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See: Global Marijuana March. ~600 different cities since 1999. First Saturday in May. City lists: 1999 2000 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 2010. 11 ...Search them. Add city name to search.
With less than 5% of world population the USA has over 2.4 million of 9.8 million world prisoners! The majority of U.S. inmates are in due to the drug war.
Most Republican leaders oppose cheap universal healthcare. 45,000 uninsured Americans die each year due to lack of health insurance.
Chart. U.S. Federal Mandatory-Minimum Drug Sentences. Non-violent possession only. Drug War concentration camps. Sentences do not allow parole until around 85% of the sentence served. Sentences are doubled if prior felony drug conviction. Life in prison if a second-tier drug offense, and 2 prior felony drug convictions. Most states also have mandatory minimums.
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*Table of Contents. After text loads, click topics below. Click TopLink, back button, or HomeKey to return here fast.

*Length of sentences causes the huge U.S. incarceration rate.

*Mandatory-Minimum Drug Sentences Chart.

*Drug War. Big picture.

*History, info, and links.

*Drug War charts, and more.


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Length of sentences causes the huge U.S. incarceration rate. [TopLink]

American Exception. Inmate Count in US Dwarfs Other Nations'.
New York Times. Apr 22, 2008. Page 1, Section A, Front Page.
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v08/n417/a04.html
 
From the New York Times article (emphasis added):

Still, it is the length of sentences that truly distinguishes American prison policy. Indeed, the mere number of sentences imposed here would not place the United States at the top of the incarceration lists. If lists were compiled based on annual admissions to prison per capita, several European countries would outpace the United States. But American prison stays are much longer, so the total incarceration rate is higher. ... "Rises and falls in Canada's crime rate have closely paralleled America's for 40 years," Mr. Tonry wrote last year. "But its imprisonment rate has remained stable."


Mandatory-Minimum Drug Sentences. Including non-violent possession only. Drug War concentration camps for "undesirables." Sentences that usually do not allow parole until at least around 80% of the sentence served. Federal laws, and most states, have mandatory minimums. The majority of U.S. prisoners are in due to the drug war in some way or another. 2.

*Racism of the Drug War. Charts. Revised. Many links and notes. This racism page linked just below has charts for black, white, and Hispanic inmate numbers and rates in the USA; and U.S. state by state disenfranchisement (no voting rights) laws. Many drug war notes, and LINKS to many more charts. Republican evil, Democrat complicity. The drug war disenfranchises (no voting rights) millions of voters (mostly poor people of color). Modern corporate control of the poor.
https://corporatism.tripod.com/charts5.htm and
https://www.angelfire.com/rnb/y/charts5.htm

[TopLink]

U.S. Federal Mandatory-Minimum Drug Sentences.
For non-violent possession. Sentences double if prior felony drug convictions.
For second-tier offenses: Mandatory life sentence if 2 prior felony drug convictions.
Most states also have mandatory minimums of various kinds.
Type of Drug. First tier.
5 year sentence
without early parole.
 Second tier.
10 year sentence
without early parole.
LSD  
1 gram. 10 to 20 doses if carrier weight included.
10 grams
Marijuana
 100 plants or 100 kilos.
1000 plants or 1000 kilos
Crack cocaine
 5 grams. 1 to 10 day supply for heavy user.
50 grams
Powder cocaine
500 grams 
5 kilos
Heroin  
100 grams
1 kilo
Methamphetamine
5 grams. 3 to 10 day supply for heavy user.
50 grams
PCP
10 grams
100 grams
https://www.angelfire.com/rnb/y/mandatory.htm mirror page.
https://corporatism.tripod.com/mandatory.htm mirror page.
http://www.famm.org/si_federal_sentencing.htm and
http://www.famm.org/pdfs/Primer.pdf and
http://www.famm.org/pdfs/fedbroch2.pdf and
http://www.bop.gov/about/facts.jsp and
https://www.angelfire.com/rnb/y/nra.htm __
Use the free Adobe Reader to view the pdf file.
1 kilo is equal to 2.2 pounds.
1 kilo is 1 kilogram, which equals 1000 grams.
1 pound equals 454 grams. 1 ounce equals 28.35 grams.
A gram roughly equals a single packet of sweetener.
1 gram of powder cocaine is turned into 0.89 grams of crack.
Per capita use of crack is higher among whites than blacks.

