“Don’t shake the inmates’ hands,” said the beefy prison guard, who towered at least a foot over my head. “The men won’t wash their hands for a week and they’ll use them to masturbate. I don’t want to be cleaning jizz off the walls.”

I glanced at the floor. Dr. Kuhns, the soft-spoken psychologist standing next to me, told the officer I had volunteered to teach a journaling class to Death Row prisoners.

The guard curled his lip, but waved us into an adjacent classroom. “Can’t believe I have to put extra guys on the shift for this shit,” he grumbled.

“Sorry about him,” whispered Dr. Kuhns when we were out of earshot. “We just started offering classes to Death Row a few weeks ago. Some staff is supportive, but others…” He shrugged.

“It’s okay,” I replied as I looked around the room. A whiteboard hung on a concrete wall and a few chairs stood in a corner. Dr. Kuhns helped me arrange the chairs in a circle. 

“I’ll stick around to help with introductions,” he said. 

I nodded. Tension clawed at me. During our walk to the classroom, heavy automatic doors had interrupted corridor after endless corridor. Operated by an unseen controller, the doors opened without warning and shut behind us with ominous clangs. Lines of men in jumpsuits had trudged past. They glanced at us, hunched and hollow-eyed like coal miners wasted from lack of sun. But the air damned the place. Basement air. Too still. Too stale. 

As we sat to await the men, nervousness skittered through me like tiny spiders. Soon men convicted of murder would fill the room. How would they react to a woman among them? Adding to my general unease, Dr. Kuhns had asked me to keep these meetings a secret. 

“The prison doesn’t want the public to know about these classes,” he had explained. With a sad smile, he added, “People want us to punish these men, not teach them.”

After several minutes, a line of men in blood-red jumpsuits shuffled into the classroom. I jumped up and offered my hand (damn the guard), which some took, though few smiled in return. The correctional officer stayed in the corridor. The men sat. I breathed. 

“Welcome to journaling class,” I said. “My name is Tessie. I want to help you share your stories.”

I asked the men their names and why they wanted to write. As they went around the room, I tried to remember their names. Most looked at the floor when speaking.

Several men said they had little schooling and wanted to improve their writing. Others wanted to write stories. Some admitted signing up out of boredom or curiosity.

After introductions, Dr. Kuhns passed out journals. The men hunched over their notebooks and filled the room with the soft sound of scribbling.

The two dozen participants represented many ages and races, though the majority were black. Before my first day of class, Dr. Kuhns had sent me a class roster. I had used it to research their crimes. I assumed only the most heinous murders earned a death sentence—those involving children, rape, torture, or serial killing. After all, many people kill, but few are executed for it.

To my surprise, I discovered that few men in my class were convicted of grisly murders. Drug dealer skirmishes or robberies gone wrong made up most of their crimes. In fact, according to trial transcripts, two of my class participants had killed no one. They had taken part in crimes during which a co-defendant murdered the victim. In both cases the actual murderer did not get the death penalty.

After 10 minutes, everyone put down their pencils.

“The day I watched that bird escape, not once did I consider what the ordeal must have been like for it. I didn’t consider how afraid it must have been swallowed up in the darkness.”

“Who wants to share what they wrote?” I asked. 

Silence.

“Come on,” I coaxed. “Anyone?”

A round-faced black man raised his hand. 

“Go ahead, Chanton,” I said, pleased to remember his name. Chanton began reading with a cadence revealing a long life in the streets. He had written a scene from his childhood about trapping a bird.

“The day I watched that bird escape, not once did I consider what the ordeal must have been like for it,” he read. “I didn’t consider how afraid it must have been swallowed up in the darkness. The loneliness and confusion it must have felt… Would its family miss it? Were there young that depended on its safe return for survival? Today, on Death Row, I am that bird. Yet here, there are no cracks to breach, no slits from which to escape, and the only air to breathe holds the aroma of death.” 

Chanton (Terry Robinson)

His story earned appreciative claps and encouragement from his classmates. Other men volunteered to read. Some wrote simple things such as their dislike of prison food, or “chow.”  Others dug deep. A tall black man with graying dreadlocks named Paul Brown shared an essay about his granddaughter’s visit. It pained him that thick Plexiglas walls separated them. Another wrote of loneliness. None of his family members wrote to him. Each recitation met claps and murmurs of support. By the end of class, most people were eager to share. 

I returned to teach every two weeks. Sometimes a correctional officer sat in the corner, but most patrolled the corridor, leaving me alone with the men. I wasn’t afraid. My students never gave me a reason to fear them. 

Most of the classes followed a similar format. The students voted on writing prompts and read their essays aloud, offering each other feedback. They often wrote of yearning for freedom and family. Many expressed regret at not seeing their children and grandchildren grow up.

During one exercise, the men selected the prompt “women.” I braced myself, expecting an onslaught of porn-inspired fantasies. But when we read their pieces, not one person had written about sex. Most wrote tributes to the strong mothers, grandmothers, aunts and sisters who had raised them. Others wrote tender stories of first kisses and grade-school crushes. 

After a few weeks, Dr. Kuhns suggested we divide into two groups for an hour each. In this intimate setting, I got a closer look at each writer. Alim, a large biracial man of Islamic faith, had a booming voice perfect for radio. He injected dynamics and theatricality into his readings, which were fraught with remorse. Alim was the only person who admitted to me he had committed murder. No one else mentioned guilt or innocence. I never asked. 

Chanton, who had shared his story of the escaped bird, laughed often and radiated warmth into the bland, cement room. He was humble, a rare trait in a place where survival can depend on dominance. His soft encouragement became a staple feature of our classroom.

I encouraged him to open more. Though reserved, he harbored deep ambitions to defy prison stereotypes.

Lyle, a tall, gangly white man, spoke little and smiled even less. But when he did speak, his words revealed raw intelligence that silenced the room. He had published a memoir on his life leading up to the death sentence, but his pieces lacked emotion. I encouraged him to open more. Though reserved, he harbored deep ambitions to defy prison stereotypes.

Lyle May

Most of the men suffered from mental illness, anxiety or depression. Several absented class often because they were too despondent to leave bed. Some drifted into the classroom like zombies, then came alive, massaged awake by shared stories. They ducked their heads when reading, nodded at constructive criticism, and encouraged each other. I critiqued their pieces with care because their tough exteriors hid sensitivity.

Listening to their stories over several months, I learned that most writers had followed similar paths to prison. They grew up in poor neighborhoods and witnessed violence as young as three years old. In environments where compassion implied weakness, they earned credibility by acting tough and mean. As adolescents, they developed trip-wire response to disrespect and loyalty to crew even if it meant taking a life or losing their own.

“I was a kid. I was conflicted. My spirit is gentle, yet I had to compete and contend with killers.” 

Paul Brown, the man with dreadlocks, wrote: “My stepdad left when I was 9, telling me I was the man of the house. It was a brutal environment. People had to know they couldn’t fuck with me. That’s where my focus had to be. But I didn’t do a good job. I was not a good big brother or ‘man of the house.’ I was afraid. I was a kid. I was conflicted. My spirit is gentle, yet I had to compete and contend with killers.” 

Six months into the journaling program, another North Carolina man received a death sentence. The newspapers described the events leading to his trial in vivid detail. The public cried “off with his head.” I cringed at the crime, but I had spent enough time with convicted men to understand the term “monster” reflects on the accuser more than the accused. Most people, even the rule-breakers, are not dangerous, immoral, or unredeemable. Everyone is broken, but for some, the brokenness is easier to hide.

I wanted to share these insights, but I recalled Dr. Kuhns’ warning about keeping our classes a secret. For weeks I grappled with the dilemma. Then, considering that so few people enter North Carolina’s Death Row, I decided to tell my story. 

In May 2014 I published an editorial in the Raleigh News & Observer. An excerpt read:

I have been meeting twice a month with about 15 men on Death Row and the experience has been both edifying and moving. I don’t see heartless killers, though they might have killed in a moment of heartlessness. I see anger problems, stubbornness, lack of self-control, immaturity and miseducation. I see those qualities in people outside prison, too. I see them in myself sometimes. But in these men I also see pain, regret, a capacity for kindness and self-reflection – and a desire to be seen for what they are: flawed and very human … After spending time with these men and listening to their stories, I don’t claim to know them thoroughly or to fully comprehend why they did what they did. Nor do I defend the crimes of any man on Death Row…But I will defend their humanity because I see it every time I walk through those prison doors. I would challenge those who support the death penalty to spend time getting to know a Death Row inmate on a personal level. In each of these men there are many things worth understanding, worth supporting, and worth saving.

