Drug Court Savings

Portugal's drug policy pays off; US eyes lessons
By Barry Hatton

....San Francisco's drug court saves the city $14,297 per offender, officials said. Expanding drug courts to all 1.5 million drug offenders in the U.S. would cost more than $13 billion annually, but would return more than $40 billion, according to a study by John Roman, a senior researcher at the Urban Institute's Justice Policy Center....

Postsecret & Merrill Singer

"People readily, if perhaps with a sheepish smile, can admit they are addicted to their morning cup of coffee without the least fear that their morality, sanity, or competence will be questioned or that they might face criminal charges and a potentially long prison sentence.
In the nineteenth century, the same was true of heroin or cocaine addiction. All of this changed early in the twentieth century as a push for criminalization gained momentum" (Singer 2006: p55).

Needle Exchange in Iran (and what the US should notice)

An Enlightened Exchange in Iran
by Tina Rosenberg
 This is a story about a courageous policy in an unexpected place. In this place homeless shelters have vending machines selling clean syringes for injecting drugs. Drug users are not prosecuted as long as they are in treatment programs. Drug addicts are given clean needles and methadone maintenance therapy ─ available on a widespread basis even in prison. These tactics have worked to reduce crime, lower H.I.V. rates among drug users and keep AIDS from spreading out into the general population. The place is not Amsterdam. It is Tehran....

follow-up piece:
How Iran Derailed a Health Crisis
 So how did Iran do it? How did a conservative theocracy decide to deal with its drug addicts as if it were Canada?... The science behind harm reduction is solid ─ but the politics are acutely dangerous.....

let's try this again...

when do we start imprisoning drug manufacturers? Prescription opiates are responsible for an increasing proportion of overdose deaths, so they are next, right?
oh.
wait.

Des Moines man sentenced in heroin death
DES MOINES, Iowa —Federal prosecutors say a Des Moines man has been sentenced to more than 15 years in prison for his role in the heroin death of another person.
Federal officials said Tuesday that Shawn Sweeney appeared last week before a federal judge and was sentenced to 188 months in prison after pleading guilty to distributing heroin. He also was given three years of supervised release and must pay $100 to a crime victims' fund.
Prosecutors say Sweeney distributed heroin to another man who distributed to an individual who died Jan. 24, 2009, in Ames after ingesting the drug.

HIV Prisoner Segregation in SC and Alabama

To reiterate, these programs are unjust, unconstitutional, and, wait for it, enormously expensive. yeah, phenomenally thorough thinking on all fronts.

SC prisons brace for lawsuit over inmates with HIV
By Meg Kinnard
September 21, 2010

COLUMBIA, S.C. — South Carolina prison officials say they have no plans to stop segregating HIV-positive inmates despite the threat of a lawsuit by the U.S. Justice Department.
The state faces a Wednesday deadline to change the practice, which prison officials say is best for inmates and prison employees.
         All state prisons "are safer from a public health perspective and a security perspective as a direct result of this program," Corrections Department attorney David Tatarsky wrote in an August response to the Department of Justice.
         More than 400 HIV-positive inmates are housed together at maximum security prisons in Columbia, including some who would not usually be in such high-security facilities. Infected prisoners attend activities with other inmates, including work, school and faith-based programs, but eat and sleep separately.
        "Many inmates with HIV suffer disparate treatment from other similarly situated inmates without HIV," the department wrote to South Carolina officials in June, when it gave them three months to make changes.
         Alabama, which has 250 HIV-positive inmates, is the only other state that segregates them. Both were criticized in a report issued earlier this year by the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights Watch, which said officials should house all inmates together and give prisoners condoms and syringes to slow the spread of AIDS.
         The report argued that HIV-positive inmates don't have access to the same programs and jobs as other prisoners and are wrongly stigmatized. They are also prevented from participating in work-release programs, meaning they can't earn credits to shorten their sentences.
         "That inevitably means that they serve longer sentences and are essentially being warehoused for no reason other than a medical condition," Margaret Winter, associate director of the ACLU's National Prison Project, said Tuesday.
        Corrections officials have offered a compromise that would also allow infected inmates to attend work-release programs, but Director Jon Ozmint has said DOJ shot down that proposal.
In the mid-1980s, 46 of the nation's 51 prison systems housed HIV-positive prisoners separately from the general population, but most have since stopped. Most recently, Mississippi stopped segregating its 152 HIV-positive inmates in May, sending them to prisons around the state.
         The Department of Justice did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday.
Alabama officials said they have not been threatened with a lawsuit. South Carolina prison officials were not available for comment Tuesday, but said in an Aug. 20 response to the DOJ that they do not intend to change their policy."

