Drug
Policy
Letter
Focuses
on
Women
and
Drugs
4/10/98
The current issue of the Drug Policy Letter, publication of the Drug Policy Foundation, focuses on the topic "Women and Drugs". Articles include "Women and Treatment", by Marsha Rosenbaum, discussing the biases and shortcomings faced by women seeking treatment; "Dorothy Gaines: Guilt by Association", by Rob Stewart, the story of an innocent woman serving a 19-year, 7-month sentence for conspiracy to distribute crack cocaine; "Caught in the Crossfire", by Robin Lloyd, chair of the Drug Policy Committee of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, on the Colombian women's movement opposing aerial fumigation of coca fields and the increasing presence of the Colombian military; "The Price of Principle", statement of Sherry Hearn, a former high school teacher in Chatham County, Georgia who was subjected to persecution after criticizing the school and local police's random, lockdown searches in the schools; an essay by Scott Ehlers on the women's repeal movement, based on a book by Kenneth D. Rose, American Women and the Repeal of Prohibition. "In Their Own Words", by Whitney Taylor, features conversations with members of the Bridgeport Needle Exchange Program's Women's Group, a group of 50 women in various stages of use, recovery and abstinence. Insights shared by members of the group, gained from their real-world experience, verify the claims made by reformers and medical and public health groups that fear of the system drives pregnant women drug users away from the treatment services and prenatal and other health care that they and their children need. "Here in Connecticut," says a woman named Kathy, "if a woman is pregnant and she has a heroin habit and she going into the hospital to have her child, they will take her children away... It is making them go further and further out into the street. They're afraid." "The United Nations & the Taliban", by Karynn Fish, describes the unholy alliance between the United Nations Drug Control Program and the extremist religious group that has seized control of two-thirds of Afghanistan and has institutionalized a system of extreme discrimination against women (see http://drcnet.org/rapid/1997/12-5-1.html#taleban for background). The UNDCP's plan to fund the barbaric Taliban is one of the issues to be protested during the Global Days Against the Drug War this June 6-8 -- see http://www.stopthedrugwar.org/globalcoalition/ for more information and to sign on. To join the Drug Policy Foundation and subscribe to the Drug Policy Letter, send $25 or more for annual membership dues to: DPF, 4455 Connecticut Ave., NW, Suite B-500, Washington, DC 20008, or sign up online at http://www.dpf.org, or write or call (202) 537-5005 for a sample copy.
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