Two weeks later, I received a letter from the prison warden. 

Dear Ms Castillo,

It is in the best interest of all parties concerned that you be dismissed as a Community Volunteer. Therefore; effective immediately, you will not be allowed to enter the facility as a Community Volunteer. I thank you for your service to Central Prison.

Reading the letter, my hands shook. Guilt pooled in my stomach. With my dismissal, my students lost something that broke the relentless monotony of prison life. I had risked something important without asking their permission. 

I appealed the dismissal, and lost, so I wrote to them. The first round of letters received a flurry of responses from Chanton, Lyle, Alim, and Paul. Later I began writing to another Death Row resident named George. The men accepted my apology for the editorial, and we developed a steady correspondence. They wrote of prison, family, books, spirituality, personal growth and coming to terms with their sentences. At times the letters were cheerful. Other times the men seemed half mad from emasculation and grief. 

George Wilkerson

Paul wrote once, “Living in this environment is to experience death in the form of life. There is the anguish of living day-to-day knowing the suffering you have caused and not being able to make amends. Watching your family deteriorate as you drift further apart, not being able to comfort, console or even wipe away the tears, you die a little every day.” 

Lyle, the tall, quiet student, confessed, “Over the years I continue to lean on prayer and try to live my life as it should have been from the beginning. And as I go along discovering all of these wonderful things about life that I can no longer touch, taste, smell, see and feel, I beg God for mercy. I plead with him to give my time here purpose beyond punishment.” 

“How easy would it be for you to tell me the worst thing you have ever done—and then what if you had to wear a uniform or some symbol to let everyone know your sin?”

I imagined Alim’s booming voice as I read his words: “I’m accustomed to being the ‘exhibit’ with my life experiences, thoughts and feelings on display. But rarely is there opportunity for meaningful exchange. It’s like everybody wants to look at the monster, but everybody is afraid to let the monster see them. People on Death Row are vulnerable because they want to be known, they want to be understood and that is usually because people have already seen the worst of who they can be … it is easy for me to tell you about the worst thing I have ever done in my life … I wear a uniform that says it: There is the killer, the one in the red jumpsuit. But how easy would it be for you to tell me the worst thing you have ever done—and then what if you had to wear a uniform or some symbol to let everyone know your sin?”

Alim (Michael J. Braxton)

As years passed, letters piled up. Secrets spilled from the folders where I kept our correspondence. The essays offered a unique window into the minds of men living in the shadow of execution. They challenged stereotypes about people convicted of murder, proving grace and self-reflection can grow in the most unlikely places. 

In 2016 I proposed writing a book to five correspondents: Paul, Alim, Lyle, Chanton and George. Perceptive writers, they hailed from distinct cultural and religious backgrounds. Their stories represented diverse experience. 

The men agreed to co-write a book. Over the years they sent me dozens of essays describing their paths to conviction and the struggle to thrive despite a death sentence. I selected the essays which best reflect the author’s heart and journey and worked with each writer on revisions. 

The book project spanned four years of interpersonal politics and struggle to support friendships across time and distance. Paul Brown withdrew from the book project. Despite setbacks, I felt honored to open each letter, to laugh and to cry and to marvel at the human capacity to survive in the harshest circumstances. 

I believe that little separates people inside Death Row from those outside it. We are all a complex jumble of hopes, dreams, virtues and mistakes. We strive to be better people. We often fail. Being human is learning to rise again—as these men do, despite the odds—to prove we are more than our worst crime.

Excerpted from Crimson Letters: Voices from Death Row. Copyright 2020 by Tessie Castillo. Posted with permission of the publisher. Crimson Letters: Voices from Death Row is a collection of essays written by residents of North Carolina’s Death Row. Each carefully crafted personal essay illuminates the complex stew of choice and circumstance that brought four men to Death Row and the small acts of humanity that keep hope alive for men living in the shadow of death. Now available on Amazon.

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Top photo of San Quentin Prison by Zboralski via Wikimedia Commons/Creative Commons. All other photos courtesy of Tessie Castillo/Black Rose Writing.

