US prisoners sentenced under strict crack cocaine laws get relief

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Thousands of federal inmates imprisoned under a 1984 law mandating harsh sentences for crack cocaine violations are eligible for shorter sentences, the US Sentencing Commission ruled Thursday.

The ruling affects at least 12,000 federal prisoners – primarily nonviolent drug offenders and most of them African-American – though they still have to go before judicial panels to argue their cases for getting out of prison early. The average sentence is expected to be reduced by 37 months.  - CSMonitor.com



Also read:

• Reducing Unjust Cocaine Sentences - NYTimes.com


• Crack cocaine convicts could serve less prison time | Reuters


• New law could free 12K drug users - Jennifer Epstein - POLITICO.com

Monkey Business: $3.6 Million of Taxpayer Money Went to Dope-Smoking, Menstruating Monkey Study

I found this info via Creative Minority Report. What??? $3.6 million of taxpayer money went to a study on dope-smoking, menstruating monkeys? Alright, if this wasn't so absurd I'd be laughing.  Okay, folks I know that we know that we are in a recession or in an extremely fragile, weak recovery from a recession but it is obvious that these freaking clowns in Washington don't have a clue that we are suffering through a recession and that our government piggy bank is broke.  This is totally absurd! We obviously need to do some more house cleaning in congress come next election.





CNS News reports:

The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), a division of the federal government’s National Institutes of Health (NIH), has spent $3,634,807 over the past decade funding research that involves getting monkeys to smoke and drink drugs such as PCP, methamphetamine (METH), heroin, and cocaine and then studying their behavior, including during different phases of the female monkeys’ menstrual cycles.

The study also uses “interventions” as “treatment models” for monkeys who have been taught to use drugs.