As in any other playoff, candidate rhetoric let loose during the U.S. presidential race can be tough. We’ve held a front row seat to the 2012 showdown for over a year, with tensions still rising as the general election looms nearer. Some of the barbs launched along the campaign trail have been laughable: Newt Gingrich’s television ad incriminating Mitt Romney for his ability to speak French comes to mind. Others are not. The dialogue surrounding U.S. poverty and inequality, two issues that are hotter than ever during a deep recession that the nation has shown incapable of simply shaking off [...]
Drugs
Brewers exploit American Indians
OPINION: Anheuser-Busch and other brewers pour hundreds of thousands of gallons of alcohol into liquor stores just outside South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, where alcohol sales are illegal. The companies hope to entice Pine Ridge residents to consume the alcohol illicitly; their policies fuel alcoholism, domestic violence, crime, and suicide in the reservations... »
New law cuts sentences for inmates imprisoned for crack crimes
The U.S. Sentencing Commission has decided that a new law that brings penalties for crack cocaine possession into line with those for possession of powdered cocaine should apply to the roughly 12,000 federal inmates imprisoned on crack-related charges. The harsher crack penalties – instituted in the 1980s – have been criticized as racially discriminatory... »
Florida HIV victims face cuts in lifesaving drug programs
Proposed cuts in Florida programs would make it very difficult for HIV-positive patients earning more than $21,780 a year to receive government assistance for lifesaving drugs. The income eligibility requirement for an AIDS Drug Assistance Program and other HIV patient services is based on federal poverty guidelines, but insufficient funding may force a shift... »
America’s drug problem is a poverty problem
America’s problem with illegal drugs has less to do with the illicit activity and the substances and more to do with poverty. While enforcement regularly makes sweeps across poorer neighborhoods, the marijuana, ecstasy, and cocaine markets of universities and Wall Street go unregulated. The problem here is that victims of poverty resort to involvement... »