Webb began researching "Dark Alliance" in July 1995.[19] The series was published in The Mercury News in three parts, from Sunday, 18 August 1996 to 20 August 1996, with a first long article and one or two shorter articles appearing each day. It was also posted on The Mercury News website with additional information, including documents cited in the series and audio recordings of people quoted in the articles.[20] The website artwork showed the silhouette of a man smoking a crack pipe superimposed over the CIA seal.[21] This artwork proved controversial, and The Mercury News later removed it.[22]
First Page 2006 Professional V3 Crack Cocainel
The lede of the first article set out the series' basic claims: "For the better part of a decade, a San Francisco Bay Area drug ring sold tons of cocaine to the Crips and Bloods street gangs of Los Angeles and funneled millions in drug profits to a Latin American guerrilla army run by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency." This drug ring "opened the first pipeline between Colombia's cocaine cartels and the black neighborhoods of Los Angeles" and, as a result, "The cocaine that flooded in helped spark a crack explosion in urban America."[23]
The first detailed article on the series's claims appeared in The Washington Post in early October.[31] In their front-page article, reporters Roberto Suro and Walter Pincus wrote that "available information" did not support the series's claims and that "the rise of crack" was "a broad-based phenomenon" driven in numerous places by diverse players. The article discussed Webb's contacts with Ross's attorney and prosecution complaints of how Ross's defense had used Webb's series.[32]
Webb's reporting in "Dark Alliance" remains controversial. Many writers discussing the series point to errors in it. The claim that the drug ring of Meneses-Blandón-Ross sparked the "crack explosion" has been perhaps the most criticized part of the series. Nick Schou, a journalist who wrote a 2006 biography of Webb, has claimed that this was the most important error in the series. Writing on the Los Angeles Times opinion page, Schou said, "Webb asserted, improbably, that the Blandón-Meneses-Ross drug ring opened 'the first pipeline between Colombia's cocaine cartels and the black neighborhoods of Los Angeles,' helping to 'spark a crack explosion in urban America.' The story offered no evidence to support such sweeping conclusions, a fatal error that would ultimately destroy Webb, if not his editors."[78]
Snowfall is an American crime drama television series set in Los Angeles in 1983. The series revolves around the first crack epidemic and its impact on the culture of the city. The series follows the stories of several characters whose lives are fated to intersect including CIA operative Teddy McDonald who helps to secure guns for the Contras. The character reporter Irene Abe is said by fans of the show to be a stand in character for the real life Gary Webb.
Data were collected between January 1997 and December 2006 on admissions for drug abuse treatment through a regular monitoring system involving 56 drug treatment centres and programmes in Cape Town, Gauteng Province (Johannesburg and Pretoria) and the Eastern Cape every six months as part of the South African Community Epidemiology Network on Drug Use (SACENDU). A one-page form was completed by treatment centre personnel to obtain demographic data, the patients' primary and secondary substances of abuse, the mode, frequency and age of first use of substance, and information on prior treatment.
Treatment indicators point to a significant increase in cocaine related admissions over time in all sites, but with substantial inter-site variation, particularly in recent years. The data indicate high levels of crack cocaine use and high levels of daily usage among patients, most of whom were first time admissions. Patients with cocaine related problems continue to be predominantly male, with a mean age of around 30 years. Substantial changes in the racial profile of patients have occurred over time. Poly drug use is high with cocaine often used with alcohol, cannabis and other drugs.
For the purpose of surveillance, a standardised one-page form is completed on each person treated by a given centre during a particular six-month period. The form elicits responses about the source of referral for treatment, demographic information, the type of treatment received (inpatient and/or outpatient), the primary, secondary, tertiary and fourth substance of abuse, the mode(s) of use, frequency of use, age of first use and whether the person had received treatment prior to the current episode. The items included in the form were drawn from items used by the Pompidou Group in Europe in the mid 1990s and are similar to items currently included in the EMCDDA's Treatment Demand Indicator Protocol (TDI) and the US Treatment Episode Data Set (TEDS) [10, 11]. Treatment centres receive ongoing training in data collection procedures. Typically the form is filled in by the case manager a few days after the patient has been admitted to the centre. To ensure data quality, completed forms are checked for missing information and possible miscodes. Ethical approval for the SACENDU project was granted by the Ethics Committee of the Medical Research Council of South Africa.
