In our first bonus episode, host Hannah Miller and co-host Douglas Berman look back at Season 1 Episode 1. The episode provides updates and insights into the continued struggle to change the crack to powder cocaine ratio from 18:1 to 1:1 and further reduce unwarranted sentencing disparities.
Federal
Drug Enforcement and Policy Center launches Drugs on the Docket podcast
Drugs on the Docket is a production of the Drug Enforcement and Policy Center (DEPC) at The Ohio State University. Each episode explores how U.S. court rulings—primarily those handed down from the Supreme Court—impact drug law and policy and continue to shape the War on Drugs. Drugs on the Docket unpacks various ways courts have engaged with and responded to the opioid epidemic, police discretion, the sentencing disparities between crack and powder cocaine, and more. The series, hosted by Hannah Miller, invites guests with expertise in criminal justice, drug policy, and drug enforcement to help us break down the sometimes complex and always interesting stories behind today’s drug law landscape.
All six episodes are available now on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts and YouTube.
Women in Prison: Seeking Justice Behind Bars
A briefing report from the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights examines the rights of women in prison. The study found that many prison policies and facilities are not designed for women or tailored to their specific needs as policies were adopted from men’s prison institutions without evaluating their application to women’s prison institutions. The report also includes key recommendations voted on by the Commission majority.
Fees, Fines, and the Funding of Public Services: A Curriculum for Reform
“Knowledge of subnational systems of taxing and budgeting and of fiscal policymaking processes can be put to use to reduce and to end governments’ reliance on user fees for courts and for other aspects of criminal systems. This reader aims to help experts in public finance to understand the misuse of court-based assessments which are regressive revenue streams…. These materials interact with ongoing seminars, sometimes virtual, to link people experts in public finance with their counterparts seeking to reform unfair monetary sanctions. Through monographs such as this, we hope to support work underway to shape just and equitable revenue-generation mechanisms that avoid imposing harmful costs on vulnerable individuals, families, and communities.”
Seminar: Drug Law Enforcement and the Bill of Rights
Abbreviated syllabus and reading list for Drug Law Enforcement and the Bill of Rights Seminar taught by Dr. Sarah Brady Siff at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law. The seminar offers a constitutional legal history of drug control in the United States.
Link: https://u.osu.edu/teachingdrugs/files/2021/02/DrugLawEnforcementandtheBillofRights.pdf
Modeling Health Benefits and Harms of Public Policy Responses to the US Opioid Epidemic
This piece, aimed at estimating health outcomes of policies to mitigate the opioid epidemic, concludes based on its findings that “policies focused on services for addicted people improve population health without harming any groups.”
Sourced from Abstract in link.
Opioid Crisis: No Easy Fix to its Social and Economic Determinants
“Overreliance on opioid medications is emblematic of a health care system that incentivizes quick, simplistic answers to complex physical and mental health needs. In an analogous way, simplistic measures to cut access to opioids offer illusory solutions to this multidimensional societal challenge.”
Sourced from Abstract in Link.
Today’s nonmedical opioid users are not yesterday’s patients; implications of data indicating stable rates of nonmedical use and pain reliever use disorder
“Health care in general, and pain and addiction management in particular, are nuanced undertakings. Current public policies aimed at reducing opioid-related deaths ignore such nuance in favor of ham-handed, empirically dubious, and demonstrably harmful dictates. Americans suffering from chronic pain, and those from whom they receive their treatment, deserve medical care managed through better-informed and more even-handed policy.”
Sourced from Abstract in link.
Whitewashed: The African American Opioid Epidemic
This piece aims to expose the ways in which we have focused our attention in regards to the opioid epidemic almost exclusively on white communities, leaving many African American communities who suffer in similar ways without the same care, attention, or exposure. Treatment and response plans should include African Americans as apart of the conversation, and this paper aims to support that claim with data and studies.
Toward Healthy Drug Policy in the United States – The Case of Safehouse
This work focuses on critiquing the past views on drug policy and calls on the Controlled Substance Act’s failure to control the supply of drugs and thereby reduce drug-related harms.
Sourced from the New England Journal of Medicine.