Women’s activism in a drug user union in the Downtown Eastside

Marginalized women in Canada who use criminalized drugs are often defined through institutional discourses of addiction, disease, poverty, sex work, and violence. Framed by many researchers as an at risk population, the fullness of these women’s lives is often rendered invisible, and the complexity, diversity, and range of experiences of their political and community work and their movement through the city are less often a topic of interest. This gap is addressed through an exploration of how some marginalized women come to know and experience themselves politically and physically, as part of a reflection upon their movement in and through the Downtown Eastside (DTES) of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Drawing from community-based research in the DTES over a four-month period with women in leadership roles at the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users, a drug user union, this paper highlights the results from focus groups and brainstorming sessions. The participants disrupt conventional notions of addiction and criminalization through their political and community activities and their ongoing resistance to systemic discrimination.     

Human rights in Vancouver: do injection drug users have a friend in city hall?

In april 2003, the Vancouver Police Department (VPD) initiated a crackdown in the city's Downtown Eastside, an area frequented by drug users and the site of one of the developed world's worst AIDS epidemics. Human Rights Watch (HRW) visited the city and issued a report documenting first-hand accounts of unnecessary use of force by police officers and other human rights abuses. In this article, HRW staffers Joanne Csete and Jonathan Cohen describe how the initial euphoria that greeted the election of Vancouver Mayor Larry Campbell has worn off; how a crackdown that was supposed to be aimed at drug traffickers had the effect of driving drug users away from health and harm-reduction services; and how both the VPD and city tried to discredit the HRW report. Finally, the authors discuss how concerns about the VPD have led to official complaints being filed, and they question whether police forces should be allowed to investigate themselves.     

No change is a good change? Restrictive deterrence in illegal drug markets

Purpose

This study applies the concept of restrictive deterrence to a sample of drug market offenders. In particular, we assess the influence of behavioral changes post-arrest on time to rearrest.

Methods

The sample consists of arrest data on all drug offences in South Australia from the start of 2000 to the end of 2007 (n = 26819). Cox proportional hazard models are used to conduct survival analyses. Supplementary models focus on those repeatedly arrested for cannabis cultivation to assess the influence of adjusting amounts of drugs on time to rearrest.

Results

Changing behaviors is related to more rapid rearrest. Switching offense location, drug seriousness, and charge seriousness are all risk factors. However, among offenders repeatedly arrested for cannabis cultivation, changing location and increasing the number of plants they grow is related to a longer period before rearrest.

Conclusions

Offenders that change their drug market behavior after being arrested appear to be placing themselves in situations in which they are more likely to fail due to the dangers of breaking into an unfamiliar market or offense pattern. Offenders with the longest post-arrest survival seem to be those that maintain their overall pattern of behavior while implementing subtle arrest avoidance techniques.     

Human trafficking and drug distribution in Sweden from a market perspective—similarities and differences

Based on several studies, the aim of the article is to compare trafficking in women for the purpose of sexual exploitation to trafficking in drugs. Women are recruited and drugs are bought in other countries and transported to Sweden. What are the similarities and differences between the recruitment phase (women) and the purchases (drugs)? Both sexual services and drugs are sold in local markets. This requires marketing, contacts and access to customers. Women need accommodation and often a place to sell the services, drugs must be stored somewhere and prepared for sale. Procurement, trafficking and the purchase of sexual services are illegal and in the case of drugs even consumption and possession for personal use is illegal and prosecuted. Facilitators often play an important role in connecting customers and providers. This article will further describe what kind of organizational structure is needed to arrange these logistics and some different strategies used by organizers and distributors.     