The post “Swallowed Up in the Darkness”—The Humanity of People on Death Row appeared first on Filter.

Jonas, who asked that his name be changed, is the co-founder of IDUCARE, the only harm reduction group run exclusively by drug users in the Philippines. In 2015, frustrated by traditional HIV prevention nonprofits that often ignored or shunned people who acquired HIV through drug use, Jonas left his comfortable nonprofit job to do direct harm reduction.

“Drug users were dying of HIV and hepatitis C because they were afraid that if they got treatment, they would have to admit to using drugs and could be targeted by police,” Jonas told Filter in a phone interview.

IDUCARE opened a drop-in center in Cebu City, an urban center of about 1 million in the Central Visayas region of the country. There, people could seek HIV and hepatitis C prevention care and treatment, as well as overdose education. More importantly, said Jonas, it was a place for drug users to feel safe and protected.

He had no idea how much protection they were about to need.

On June 30, 2016, mere months after IDUCARE opened its doors, the Philippines inaugurated a new president, Rodrigo Duterte. The populist politician swept into office on a violent platform of zero tolerance towards drugs.

“Hitler massacred 3 million Jews [sic]. Now there is 3 million, what is it, 3 million drug addicts [in the Philippines],” he said in a Davao City speech. “I’d be happy to slaughter them.”

And slaughter he did. After taking office, Duterte granted law enforcement de facto authorization to perform extrajudicial killings of suspected drug users or sellers. Since then, Philippine police and vigilantes have murdered over 27,000 people, according to the country’s most recent Commission on Human Rights report.

From Cebu City, IDUCARE members watched with disbelief and then alarm as Duterte’s murderous war claimed tens of thousands of their peers.

At first, “I thought he was just saying those things for attention,” admitted Jonas. “I never thought it would go this far.”

Harm reduction work had always been risky in the Philippines. But once the drug war started, the work became deadly.

They have faced harassment from police, confiscation of HIV medication and fear of the nightly killing sprees.

IDUCARE staff began taking security precautions, such as doing outreach in teams and always going home before dark. They have faced harassment from police, confiscation of the HIV treatment medication they distribute, and always, fear of the nightly killing sprees that leave the bodies of suspected drug users sprawled across dark street corners.

But no one has given up the work.

“We are needed now more than ever,” said Jonas. “Most of our clients are our friends. It’s our community.”

A Growing Coalition

IDUCARE isn’t the only organization that has stepped up to challenge the drug war at great personal risk. In late 2017, Cathy Alvarez co-founded StreetLawPH, a group of lawyers pushing for drug policy reform in the Philippines. The group also provides legal support to vulnerable communities.

Prior to co-founding StreetLawPH, Alvarez worked as a human rights lawyer. Speaking with me while we were both visiting Thailand, she said that she was forced to consider a new path not only by the carnage of Duterte’s drug war, but by some surprising reactions from the Philippines human rights community.

“The stigma against people who use drugs is so strong that even within human rights there are people who don’t want to be involved with people who use drugs,” she told Filter. “Some groups will only provide legal assistance to victims’ families in the case of mistaken identity.”

“I don’t know if I could look at myself in the mirror if I don’t do anything about what is happening.”

Alvarez couldn’t turn a blind eye to the drug war. “We can’t just leave things as they are,” she said. “I try to take extra precautions, but I don’t know if I could look at myself in the mirror as a lawyer and human rights worker if I don’t do anything about what is happening.”

StreetLawPH and IDUCARE are among a growing number of organizations in the Philippines working not only to stop the drug war and assist its victims, but to shift the conversation on drugs towards an evidence-based, compassionate, harm reduction approach.

NoBox, a nonprofit based in Quezon City, a large suburb of the capital, Manila, advocates for drug policy reform at the national level. (Some of its team members were previously interviewed by Filter for a short film about their work.)

Executive Director “Ma” Inez Feria says that the killings, which shocked the international community when they began in 2016, are still ongoing, even though media coverage has slowed. However, she told Filter that the sheer horror of the war has also created opportunities for more nuanced discussions on drugs.

“NoBox has been around since 2014 and it was always difficult to engage people in that conversation [on drugs],” said Feria. “Now, more and more people are saying ‘Wait a minute, people are getting killed. This isn’t the way to go. But what do we do?’”