how to make chrome worth using on a mac:

The Extensions:
Context Menu Search
Copy Title+URL to clipboard
FreshStart - Cross Browser Session Manager
Search Box
YouTube Video Downloader
Send from Gmail
FlashBlock
Auto Bit.ly

Applescripting Language for Chrome....
tell application "Google Chrome"
tell application "System Events"
tell application process "Google Chrome"
set PageURL to value of text field 1 of tool bar 1 of window 1
end tell
(for an example of a finished script, see mail_bitly_and_title.scpt.)

guess I am finished complaining...

computer help

you know you are back in SF when...

your dog wants to wear a hoody:

&
produce costs less than rent:

semen & HIV

HIV-1 Populations in Semen Arise through Multiple Mechanisms
PLoS Pathogens

Maybe I am easily impressed, but this finding seems amazing to me.
•The types and distribution of HIV genotypes found in an individual's semen can differ significantly from those found in his blood.
•The immune system related proteins found in semen indicate that relative to blood, semen may be particularly conducive to viral replication.
__________________________________________

Abstract
HIV-1 is present in anatomical compartments and bodily fluids. Most transmissions occur through sexual acts, making virus in semen the proximal source in male donors. We find three distinct relationships in comparing viral RNA populations between blood and semen in men with chronic HIV-1 infection, and we propose that the viral populations in semen arise by multiple mechanisms including: direct import of virus, oligoclonal amplification within the seminal tract, or compartmentalization. In addition, we find significant enrichment of six out of nineteen cytokines and chemokines in semen of both HIV-infected and uninfected men, and another seven further enriched in infected individuals. The enrichment of cytokines involved in innate immunity in the seminal tract, complemented with chemokines in infected men, creates an environment conducive to T cell activation and viral replication. These studies define different relationships between virus in blood and semen that can significantly alter the composition of the viral population at the source that is most proximal to the transmitted virus.

Anderson JA, Ping L-H, Dibben O, Jabara CB, Arney L, et al. (2010) HIV-1 Populations in Semen Arise through Multiple Mechanisms. PLoS Pathog 6(8).

HIV disclosure charges

These cases seem to almost always involve male defendants. This week, female defendants in Germany and Michigan.

German Pop Singer on Trial for Concealing H.I.V. Status From Sexual Partners


HIV positive woman pleads no contest, gets 11 months in failure to disclose case
(Michigan Messenger)

A.8396 & S.8227

Say what you will about David Paterson, these laws represent some triumph of rationality and scientific evidence over bullshit.

A8396A
An act to amend the penal law, in relation to hypodermic syringes
•This bill would add language to the penal law to make it explicit that a person is not criminally liable for possessing syringes and drug residue in or on syringes that the person has a right to possess based on his or her participation in the Public Health Law's Syringe Exchange Program (SEP) or Expanded Syringe Access Program (ESAP).

SUMMARY OF PROVISIONS:
Section 1 of the bill amends Penal Law 220.03, the misdemeanor offense of Criminal Possession of a Controlled Substance in the Seventh Degree, to provide that a person does not commit this crime when he or she possesses only a residual amount of a controlled substance that is in or on a syringe that he or she possesses pursuant to a needle exchange program set forth in Public Health Law 3381.

Section 2 of the bill would add similar language to Penal Law 220.45, to make it explicit that a person does not criminally possess a hypo dermic instrument when he or she possesses a hypodermic needle or syringe pursuant to Public Health Law 3381. ....

S8227
An act to amend the public health law, in relation to HIV testing
•This bill: (1) revises the informed consent requirements associated with HIV/AIDS testing, while ensuring that adequate patient protections are maintained; (2) tailors counseling information based on HIV test results; (3) updates current testing requirements to reflect medical advances; (4) and facilitates authorization for testing in the case of certain occupational exposures to HIV infection.