Fatal poisonings in young drug addicts in the Nordic countries: a comparison between 1984–1985 and 1991

Fatal poisonings among young drug addicts (15–34 years) in the five Nordic countries, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden in 1991 were investigated and compared to a similar investigation for 1984–1985 (Sweden for 1984 only). A common definition of ‘drug addict’ has been applied by the participating countries. In both investigations, the greatest number of drug addict deaths was seen in Denmark calculated per 10⁵ inhabitants, followed in descending order by Norway, Sweden, Finland and Iceland. An increased number of deaths was observed from 1984–1985 to 1991 in all five countries. The increase in Denmark and Sweden was small while the number of deaths was more than doubled in Norway and Finland. The increased number of cases in Norway and Sweden in 1991 is mainly due to a greater number of deaths in the age group 25–34 years. In Finland, the increased number was seen mainly in the age group 15–24 years. In the two investigations heroin/morphine caused most of the fatal poisonings in Norway and Sweden. In Denmark, heroin/morphine caused about half of the fatal poisonings only, and strong analgesics other than heroin/morphine caused about one third of the deaths. In 1984–1985 it was methadone, propoxyphene and ketobemidone and in 1991 mostly methadone. The number of heroin/morphine related deaths in Finland increased from 1984–1985 to 1991, but other drugs and poisons caused a much higher proportion of the deaths. Pentobarbital caused the only fatal poisoning in Iceland in 1991.     

FDA preemption of drug and device labeling: who should decide what goes on a drug label?

The Supreme Court decided an issue that is critical to consumer health and safety last year. In April 2009, the Supreme Court held that extensive FDA regulation of drugs did not preempt a state law claim that an additional warning on the label was necessary to make the drug reasonably safe for use. Thus, states--and even courts and juries--are now free to cast their vote on what a drug label should say. This is in direct contrast to medical devices, where the federal statute regulating medical devices expressly provides that state regulations are preempted. This Article discusses basic preemption principles and drugs, and explores the policy ramifications of pro- and anti-preemption policy in the healthcare industry.     

The extent to which demographic characteristics determine international drug couriers’ profiles: a cross-sectional study in Istanbul

Transnational crime syndicates (TCS) have increasingly been deploying couriers to transport narcotics. TCSs develop innovative strategies and constantly recruit couriers that demonstrate fewest risk indicators. As a counterstrategy, drug-enforcement agencies launch courier-profiling programs and identify the emerging risk factors. Demographic factors and ethnic origins are often cited by the international literature as noteworthy risk factors in drug-enforcement agencies?? courier-identification schemes. This cross-sectional study aimed to investigate whether demographic characteristics and ethnic origins play any significant role for courier recruitment in Turkey. The population of this study consisted of international drug couriers who were detained between 2006 and the first 6?months of 2010 and charged with drug offenses (importing/exporting drugs) in Istanbul/Turkey. The data was collected through content analysis of criminal case files. This research revealed that several demographic factors and nationalities have a significant relationship with courier recruitment.     

Facing drug problems and advancing sentence plan. Prisoners’ perspectives on drug treatment programmes in Finland

ABSTRACT

In Nordic countries, the rapid development of various prison-based drug treatment (PDT) programmes emerged in the mid-1990s, and this development can be viewed as a criminological shift towards a “new form” of penal welfarism combining control and rehabilitation in a revised form in a new era. This article examines PDT programmes from the prisoners’ perspective to analyse their motives to participate, experiences, and relationships with counsellors, guards, and prisoners. Data were collected from interviews of the prisoners and observations in three Finnish prisons. Both the motives connected to handling drug problems and those connected to gaining an advantage for the duration of time spent in prison were experienced simultaneously by participants. Prisoners made a clear distinction between guards and drug counsellors and were somewhat confused by staff roles that combined both rehabilitative and control features. These findings suggest that new hybrid roles already found among correctional staff seem to exist also for prisoners.     

Dragon's Blood incense: misbranded as a drug of abuse?

An unknown red substance was being sold and used with other drugs of abuse in Virginia (often being used in conjunction with marihuana). The red substance was identified as Dragon's Blood incense from Daemonorops draco. In bioassays, Dragon's Blood incense exhibited a low, but measurable cytotoxicity in in vitro cell lines. Dragon's Blood incense or Volatilized Dragon's Blood had no adverse effect on mouse motor performance based on the inclined screen and rotorod tests. delta(9)-Tetrahydrocannibinol (THC) produced a dose-related decline in mouse performance on the rotorod test. The combination of Dragon's Blood incense or Volatilized Dragon's Blood with delta(9)-THC did not contribute further to the impairment of the mice on the rotorod. This data suggests that the abuse potential for Dragon's Blood incense alone or in combination with marihuana is minimal.     

