Korean Job Discussion Forums

[World Traveler]

Between 2006 and 2010, domestic cocaine use declined 37 percent, according to the latest National Survey on Drug Use and Health. That's no blip on the screen.

Workplace drug tests proving positive for cocaine went down 65 percent in the same time frame, according to data provided to the government by a major testing firm, Quest Diagnostics Inc.

And while the government-funded 2011 "Monitoring the Future" survey found teens consuming greater amounts of marijuana, cocaine rates plummeted to their lowest levels since the 1980s.

The numbers "should be heralded as basically very good news about cocaine," said R. Gil Kerlikowske, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy.

Use of crack, the smokable rock-crystal form of cocaine, is only a fraction of what it was in the 1980s and 1990s when it devastated inner-city neighborhoods.

Despite some regional and socioeconomic variations, "the crack epidemic, as it was, appears to be over," said Dr. Westley Clark, director of the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment, a part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Survey-finds-cocaine-use-down-sharply-in-U-S-2413684.php

[Stan Rogers]

How much has the population of the U.S. grown in the past 30 years? That might explain a lot of the increase.

[joelove]

The thing to look at is increase in the rate of incarceration.

If you go from 2/1000 to 7/1000 people living in a cell, in 30 years, that's a big jump.

[World Traveler]

More prisons were built to deal with overcrowding. Like I said, the prison population peaked years ago and has been steadily declining since (even as the United States population continues to grow).

[KimchiNinja]

[joelove]

Indeed KimchiNinja. That is quite something. I dunno why I got interested in this the past day or two. It's a pity to see that people's lives are destroyed by stupid laws and policies, like mandatory sentencing for drug use at longer terms, because some men had power and really hated drugs, and could get votes appealing to the fear they helped engender. Maybe the illusion of safety was well marketed. Mostly the poor suffer from this. It's a very punitive and class-based approach, I guess. I don't really know. Not sure why I find it disturbing. I'm not even American! Just a person.

Anyone who defends this is lost. There is no defense for an incarceration rate to double or triple in a matter of decades. It is very corrupt. We know about the privately owned prisons and the incentive to keep them full.

[Steelrails]

[World Traveler]

[World Traveler]

[Ralph Winfield]

[Leon]

[joelove]

I'm sure many have asked if being stricter, just putting people away for longer sentences for drug use/selling is helping anybody. Isn't it mostly poorer people? Do lots of middle class and richer people get put away for their coke/whatever habits? You know what the answer to that is. It's the usual story that people with money have the power. You can convince people that the problem is out of hand, which it is for the addicts, and is merely a serious crime, because we as human beings are a gullible lot, and you can play on our fears, and say things like, "I'll help get rid of this terrible problem by being tougher on crime," to help get yourself elected. It was the self-interest of a few mostly rich white guys that led to a national prison population that is just ridiculous, where you've got a million people living in cells for years for a problem that is treated only as a serious crime, that doesn't seem to address it being also a health and poverty issue. It merely gets it out of the neighborhood, and that's good enough for most people to judge the users/sellers as criminals. Then they can feel better about how their town is safer and cleaner. It needs a different approach.

Certainly it's a complex problem and these are just gut reactions I'm expressing. I don't have the slightest clue how such a major problem could be dealt with effectively.

[joelove]

[World Traveler]

Well if someone got 20 years, it is because they murdered somebody. Murder plus prior criminal conviction. Sometimes drugs (in this case crack) can be the cause of murder. In the early 90's the murder rate was really high. Now it's not.

The rate of new prison admissions has been declining for the last nine years, and now stands at roughly the level of two decades ago, according to data compiled by Keith Humphreys, a Stanford University psychiatrist who studies criminal justice issues.

The root cause of these welcome trends is another welcome trend: the plunging crime rate of the last two decades. Less crime leads to declining incarceration in two ways. First, and most obvious, there are fewer law-breakers to lock up. Second, safer streets reduce the public’s demand for tough “law and order” policies – like the stiff mandatory minimum sentences that helped drive the U.S. rate of incarceration up in the 80s and 90s.

Yes, declining incarceration also reflects sentencing reforms and other policy changes at the state and local level. But those changes would not be occurring unless lower crime had eased fears about public safety to the point where it was politically possible to discuss them in the first place.

According to data from the General Social Survey compiled by Professor Mark Ramirez of Arizona State University, the percentage of Americans who believe criminals are not punished “harshly enough” declined from 85 percent in 1994 to 62 percent by 2012.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2014/02/21/america-gets-out-of-jail/

[World Traveler]

If you are interested in knowing how long people were being sent away for slinging crack in the early 90s, do some research on the prior arrests of now famous rappers.

50 Cent: