Friday, December 1, 2006

Supreme Court Justices take Bong Hits for Jesus This is not good. The Supreme Court entered into a free-speech dispute Friday involving a high school student suspended over a "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" banner. The justices accepted an appeal from a school board in Juneau, Alaska, after a federal appeals court allowed a lawsuit by the family of Joseph Frederick to proceed.[...] The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, California [concluded] the school could not show Frederick had disrupted the school's educational mission by showing a banner off campus. The fact that the Supreme Court agreed to take such a silly case is troubling, although I don't know enough about the appeal to know if it's strictly an attempt to overturn the 9th Circuit free speech decision, or if it has more to do with the right to sue the school and principal over the case. And of course, it will be high profile, with Kenneth Starr taking on the case for the school board. We may need to follow this one closely... The case will test school's ability to regulate speech on illegal drugs, particularly when it is done off school grounds. The government would very much like to be able to keep people from telling the truth about drugs. Would schools then be able to prohibit students from participating in groups like Students for Sensible Drug Policy? How many steps away would that be? [Thanks, Russell] 10:13:42 PM | drug policy | Related  | permalink | comment []

Incarceration Nation 1 in 32 Americans in jails, on parole A record 7 million people - or one in every 32 American adults - were behind bars, on probation or on parole by the end of last year, according to the Justice Department. Of those, 2.2 million were in prison or jail, an increase of 2.7 percent over the previous year, according to a report released Wednesday. [...] "Today's figures fail to capture incarceration's impact on the thousands of children left behind by mothers in prison," Marc Mauer, the executive director of the Sentencing Project, a Washington-based group supporting criminal justice reform, said in a statement. "Misguided policies that create harsher sentences for nonviolent drug offenses are disproportionately responsible for the increasing rates of women in prisons and jails." From 1995 to 2003, inmates in federal prison for drug offenses have accounted for 49 percent of total prison population growth. The United States has 5% of the world's population... ... but 25% of the world's prison population. We lead the entire world in incarceration rates. And what the drug war has done to the black community... In 1993, under Apartheid, South Africa incarcerated 851 black males per 100,000 population. In 2004, under Prohibition, the U.S. incarcerated 4,919 black males per 100,000 population. For what? 7:58:53 AM | drug policy | Related  | permalink | comment []