"There are only two ways to avoid a mandatory minimum sentence. First, the defendant may provide 'substantial assistance' to the government by turning in other defendants. Second, some defendants qualify for the 'safety valve' that Congress passed in 1994 to address (at FAMM’s urging) the excessive sentences served by non-violent drug offenders. If the judge finds the defendant is a low-level, non-violent, first-time offender who qualifies for the safety valve, the defendant may be sentences under the sentencing guidelines instead of the mandatory minimum sentence law. Although the safety valve is a step in the right direction, the criteria for eligibility is very narrow so thousands of nonviolent drug defendants are still sent to prison for decades under mandatory minimum sentencing laws." - Emphasis added.
http://www.famm.org/si_federal_sentencing.htm

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Drug war. Big picture. [TopLink]

"In the federal system, there are two levels of mandatory minimums, with each level doubling for defendants with prior convictions. The first tier requires a minimum sentence of imprisonment for five years (10 with a prior felony drug conviction), and the second tier requires a minimum of 10 years (20 with one prior felony drug conviction, and mandatory life with two such prior convictions). Of that, defendants can receive a reduction in the time they serve in prison of only 54 days per year as a reward for 'good behavior,' which means they must actually serve about 85% of their sentences."
-- David Risley, Assistant U.S. Attorney, Illinois. "Mandatory Minimum Sentences. An Overview." From May 2000. Emphasis added.
http://www.drugwatch.org/Mandatory%20Minimum%20Sentences.htm

*Marijuana Arrests and Incarceration in the United States. Around 37,000 marijuana prisoners were incarcerated in U.S. prisons and jails in 1997. If the percentage of inmates who were marijuana prisoners stayed the same, then in 2003 that means there would be around 44,000 inmates.
http://www.mpp.org/arrests/prisoners.html



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*Graph 3 below is one of many from a July 2000 report. Poor Prescription: The Costs of Imprisoning Drug Offenders in the United States.
http://www.cjcj.org/pubs/poor/pp.html



See also: https://corporatism.tripod.com/world.htm
http://www.kcl.ac.uk/depsta/rel/icps/worldbrief/highest_to_lowest_rates.html

*Majority of over 2.4 million U.S. prisoners are in due to drug war. Drug offenders, plus inmates in for drug-related crimes (such as robbing to get money for drugs that are expensive because of the drug war), plus drug trade crimes, plus drug-related parole violations, etc.. The USA has the world's highest incarceration rate. The USA has 5% of the world's population and 25% of the world's 9 million prisoners. The Drug-War Industrial Complex. Statistics, references, links, and charts:
https://corporatism.tripod.com/majority.htm and
https://www.angelfire.com/rnb/y/majority.htm

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History, info, links. [TopLink]

*FAMM - All about Mandatory Minimum Sentencing.
http://www.famm.org

*10-1995. Young Black Americans and the Criminal Justice System: Five Years Later. October 1995 report.
http://www.sentencingproject.org/policy/9070.htm

*Federal prison population, and number and percent sentenced for drug offenses, United States, 1970-2004. A great Drug War trend chart in itself.
http://www.albany.edu/sourcebook/ind/DRUGS.Prisoners.Federal.2.html

*USA. Mandatory Life Without Parole for Woman after First Offense.
http://www.drcnet.org/rapid/1998/5-8.html#jurors