NoBox, StreetLawPH, IDUCARE and other local NGOs, many of which started as a direct response to the drug war, are encouraging these conversations. Feria explained that during community trainings, members of NoBox try to help participants unpack their biases and stereotypes about people who use drugs.

“We create space where people can openly discuss experiences and ask questions,” she said. “We put forth the framework on harm reduction and try to help them understand how to apply it to their own lives…There is hunger to understand and to have answers.”

Even as the killings continue, efforts are underway to advocate for bills aimed at reducing some of the harms. These include reduced sentencing for low-level drug offenses, 911 Good Samaritan laws, and implementation of drug education that is honest and useful. As well as the NGOs, community groups and churches are also working to provide support for people who use drugs and to protect them from the killings.

“If there is one good thing that has come out of all this it is that people have started talking more about drug use and drug policy,” said Alvarez. “We are working with organizations to help increase the voices of people who use drugs in places where decisions are being made. It sounds impossible now, but we are starting to plant those seeds.”

“I think we will soon realize that the drug war didn’t succeed and the other choice is harm reduction.”

Jonas is even more hopeful. Ultimately, “I think the war on drugs will make things better for drug users,” he said. “Before the drug war, no one even knew what harm reduction was. I think we will soon realize that the drug war didn’t succeed and the other choice is harm reduction.”

Troubling Questions

The startling optimism of many harm reductionists in the midst of the bloodiest drug war in history presents food for thought.  

The story of Duterte’s drug war is one of human cruelty. Most articles about it understandably focus on the body count and repetition of the demagogue’s most heinous quotes.

At the same time, many responses to the atrocities are inspiring examples of human courage. Across the island nation, people who use drugs and their allies are putting their lives at risk to do what is right. If Jonas’s rosy prediction comes true, and the drug war catalyzes a national shift towards harm reduction policies, a redemption of sorts could follow—though too late for the victims and their loved ones.

But to me, the situation in the Philippines poses a troubling set of questions. Why do 27,000 people have to die before we can even begin to shift the conversation on drugs? Why do we only see other people after we hurt them?

Is tragedy the only way to spark change?

The story of tragedy as a catalyst for change is repeated over and over in human history. During the 1980s and ‘90s, thousands of people died of HIV/AIDS before the modern harm reduction movement was birthed. In the United States, the overdose crisis has been claiming tens of thousands per year for the past two decades, and the country is only just starting to consider alternatives to drug prohibition.

“Sometimes it takes a negative experience to jar people out of their comfort zones,” said Alvarez. “A crisis makes us ask difficult questions like, ‘Why is this happening and what should we be doing about it?’”

But is tragedy the only way to spark change? If we believe it is not, then how do we cultivate communities strong and kind enough to explore difficult issues before discrimination, oppression and murder take over?

I don’t have the answers. But to me, these are the questions whispered across the graves of every drug-war victim in the Philippines and beyond. 

Photo of a 2016 protest at the Philippines consulate in New York City by VOCAL-NY via Flickr/Creative Commons.

The post The Startling Optimism of Harm Reductionists in the Philippines appeared first on Filter.

It was December 10, 2002—International Human Rights Day. About 50 Thai drug users were gathered to discuss a documentation project detailing the extraordinary levels of human rights abuse endured by people who use drugs in Thailand. For decades they had been hunted by police, forced into compulsory treatment centers, denied access to basic medical care, degraded, marginalized and even tortured.

And yet in that room, a young man, an HIV-positive injection drug user, was insisting: We have rights. We have dignity. We need to act.

The speaker, 37-year-old Paison “Ott” Suwannawong, was the founding chairman of the Thai Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS (TNP+). Ott had collaborated on the documentation project with Karyn Kaplan, an American working for the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission. But he wasn’t content to merely show human rights abuses. He wanted to challenge them. 

“Our friends will die if they don’t get clean needles. We need to start our own program.”

At that time, nearly 50 percent of injection drug users in Thailand had HIV, while hepatitis C rates hovered at 90 percent. Yet the government refused to endorse even basic harm reduction programs like needle exchange.

“Our friends will die if they don’t get clean needles,” Ott (pictured above in 2019) insisted. “We need to start our own program.”

Some people objected: No one in Thai society would support a needle exchange.