SUMMARY OF PROVISIONS:
Section 1 of this bill amends Public Health Law (PHL) 2781 to authorize HIV related testing to be part of a signed general consent to medical care, or documented oral consent when the test being ordered is a rapid HIV test. Such consent would be durable and remain in effect until it is revoked or expires. Patients will be provided an opportunity to decline HIV testing, and testing will only be done with full patient consent after the patient is provided with pre-test counseling informa tion. In all instances, a physician will be required to provide oral notification to the patient whenever an HIV test is performed and this shall be noted on the patient's medical record. The provisions of this section regarding oral informed consent for a rapid HIV test shall not apply to tests performed in a facility operated under the correction law. ....

KRAUS--Esther Rochelle

obituary here

...

Service
Wednesday, 2pm
Temple Shaaray Tefila
250 East 79th Street

Harm Reduction News: the Vienna Declaration & US Federal Funding

The Vienna Declaration
•The criminalisation of illicit drug users is fuelling the HIV epidemic and has resulted in overwhelmingly negative health and social consequences. A full policy reorientation is needed.•


Sensible Rules, Soon
....State and local health officials are eager for the new rules so they can move forward and are pressing the Obama administration to avoid placing unnecessary restrictions on already proven programs. They are especially worried about how the new rules will interpret a provision of the statute that gives local police departments some say in where needle-exchange programs can be located. It is important to protect the interests of local residents and businesses, but forcing exchange sites to the far edges of a city or town would utterly defeat their purpose. ....

my thoughts exactly

hiking snugget! Mt Burdell version

it's not the tar; it's the fentanyl, stupid. (or, another AP asshat)

The AP misses the boat, again.
What they describe is, in fact, impossible. They are describing the effects of fentanyl, not heroin. Trust me, addicts would be a lot more excited about black tar heroin if the purity was ever 90%.Heroin does not magically disappear in post-mortem toxicology tests. Fentanyl, on the other hand, requires a specific and often excluded test.
Try again, fools.

AP IMPACT
Deadly, ultra-pure heroin arrives in US
WINFIELD, Mo. — Mexican drug smugglers are increasingly peddling a form of ultra-potent heroin that sells for as little as $10 a bag and is so pure it can kill unsuspecting users instantly, sometimes before they even remove the syringe from their veins. ....

so all of the delicious beer I have tried recently, not just a coincidence?

Heads Up
Tastings With Craft Beers
By Eric Smillie
YOU could be forgiven a bit of indecision when ordering a drink at Beer Revolution in Oakland, Calif. While its coolers glisten with bottles of the world’s choice beers, the bar offers a list of exquisite and rare brews that changes daily — it could take an enthusiast months (or a visit to a potentially far-flung brewery) to catch some of them again.
Painted a deep red appropriate to its name, Beer Revolution (464 Third Street; 510-452-2337; beer-revolution.com), which opened earlier this year, is the latest in a growing number of tasting bars in northern California and Oregon that combine a hyperactive tap list with an exhaustive selection of bottled craft beers that patrons can sample in-house or take away. “There’s a huge craft brewing movement — every month there’s a new small craft brewery opening,” said Rebecca Boyles, a co-owner of the shop with her husband, Mark Martone, who is known as Fraggle. “There’s literally a beer revolution going on,” Mr. Martone said ...

world hepatitis day is May 19th

read more here and here

ccfay: I miss you a lot.

junky's christmas (or, more scary heroin art I cannot believe I only just discovered)

yup, a claymation film about heroin. A William Burroughs story in claymation, narrated by William Burroughs and produced by Francis Ford Coppola. (IMDB)
How had I not seen this?

where has this been my whole life? (or google image-search life, anyway.)

