Marijuana Prohibition to Blame in Shooting Death of UMD Student

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: January 14, 2011
CONTACT: Stacia Cosner, SSDP National Associate Director – (410) 299-3433
Lauren Mendelsohn, UMD SSDP (202) 596-7737

Marijuana Prohibition to Blame in Shooting Death of University of Maryland Student
UMD student group says legalization will end drug war violence

College Park, MD. – Officials at Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP) charged today that the murder of UMD student Justin DeSha-Overcash on Tuesday is a result of marijuana prohibition policies that actually put young people in more danger than a system of legalization and regulation. DeSha-Overcash, 22 years-old, had a bright future ahead and was slated to graduate in June with a degree in physics and astronomy.

“This isn’t simply a drug related crime as the media is calling it,” explained Stacia Cosner, Associate Director at SSDP. “This is drug-prohibition related violence. We don’t see students shooting one another over alcohol, because it’s legal and there are no black market profits worth protecting.”

SSDP is joining DeSha-Overcash’s friends and family in criticizing Prince George's County Police for placing the blame on the victim, labeling him as a drug dealer simply because marijuana was found at the home.

"As Justin’s friends and family mourn their loss, SSDP members extend their support by emphasizing a positive and fair characterization of his life," said Cosner. "On top of his ambitious schoolwork, he also worked as a teaching assistant and at the campus observatory. He was not simply a drug dealer whose death could somehow be justified by the presence of marijuana in his home as police have suggested."

Lauren Mendelsohn, a member of the UMD chapter of SSDP, expressed her concern about law enforcement’s stated priorities in response to the murder. "A young man lost his life, tragically and with the killer still on the loose. The College Park community is seeking support and assurance that the killer will be brought to justice, but the Prince George's County Police blaming the victim is incredibly concerning. It raises serious questions about their priorities.”

“Police need to start looking at the policies surrounding drugs and evaluating the unintended consequences of prohibition. If marijuana were regulated in a similar way to alcohol, perhaps Justin would still be alive today," says Cosner.

Baltimore Murder Rate Drops as Police Focus on Violent Crime Instead of Drug Crimes

In Baltimore, one of the nation's most violent cities, police are beginning to rethink their zero tolerance strategy in order to reduce violent crimes. Over the past two years, arrests have declined. Along with that, homicides and shootings are down too - totals that haven't been that low since the late 1980s.

Instead of chasing suspected drug dealers, officers are focusing on people with violent backgrounds. Since Police Commissioner Fredrick H. Bealefeld III took over in 2007, homicides dipped from 282 to 234 in just a year. In 2008, nonfatal shootings dropped from 582 to 450 last year. Also in 2009, the department arrested 4,000 less people than in the previous year. Last year's arrest total was down nearly 20,000 from 2002 - when Baltimore was at the height of the zero tolerance strategy. With 64 slayings through May 11, the city is on pace for 178 homicides this year, the lowest total since 1977.

"Im not trying to win the drug war," Bealefeld said. "I'm out to win the war on violence and deal effectively with violence."

David Kennedy, director of the Center for Crime Prevention and Control at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, places Bealefeld among a handful of police chiefs willing to acknowledge that the strategies their departments used for decades were ineffective, even counter productive. He's confident that the big drops under Bealefeld are no coincidence.

Kennedy said, "It's common sense to focus on a small number of dangerous people instead of rounding up people for low-level nonsense."

It's a lot like a scene out of President Obama's favorite show, The Wire.

80% of Puerto Rico Murders Called Prohibition-Related

The title actually read "Drug-Related." We know better. Just like the U.S-Mexican border, this isn't violence caused by people taking drugs and going out on murderous rampages. These murders are fueled by a desire to control the drug trade. Something that is worth quite a bit of money.

University of Puerto Rico researcher Hector Colon said that the island’s drug users collectively spend nearly $3 million a day to feed their habits.

Colon also said that keeping an addict incarcerated costs between $28,000 and $30,000 per year, to which must be added other costs pertaining to medical attention when the inmates have AIDS or hepatitis.

The DEA, FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the U.S. Marshals Service and the Puerto Rico police recently arrested 38 people on drug trafficking charges. It's estimated that about 30% of illegal drugs coming into the U.S. are coming from Puerto Rico and the islands. There is good reason for this:

As American soil, it is attractive because drugs leaving here do not have to clear customs to reach the U.S. market.