*Shattered Lives, Human Rights and the Drug War. [Portraits From America's Drug War. Book by Mikki Norris, Chris Conrad, and Virginia Resner.]|
http://www.hr95.org/Shattered.htm

*National Rifle Association (NRA). Their campaign for longer sentences, mandatory minimum sentences, truth in sentencing. For both violent and non-violent offenders, DRUG offenders, etc.. A far-right Nazi-like cult for the U.S. prison industrial complex, whether they know it or not. Ban handguns, so we can keep rifles and shotguns legal. Wimpy handguns don't defend against tyranny. We can end the drug war and mass-incarceration tyranny a lot faster if murders, handguns, and drug war violence were at Canadian, Australian, and Western European levels.
https://corporatism.tripod.com/nra.htm and
https://www.angelfire.com/rnb/y/nra.htm
 
*3-1997. "The NRA strikes back." IN THESE TIMES article from March 17, 1997. It is the last article on the page.
http://www.prop1.org/legal/prisons/970317itt.htm

Ronald Wilson Reagan was president from January 1981 to January 1989. Here is a quote from "The Fix" an excellent recent 1998 book by Michael Massing. One may not agree with all his prescriptions for drug reform, but his history of US drug policy and mandatory minimum drug sentencing is enlightening. The [bracketed] info was added

from page 184 of the book "The Fix":
"Most significant of all were the changes voted in the criminal code. Since 1970, the federal government had had no mandatory minimum penalties for drug offenses. Led by such hard-liners as [Texas bubba-Republican] Senator Phil Gramm, however, legislators approved [1986] a series of whopping new sentences tied solely to the amount of drugs involved. ... Specifically targeting crack, Congress voted to impose a mandatory minimum sentence of five years for the sale of just five grams of the drug. ... With the passage of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, the parent [Atlanta Georgia-rooted, bubba-P.R.I.D.E., Nancy-Reagan, Republican] model of drug abuse had become, in effect, the law of the land." Actually, it is five years just for POSSESSION!

The book goes into VAST detail about how drug policy under Nancy Reagan (yes, Nancy) from 1981 to 1988 shifted from an emphasis on dealing with the hard-core drug users in a slightly more public-health way in the 1970's to a focus on zero tolerance, far less treatment, far more prison, "Just Say No," the gateway theory, and an all-out attack on cannabis. This was all BEFORE 1986 mandatory minimums at the federal level. Of course drug mandatory minimums were first massively installed in 1973 in New York by the Republican Rockefeller laws. The whole "drug war" mentality has nearly always been led by Republicans. Democrats and the mass media nearly always follow their lead. In war, one goes after the officers whenever possible. SO DON'T VOTE REPUBLICAN!!!

This from the "Snitch" PBS site:
"After bouncing back and forth between the Democratic controlled House and the Republican controlled Senate as each party jockeyed for political advantage, The Anti Drug Abuse Act of 1986 finally passed both houses a few weeks before the November elections." Emphasis added.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/snitch/primer/

From page 100 of the 1998 book "Drug Crazy" by Mike Gray: "In June of 1982, Reagan reopened the War on Drugs with a broadside from the Rose Garden. 'We're taking down the surrender flag that has flown over so many drug efforts. We're running up a battle flag.'"

*8-1999. Ireland: OPED: Drugs War Invented By Nixon To Extend His Power.
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v99.n840.a11.html

*Republicans lead U.S. Drug War. Democrats follow Republican evil. Huge LINKS list! U.S. Drug-war Industrial Complex. Republican fundamentalist holy war. Friendly Fascism. Drug war leaders are the rabid right, hate radio, hate television, NRA (National Rifle Association), religious right, (snortin') George Bush the hypocrite, etc.. Republican-led drug war disenfranchises (no voting rights) millions of voters (mostly Democrat-voting blacks).
https://corporatism.tripod.com/gop.htm and
https://www.angelfire.com/rnb/y/gop.htm

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Drug War charts, and more. [TopLink]