The Drug-Takers
"Karen, a drug addict w. nylon stocking around her arm to make vein pop out as she uses hypodermic needle on an eyedropper which addicts call a "spike" to shoot up w. heroin."
Location: New York, NY, US
Date taken: February 1965
Photographer: Bill Eppridge

dork-a-palooza: art and software

Nathan Sawaya, Lego Sculptor




software
Even as lifehacker struggles for relevance, (can someone explain advantage of calibre over stanza?) they offer the occasional gem.
So far, cloudapp seems quite handy, especially for quickly sharing screenshots and the like.
via

Last but not least, even though Chrome for mac still needs much improvement, its full screen mode looks great and proves very useful for viewing maps and book previews.

an uplifting article and an encouraging article

the times runs an almost identical article every few months, but I love it nonetheless:
For the Battle-Scarred, Comfort at Leash’s End
By Janie Lorber
WASHINGTON — Just weeks after Chris Goehner, 25, an Iraq war veteran, got a dog, he was able to cut in half the dose of anxiety and sleep medications he took for post-traumatic stress disorder. The night terrors and suicidal thoughts that kept him awake for days on end ceased.
Aaron Ellis, 29, another Iraq veteran with the stress disorder, scrapped his medications entirely soon after getting a dog — and set foot in a grocery store for the first time in three years.
The dogs to whom they credit their improved health are not just pets. Rather, they are psychiatric service dogs specially trained to help traumatized veterans leave the battlefield behind as they reintegrate into society....
....Under a bill written by Senator Al Franken, Democrat of Minnesota, veterans with P.T.S.D. will get service dogs as part of a pilot program run by the Department of Veterans Affairs. Training a psychiatric service dog and pairing it with a client costs more than $20,000. The government already helps provide dogs to soldiers who lost their sight or were severely wounded in combat, but had never considered placing dogs for emotional damage....
....But when Gloria Gilbert Stoga, who runs Puppies Behind Bars, received an application from Maj. James Becker, she decided, with support from his doctors, to take a chance on a veteran who had just left inpatient care.
Major Becker, 45, suffered two severe brain injuries in separate explosions, earning two Purple Hearts in his three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. When he came home last winter, his 24-year-old daughter, also an Iraq veteran, was being treated for leukemia.
In Major Becker’s mind, home started to resemble Afghanistan’s Helmand Province. His P.T.S.D. symptoms worsened, and a suicide attempt in July landed him in San Diego Naval Medical Center for seven months. A few weeks after leaving the San Diego hospital, Major Becker flew to New York to collect his dog, Annie, and participate in a two-week training session with Puppies Behind Bars. Still, he said he spent a lot of time alone in his room “because it’s easier to deal with four walls than it is to come out and deal with crowds.”
But within days, Annie was beginning to pull him out of his shell. “She helps me meet people,” he said, describing how people are attracted to the dog.
He added, “I like to think it’s going to get better.
[I had to make sure to include the Al Franken and Puppies behind Bars details, in case your heart requires more than vets' therapy dogs to melt completely.]


(my) City Endorses New Policy for Treatment of H.I.V.
By Sabin Russell
In a major shift of H.I.V. treatment policy, San Francisco public health doctors have begun to advise patients to start taking antiviral medicines as soon as they are found to be infected, rather than waiting — sometimes years — for signs that their immune systems have started to fail.
The new, controversial city guidelines, to be announced next week by the Department of Public Health, may be the most forceful anywhere in their endorsement of early treatment against H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS. ....
Dr. Katz said that despite cuts in health budgets, a policy to add to the number of H.I.V. patients taking expensive drugs made economic sense. “H.I.V. medications have been continually proven to be cost effective,” he said, “and in this case, it is also the right thing to do.”....

I love the annual peep show!

you know you are nutty when...

another possibility in my quest for convenient ways to send text messages from my computer

I think I am pretty hooked on google voice for computer texting. I am nonetheless pleased to see that other options have improved. Google talk in gmail has had sms capability for a while, but since it incorporates all of the messiness of google contacts, I never liked it very much. The newer version works more simply; you have the option of entering the number you want to text without having dig through hundreds of gmail contacts.

things I hope are fake include...

charging the drug buddy: this increasingly popular approach cannot possibly help

if you use drugs with someone who overdoses, you get charged with homicide or manslaughter. The 112 government bodies who failed to keep drugs out of the country, to make drug treatment a viable option, or make naloxone readily available?

Rock County teen sentenced in overdose death
A 14-year-old Edgerton girl accused in the drug overdose death of a 13-year-old boy has been sentenced to state custody for the next five years. ....