In all sites the percentage of first time admissions among patients having cocaine as a primary drug of abuse has fluctuated between about 50% and 70% (Table 1). There has been no discernable increase or decrease in this percentage over time. Among patients who present for the treatment of cocaine related problems, the main mode of cocaine HCL administration is through snorting, and crack cocaine is smoked. Across all sites less than one percent of patients reported injecting cocaine. This has not changed over time. In terms of the frequency of cocaine use, 65% of patients in treatment in Cape Town with cocaine as a primary drug of abuse in the second half of 2006 reported daily use, compared to 45% in the Eastern Cape. A quarter of these patients in Cape Town reported using cocaine between two and six times per week compared to 41% in the Eastern Cape. In the second half of 2006 the mean length of time between the age of first treatment admission and age of first use of cocaine was 3.4 years (SD = 4.68) in the Eastern Cape and 6.1 years (SD = 5.25) in Cape Town. No data were available on this for Gauteng.
In Gauteng between the second half of 1999 and the second half of 2006 roughly 60% or more patients having cocaine as a primary drug of abuse were white (Table 2). The Cochrane-Armitage trend test revealed that the proportion of patients treated for cocaine related problem who were black African in Gauteng increased significantly from 4.8% in the second half of 1999 to 12.5% in the second half of 2006 (Z = 5.364, p Z = 6.985, p p p
While the majority of these symptoms can be very uncomfortable, they are unlikely to cause physical harm. It is important to know that you can receive professional addiction treatment to help ease withdrawal side effects and prevent future relapses.13 Common crack cocaine withdrawal symptoms include:6,7,11,12,13,14
The hate crime legislation enacted in 2009 directed the U.S. Sentencing Commission to submit a second report on federal mandatory minimums.28 The commission presented its second report in October 2011.29 A number of things had changed between the first and second Commission reports. Sentencing under the Guidelines had been in place for only a relatively short period of time when the first report was written. By the time of the second report, the number of defendants sentenced by federal courts had grown to almost three times the number sentenced under the Guidelines when the commission wrote its first report.30 The judicial landscape has changed as well. When the commission issued its first report, the Guidelines were considered binding upon sentencing judges.31 After the Supreme Court's Booker decision and its progeny, the Guidelines became but the first step in the sentencing process.32 In addition, the Fair Sentencing Act, passed in 2010, reduced the powder cocaine-crack cocaine ratio from 100 to 10 to roughly 18 to 1.33
The eight substances are heroin, powder cocaine, cocaine base (crack), PCP, LSD, fentanyl, methamphetamine, and marijuana. Criminal penalties related to each substance provide one set of mandatory minimums for trafficking in a very substantial amount listed in Section 841(b)(1)(A), and a second, lower set of mandatory minimums for trafficking in a lower but still substantial amount listed in Section 841(a)(1)(B). The first set (841(b)(1)(A) level) features the following thresholds:
P.L. 111-220, 2(a), 124 Stat. 2372 (2010). Prior to enactment, 5000 grams of powder cocaine or 50 grams of crack cocaine triggered the Controlled Substances Act's 10-year mandatory minimum, 21 U.S.C. 841(b)(1)(A)(ii) and (iii) (2006 ed.), and 500 grams of powder or 5 grams of crack triggered its 5-year mandatory minimum. Id. 841(b)(1)(B)(ii) and (iii) (2006 ed.). The FSA established a 5000 grams to 280 gram ratio for the 10-year mandatory minimum, 21 U.S.C. 841(b)(1)(A)(ii) and (iii), and a 500 grams to 28 gram ratio for the 5-year mandatory minimum. Id. 841(b)(1)(B)(ii) and (iii). 2ff7e9595c
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