13 Year Old American Teenagers Recruited as Assassins for Mexican Drug Cartel

Rosalio Reta and his friend, Gabriel Cardona, were members of a three-person cell of American teenagers working as cartel hit men in the United States, according to prosecutors.

...In interviews with CNN, Laredo police detectives and prosecutors told how Cardona and Reta were recruited by the cartel to be assassins after they began hitting the cantinas and clubs just across the border. [CNN]

The Mexican drug cartel, fueled by the constant demand for illicit drugs and armed with guns supplied by America has unsurprisingly been recruiting American teenagers to fight their bloody battles, starting as early as 13 years old.

Both teenagers received six-month military-style training on a Mexican ranch. Investigators say Cardona and Reta were paid $500 a week each as a retainer, to sit and wait for the call to kill. Then they were paid up to $50,000 and 2 kilos of cocaine for carrying out a hit.

The teenagers lived in several safe houses around Laredo and drove around town in a $70,000 Mercedes-Benz.

So let’s get this straight. They have our guns, they have our money, they supply us with our drugs, they control our border, and now they have more power over our kids than parents ever would. I doubt you’d find a parent out there who’d be willing to pay their child $500 a week for sitting around, though at this point, maybe they should start looking into it.

I hate to be repetitive in my posts, but how are people not panicking? Do they not understand the idea of cause and effect, or do they need their North American geography refreshed?

There are sleeper cells in the U.S.," said Detective Garcia. "They're here, they're here in the United States.

Think about it, what else could the cartel sell that would give them so much easy money and an overwhelming amount of control? Chocolate candy bars? I don’t think so. Everyone wants drugs. No matter how many “Just Say No” campaigns we may feed our tax dollars into, we will not be able to turn American into a “drug free” nation. Instead, we need to legalize, regulate, control, and educate the public about the real harms drugs can cause and how to use responsibly if they’re going to use.

The solution is right in front of us, but some of us are too scared to even talk about it. Unfortunately at this point, there's so much more to be scared about than the word "legalization".

El Paso Can't Decide if it's OK to Talk About Drug Legalization

By now you are probably aware of the recent resolution, written and passed by the El Paso city council, that included an amendment encouraging that ending drug prohibition be discussed. The resolution was aimed at addressing and drawing attention to the rising violence occurring in the city of Juárez, Mexico which borders El Paso, Texas.

After passing unanimously, the resolution was quickly vetoed by El Paso mayor John Cook, who reasoned that "It is not realistic to believe that the U.S. Congress will seriously consider any broad-based debate on the legalization of narcotics," Cook added. "That position is not consistent with the community standards both locally and nationally."

Cook goes on to say "The whole purpose of the resolution was to get national attention to the violence in Juárez," he said. "After it was amended, the focus was placed instead on legalizing drugs in the United States."

I disagree and think that had the amendment not been added, no one would have heard of this resolution and little more attention would have been drawn to the prohibition related violence in Juárez. Beto O'Rourke, the city councilman that added the amendment, speaks quite eloquently about the purpose of bringing legalization into the discussion. He makes it very clear that the council did not vote in support of legalization, but in support of evaluating the relationship between the rise of violence in Juárez and U.S. drug policy.

More than 20 people have already been killed in Juárez since the new year started. The details of these murders are so grotesque and frightening, it's hard to believe the Mayor wouldn't even support the discussion of drug decriminalization.

The council is set to vote on an override of the veto this Tuesday.

The El Paso Times has an article on the vote and a follow up opinion in support of the council's vote. Be sure to weigh in on the comments section and also to vote YES on the poll located near the end of this article. LEAP's Terry Nelson had an excellent op-ed printed in the El Paso times. Again, please leave comments of support for the resolution, Terry Nelson's op-ed, and while your at it, throw in a mention of your favorite student drug policy reform organization.

In an unrelated story, El Paso's "most wanted fugitive" is:

EL PASO -- A 23-year-old man who was arrested for shoplifting at Wal-Mart while eating potato wedges and popcorn chicken he didn't pay for, is the most-wanted fugitive this week, an El Paso County Sheriff's Office spokesman said.