Man goes to prison in girlfriend's fatal overdose
By Christy Gutowski
....Brett M. Johnson was sentenced to four years in prison for supplying his girlfriend, Jill Przespolewski, with heroin last year in his grandmother's home on the 900 block of Columbia Court in Carol Stream.
Johnson called 911 at 7 a.m. March 25, 2009, after he awoke and found the 33-year-old Clarendon Hills woman unresponsive. Police said Johnson admitted repeatedly driving into Chicago to buy heroin and crack cocaine for them during a two- to three-day binge. He said his girlfriend only snorted heroin when with him. ....

foolish fourteen year olds...

may be the ones to convince mainstream America that laws require nuance.
Your half-naked teenager may help illuminate the drastically disparate realities underneath superficially similar acts.

Rethinking Sex Offender Laws for Youth Texting
By Tamar Lewin
....In most states, teenagers who send or receive sexually explicit photographs by cellphone or computer — known as “sexting” — have risked felony child pornography charges and being listed on a sex offender registry for decades to come.
But there is growing consensus among lawyers and legislators that the child pornography laws are too blunt an instrument to deal with an adolescent cyberculture in which all kinds of sexual pictures circulate on sites like MySpace and Facebook.
Last year, Nebraska, Utah and Vermont changed their laws to reduce penalties for teenagers who engage in such activities, and this year, according to the National Council on State Legislatures, 14 more states are considering legislation that would treat young people who engage in sexting differently from adult pornographers and sexual predators.....

Virginia, Oklahoma, Mississippi.... I give up.

Yeah, my blue state, elitist, snobby butt is staying put.

Oklahoma Senate passes amendment to opt out of federal hate crimes protections
....State Sen. Steve Russell, R-Oklahoma City, said the newly passed Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which extends hate crimes law protections to include actual or perceived gender, sexual orientation, gender identity and disability, oversteps the bounds of the federal government and hinders free speech and religious freedom. ....
.....“The law is very vague to begin with,” Russell said. “Sexual orientation is a very vague word that could be extended to extremes like necrophilia.” read the rest of the article here

Miss. prom canceled after lesbian's date request
JACKSON, Miss. — A Mississippi county school board announced Wednesday it would cancel its upcoming prom after a gay student petitioned to bring a same-sex date to the event.
"Due to the distractions to the educational process caused by recent events, the Itawamba County School District has decided to not host a prom at Itawamba Agricultural High School this year," school board members said in a statement. ....

more reasons I still love John Kerry and will never understand what the hell goes on in Virginia...

Outdated, unnecessary ban on blood donations should be lifted
by John Kerry

Cuccinelli asks colleges to rescind policies protecting gay state employees
By Rosalind S. Helderman
 

catholic needle exchange

Their reasoning seems pretty nutty, but I will take it.
Albany, N.Y., diocese defends needle exchange; some Catholic scholars disagree
By Daniel Burke
In launching a needle-exchange program recently, the Catholic Diocese of Albany, N.Y., said the decision came down to choosing the lesser evil. Illegal drug use is bad, but the spread of deadly diseases is worse.
The medical evidence is clear, the diocese said when it began Project Safe Point in two Upstate New York locations through the local branch of Catholic Charities. Public health studies document that exchanging used syringes for new ones can reduce the spread of blood-borne diseases such as AIDS and even lead drug abusers to treatment and recovery. ....
 

Just amazing.

This show was just unbeliveable.

I love POS.

Love him.

Grieves and Dessa,

definitely check them out.

wow.

hep C & detachable needles

this is from a press-release and conference abstract. If these findings withstand repeat testing & peer-review, this is huge-
Certain Syringes More Likely To Spread Hepatitis C Virus Among Drug Users
•...This is believed to be the first study establishing the survival of HCV in contaminated syringes and the duration of potential infectiousness. HCV is transmitted through blood-to-blood contact. There is currently no vaccine against HCV, and treatments are problematic because of limited efficacy, high cost and side effects. Untreated, HCV can cause severe liver disease and even death. HCV infection from people sharing contaminated syringes is one of the most common and predictable consequences of injection drug use.

