An estimated 60 percent of AIDS cases in women are attributed to dirty needles and syringes. A recent U.S. Supreme Court decision probably will spur more litigation in the drug war, as prisoners use the ruling to appeal unusually harsh sentences. The court ruled that any factual determination used to increase a sentence will have to be made by a jury, not a judge. While a judge can use a standard of the preponderance of the evidence in sentencing, a jury must decide beyond a reasonable doubt, says Graham Boyd, director of the Drug Policy Litigation Project of the American Civil Liberties Union. That's just one example of the civil rights casualties of a war in which paramilitary police raid people's homes and authorities seize their assets without due process, flying in the face of the Fourth and Fifth amendments.
Drug policies affect millions of people who have family members behind bars.
Some of them will be at the shadow conventions. They will put names and faces on this whole failed drug war effort. Many of them are likely to be black. While African Americans constitute 13 percent of the illegal drug users, they account for 74 percent of those sentenced for drug offenses. Convicted felons lose their right to vote, a backdoor way of reinstituting Jim Crow laws.