In July, various news outlets began reporting on a particularly outrageous order that was enacted by a Tennessee Judge. According to the Washington Post, “[u]nder a standing order issued by General Sessions Judge Sam Benningfield, inmates in White County, Tenn., can receive 30 days credit for the...
The Baltimore Police Department, which has come under fire for a number of things in recent years, is once again making headlines because of the alleged conduct of some of its officers. The public defenders office has stated that the body camera video of several Baltimore police officers show th...
A new bill, recently approved by the Oregon state legislature, will reduce criminal penalties for first-time offenders who are found in possession of certain drugs including heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, and others. Now, less jail time and smaller fines will be imposed on those convicted of p...
No family is immune to the epidemic of opioid abuse. Earlier this month, Ohio Lieutenant Governor Mary Taylor revealed her two sons, both in their 20s, were battling drug addiction. She came forward with the information a day after her state's attorney general filed a lawsuit against five manufac...
Although driving while drugging is illegal in every state in the nation, measuring the level of impairment caused by drug use is a complicated endeavor. Unlike the routine field testing tactics practiced for alcohol intoxication during a stop, law enforcement agencies and researchers have yet to ...
For awhile now, Seattle has been gearing up to open two safe drug injection sites in King County. If the proposal is passed, the sites are projected to provide around-the-clock supervision to drug abusers who come to the areas in the county to smoke or inject illegal substances in a safe place. S...
Law enforcement officers are expected to adhere to the laws that they enforce on others. But as citizens of society have seen time and time again, officers have been exposed for not being law abiding citizens themselves. Although some may perceive police officers as people with a high moral stand...
Drug overdose death rates in the United States have soared within the last decade, deeming the chronic consumption of drugs the leading cause of injury-related death in the nation. Solely in Washington, 1,094 people died from overdoses in 2015, transcending the number of deaths in prior years by ...
A woman from Louisiana credits a false positive on a field drug test for ruining her life. Due to this traumatizing experience, she has decided to sue the City of Houston, Harris County, a former district attorney and two police officers for $2.5 million. In 2010, Amy Albritton and her boyfriend...
A Massachusetts crime drug lab scandal could cause the dismissal of as many as 23,000 drug convictions in the state. There has been no other in drug lab incident in the history that has impacted so many people on such a grand scale. This month, the five-year court debacle is finally coming to an ...
The burden of drug addiction is one that is incredibly difficult for anyone to bear. Many people see the grasp of addiction for what it really is, an ailment that must be remedied through treatment and rehabilitation. But with 30 years of failing drug policy and the government's take on substance...
Authorities in Washington issued a no-bail arrest warrant earlier this month for a man wanted in connection with the May 2016 homicide of a reputed drug dealer. The 32-year-old suspect and the victim, 29, were having dinner together in a Kirkland home about 20 minutes northeast of Seattle when, ...
On December 12, Nika Larsen, former employee of an Oregon State Police crime lab, was sentenced to three years in prison and 250 hours of subsequent community service after being convicted of stealing hundreds of prescription pills and controlled substances that had been submitted as evidence to ...
On December 2nd, nurses and doctors staged a protest called a “die-in” at Seattle City Hall to show their support for the initiation of safe injection sites in Seattle, places where people with drug addictions could ingest drugs under supervised medical care. The medical professionals were all pa...
Police depend on drug kits to determine the presence of controlled substances in the field. Unfortunately, these tests do not always perform accurately. Utah couple Wendell Harvey and wife Gale Griffin experienced this firsthand when they were imprisoned for two months in an Arkansas jail for all...
Recently in the US we have experienced a very steady volume of drug overdose deaths, most of which relate to opioids. Opioids are found in the form of the illicit drug heroin, which is typically administered intravenously, and also in pain medications that are prescribed by a physician such as ox...
A former prison inmate was arrested this month, suspected of mailing postcards and letters soaked in methamphetamine to the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla. Initially the man was arrested for refusing to take a drug test as a condition of his parole. A search of his home turned up t...
A member of a Canadian drug-smuggling ring that used leased helicopters and snowmobiles to bring marijuana, ecstasy and cocaine into the United States, was sentenced this month in U.S. District Court in Seattle. The man pleaded guilty last December after fighting extradition for years in the smu...
The U.S. Supreme Court recently decided the case of Foster v. Chatman. The case dealt with whether or not prosecutors in Georgia used their peremptory strikes in a racially motivated way when removed four black prospective jurors during jury selection in Timothy Foster's murder trial. In 1986, F...
Despite a huge defeat in last November's last election, the movement to legalize recreational marijuana in Ohio took a huge step forward on May 25, when the state senate passed a bill that would legalize the drug for medicinal purposes. The bill is set to go to the state's house of representative...
In 2012, Colorado – along with our home state of Washington – became one of the first two states to legalize recreational marijuana. The legalization, however, was not for everyone: Only adults were allowed to legally smoke marijuana in the state. For young adults under the age of 21, smoking pot...
One of the aspects of Washington's medical marijuana law that raises complications with law enforcement is the notion of caregivers. Because some of the qualified patients who need medical marijuana the most are unable to cultivate it for their own use, they need people who can do it for them. By...
By passing Initiative 502 back in 2012, Washington became one of the few states in the U.S. to legalize marijuana for recreational use. In fact, we were one of the first states in the country to pass a legalization law. However, the passage of Initiative 502 does not mean that there are no more r...
One of the most confusing areas of the law in the United States today is marijuana law. Out of the 50 states and the District of Columbia, there are a handful of different approaches, ranging all the way from outright illegality to it being completely legal, even for recreational purposes. In bet...
The law in Washington that deals with drug crimes is the Uniform Controlled Substance Act. Violating this law is known as a VUCSA crime, and carries significant criminal penalties, from steep fines to jail time to difficulties and restrictions after all of the criminal sanctions have ended. The ...