Is tobacco a drug? Administrative agencies as common law courts

Professor Cass Sunstein argues that the FDA has the authority to regulate tobacco products. He considers the text of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, which supports the FDA assertion, and the context of its enactment, which argues against the FDA. He resolves the tension between text and context in favor of FDA jurisdiction by turning to the emerging role of administrative agencies. In modern government, he contends, administrative agencies have become America's common law courts, with the power to adapt statutory regimes to new facts and new values when the underlying statute is ambiguous. Professor Sunstein's Article, like the other pieces in this volume, was written after the United States District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina decided Coyne Beahm v. FDA, but before a three judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit reversed that decision in Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp. v. FDA. In Coyne Beahm, the District Court held that the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act authorized the FDA to regulate tobacco products, but not tobacco advertising. The Fourth Circuit rejected the District Court's jurisdictional ruling and invalidated the FDA's regulations in their entirety. The Clinton Administration has since requested an en banc rehearing before the Fourth Circuit.     

Offending,drug abuse and life chances—a longitudinal study of a Stockholm birth cohort

There are many factors, both empirical and theoretical, which indicate that drug abuse can play an important role in explaining the links between criminality and life chances when viewed from a life-course perspective. In this article, we examine the links between crime and drug abuse and social inclusion and exclusion in adult life, and look at whether there are gender-specific patterns in these regards. The Stockholm Birth Cohort database allows us to follow a birth cohort born in 1953 to age 56. The results show that drug abuse is central both to processes of continuity in and desistance from crime and to life chances in adulthood. For the adult outcomes that relate to work and health, we also note a tendency towards polarization; the size of both the relative and the absolute differences between the comparison group and offenders with registered drug abuse increases over time. The same general pattern can be seen for males and females.     

How many samples from a drug seizure need to be analyzed?

Recently Aitken introduced an outstanding advance in the approach to decision making regarding drugs sampling. Unfortunately this approach has not, as yet, been widely implemented despite being based on a solid mathematical foundation. In this paper we advocate a Bayesian approach along the lines of that outlined by Aitken but designed to be both easily understood with less mathematical sophistication and implementable using standard EXCEL software. The emphasis is placed on encouraging the application of this methodology to routine case work by explaining the statistics involved. Minor differences exist between this approach and that of Aitken in both the modeling of the prior probability and in dealing with the discrete nature of the samples. These differences in no way detract from the sound mathematical foundation of the approach.     

For whom does prison-based drug treatment work? Results from a randomized experiment

Objectives

Prison-based therapeutic community (TC) drug treatment followed by community aftercare is widely recognized as the most effective treatment paradigm for drug-dependent offenders. However, few randomized experiments have addressed this question and fewer studies have examined how interactions between treatment modality and individual characteristics may explain variations in outcomes.

Methods

Using a randomized experimental design, this study examined the effects of treatment modality [TC vs. Outpatient (OP) group counseling], individual psychosocial characteristics (e.g., risk, negative affect), and interactions on reincarceration over a 3-year follow-up period. Survival analysis using Cox regression with covariates was used to analyze data obtained from 604 subjects at a specialized drug treatment prison.

Results

The expected advantage of TC failed to emerge. Critical and heretofore unexamined interactions between treatment modality (TC vs. OP), inmate levels of risk, and negative effect help explain these unexpected findings.

Conclusion

The superiority of prison TC to less intensive OP counseling was not supported. The effects of TC appear to be conditioned by critical responsivity factors that have received little empirical attention.     

Are effective drug courts an urban phenomenon?: considering their impact on recidivism among a nonmetropolitan adult sample in Washington State

Drug courts represent a significant development in criminal justice during the past 15 years, and a small but growing literature suggests they are effective in reducing drug use and criminal behavior. Most of these studies evaluate the effects of drug courts in urban areas, however. This study adds to this literature by considering the effects of this intermediate sanction among adult offenders in a small, nonmetropolitan county of northwest Washington. Using a retrospective comparison group of matched control participants, these results show that the prevalence and incidence of rearrest is significantly lower among drug court graduates than probationers. These differences in recidivism persist even when the age, race, gender, and number of days at risk in the community are statistically controlled. Among those who did recidivate, drug court graduates did not significantly differ from controls in duration to first arrest and arrest incidence. Policy implications are discussed.