at the point-of-Need via monolithic spectroscopic chip identiFying harmFul substances in frEsh pRoduce).
Modern food safety system broken
According to FOODSNIFFER project coordinator Ioannis Raptis and exploitation leader Eric Smith, globalization has greatly complicated efforts to ensure the safety of food."The industrial revolution and our modern lifestyle have changed our perception of food," they said. "Previous generations used to buy a product based on a long-time trust relationship with the food producer but this is not the case anymore. The complexity and geographical spread of the modern food supply chain may also hide far greater dangers than we may have anticipated, and the ease of distribution of large quantities of potentially unsafe food to many countries within short timeframes may have a snowball effect worldwide and makes tracing of the suspect product difficult."
In recent years, several food safety-related crises have hit Europe. Analysts have attributed these crises to the inability of government agencies to test the majority of food before it reaches consumers. Modern food safety testing technologies are expensive and must be conducted in laboratories, leading European governments to test only about 1 percent of all food products before they reach store shelves. Other governments, including those that export food to Europe, are known to have even weaker food testing policies.
And while many cases of foodborne illness may seem minor, they may actually have lifelong consequences, Raptis and Smith warn.
"Cutting-edge medical research is now showing that short-lived infections are not harmless," they said. "In fact, they may often cause permanent damage to the physiology of many otherwise-healthy people.... This can consist of, for example, disturbance in the immune system."
Putting testing in consumer hands
The idea behind FOODSNIFFER is to develop a device that moves food testing out of the lab and places it into the hands of consumers, while also making sure that the data collected gets transmitted to the relevant scientists and regulators for analysis."We expect FOODSNIFFER to bring about a change in how we approach food by empowering us to identify potential dangers along the entire food supply chain," Raptis and Smith said.
The €4 million ($5.5 million) FOODSNIFFER project involves the participation of 10 European partners, including researchers from various fields and industries. The goal is to develop an optical biosensor, embedded in a smartphone, that can scan food -- such as a jar of baby food -- for the chemical signatures of unique toxins including pesticides, mycotoxins and allergens. The sensor would immediately transmit the data collected, along with user metadata including time, date and location, to the Internet cloud. The associated app would allow researchers or other users to compare data collected by different phones and create charts or maps to trace contamination.
"This contrasts with current laboratory practice, which requires delivery of samples to remote locations and a delay before receiving results," Raptis and Smith said.
The device is in the very early stages of development, but preliminary tests of the sensor's ability to detect health-related biomarkers have shown promising results.
"The FOODNIFFER technology is a great step forward in that it would enable us, for the first time, to achieve reliable food surveillance down to the source of production, from the safety of irrigation water to controlling the use of only permitted pesticides," Raptis and Smith said. "This means we will be able to solve the problem where it starts - deep at the source or in the distribution chain." As Always The Plain Truth!
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