The Yale team simulated the most common scenarios of injection drug use in order to measure the longevity of the residual virus-blood mixture left in syringes after injection. After loading blood spiked with HCV into various syringes and depressing their plungers, researchers tested the residual blood for the presence of infective HCV immediately and after storage for up nine weeks.

They observed a prolonged survival of HCV infection at all storage temperatures, with viable amounts measured even at nine weeks in tuberculin syringes that have detachable needles. They observed far less viable HCV in insulin syringes with attached needles.

“This tells us that syringes with detachable needles are the most dangerous in terms of potential HCV infection, because they are far more likely to transmit a surviving virus,” said lead author Elijah Paintsil, M.D., assistant professor of pediatrics and pharmacology at Yale School of Medicine.•

race & the criminal justice system: NYPD follow-up & how the Census counts prisoners

Urban, Rural Areas Battle For Census Prison Populace
by David Sommerstein
An urban-versus-rural battle is brewing over the census because prison inmates are counted as residents of the prisons where they are locked up. That inflates the population of the mostly white, rural towns that have the prisons.
Higher population means more political representation — and often more money for schools, road crews and other services. Activists say the counting unfairly shifts political and economic power away from the poor city neighborhoods most inmates came from....


& follow-up to this post:
glad to see that the NYPD has improved not one bit under Bloomberg

links to the original reports from the Center for Constitutional Rights
CCR's Report on Racial Disparity in NYPD Stops-and-Frisks(pdf)
CCR's NYPD Data Used in Report (MS Excel spreadsheet)

glad to see that the NYPD has improved not one bit under Bloomberg

Jim Crow Policing
By Bob Herbert
....An overwhelming 84 percent of the stops in the first three-quarters of 2009 were of black or Hispanic New Yorkers. It is incredible how few of the stops yielded any law enforcement benefit. Contraband, which usually means drugs, was found in only 1.6 percent of the stops of black New Yorkers. For Hispanics, it was just 1.5 percent. For whites, who are stopped far less frequently, contraband was found 2.2 percent of the time.
The percentages of stops that yielded weapons were even smaller. Weapons were found on just 1.1 percent of the blacks stopped, 1.4 percent of the Hispanics, and 1.7 percent of the whites. Only about 6 percent of stops result in an arrest for any reason.
Rather than a legitimate crime-fighting tool, these stops are a despicable, racially oriented tool of harassment. And the police are using it at the increasingly enthusiastic direction of Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly. ....

Thursday night! Benefit for the CA Emergency Supply Fund

SFmoma

so many teases. A whole room devoted to Gerhard Richter. The Fishers own half of his work. I expected mind blowing. Not so much. I still love him. Of three Richard Serra pieces,
one great one and two unremarkables.
Enough complaining. Even though I had already seen all of the Diane Arbus photos in the exhibit, they are still amazing. Even though I only saw a few Robert Bechtle's, I loved being reminded of how much I like him and how well he portrays San Francisco.
Some of the video installations floored me as well:
Pipilotti Rist, I'm Not The Girl Who Misses Much
Bruce Conner, Three Screen Ray

prison AIDS walk

This is amazing:

Housing Works has long provided housing and services to help formerly incarcerated people get their lives on track. Now, through a federal government grant, Housing Works has implemented an innovative new program that sets people up with care before they get out of prison. The Housing Works program targets HIV-positive and high risk minority ex-offenders moving to New York City. The program has just begun in September, and seven people have already been connected with care and treatment at Housing Works.
“I always tell people that planning for re-entry starts the day you’re locked up,” said Ray Rios, Housing Works central intake/outreach program director.
And the good will goes both ways.
The prisoners at Otisville Correctional Facility held an AIDSWalk on World AIDS Day (December 1) where one-quarter of the prison participated in the walk. They raised $240 for Housing Works. The inmates joked that they wish they could have given $240,000; they all make less than 25 cents a day.
Housing Works

free NYC - Irving Penn at MOMA

I love Irving Penn (and really wish he was not always described as a fashion photographer - he was infinitely more.) Ten or so of his photographs are on display in the MOMA lobby. They are free to see and well worth it.

If you do have the time and money for a full visit, the best Gabriel Orozco is the easiest to miss; it is in the stairwell with exhibit computers.