“Who fucking cares about society? They don’t care about you,” countered Ott. 

People started to nod. A few spoke up with other ideas to save lives. Slowly, confidence grew. 

“There was a palpable transformation in that room,” recalled Kaplan, now the executive director of Asia Catalyst, to Filter. “The creativity that poured out of that space was unstoppable.”

Ott asked people to join him to launch a national movement.

“We need a project managed by people who use drugs,” he said. “Drug users have to be involved in policy change. We need a system where we can talk openly about our issues.”

People stepped forward. Soon, what had begun as a human rights project gave birth to the Thai Drug Users Network (TDN): the very first user-led activist group in Thailand.

A Deadly Drug War Unleashed

The timing of TDN’s creation was eerily perfect. In February 2003, two months after that first meeting, then-Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra launched a brutal war on Thailand’s drug users.

“We have to be as ruthless with drug dealers as they are to our children,” he declared in a speech in Bangkok. Thaksin authorized police to go after suspected drug users and sellers and take “an eye for an eye.”

Police entered Yai Sak’s home and sprayed bullets at everyone in the room, including his two sisters. No one survived.

Within three months, law enforcement had murdered 2,800 people. In a situation reminiscent of Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte’s present-day murderous drug war, Thaksin enjoyed up to 90 percent public support for his approach.

One victim of the extrajudicial killings was 22-year-old Yai Sak of Chiang Mai. According to his friend Nuttarapong “Tom” Punyodana, whom I interviewed, police entered Yai Sak’s home and sprayed bullets at everyone in the room, including his two sisters. No one survived.

The newly formed TDN scrambled to respond to the killings. Risking their own deaths, drug users organized a “die-in” in front of the Government House and an appeal on Father’s Day—the previous Thai king’s birthday—at the palace.

In April 2003 they held a peaceful protest during a speech by the Thai public health minister at the International Harm Reduction Conference, where they garnered international support. On June 12 that year, they launched a global day of action to draw the world’s attention to the murders. Drug user activist groups in 10 countries around the world held events in front of their respective Thai embassies and the United Nations to demand an end to the killings. 

TDN activists even met with Prime Minister Thaksin himself.

“He didn’t listen to us,” Ott told Filter. “He talked over us. He acted like he knew more and always went back to his own issues.”

After a few months, Thaksin declared his drug war a success. He cited a study showing that self-reported rates of injection drug use in Thailand had plummeted 85 percent.

I spoke with Professor Apinun Aramrattana of Chiang Mai University, one of the leading drug policy researchers in Thailand, about this research. He confirmed that during Thaksin’s drug war, the use and sale of illicit drugs in Thailand declined.  

“Drug suppliers didn’t foresee the announcement of the drug war,” he said. “There is evidence that the smuggling and supply operations reduced remarkably for a time.” 

However, Aramrattana also pointed out research showing that as rates of illicit drug use declined, rates of licit drug use, such as alcohol and benzodiazepines, shot up.  

She and other heroin users started mixing their limited supply with benzodiazepines obtained on the illicit market.

Supawan “Mod” Ngoencharoen, a former injection drug user whom I interviewed in Bangkok, confirmed this account. During Thaksin’s drug war, “drugs became more expensive and harder to get,” she told Filter. So she and other heroin users started mixing their limited supply with benzodiazepines obtained on the illicit market—a high-risk combination that led to more overdoses. 

In addition to becoming more dangerous, once the drug market later recovered, it became flooded with a cheaper, more plentiful supply of drugs than before.  

“The cartels lost the fight in the beginning, but they figured out how to change their tactics,” said Aramrattana. “They found a different way to produce meth and they bombarded the market. The price was reduced by five times.”

Mo’ Money, Mo’ Problems

While Thaksin’s drug war was still raging, members of TDN were busy planning their next moves. 

In April 2003 they partnered with international and local NGOs, including Thai AIDS Treatment Action Group (TTAG), to submit a $1.3 million grant proposal to the Global Fund to establish a network of drug user-led harm reduction centers in Thailand.

The centers would provide harm reduction education, access to clean injecting equipment, linkage to HIV and hepatitis C care, overdose prevention, peer-led outreach and ongoing documentation of harms experienced by drug users. Because Thailand does not officially recognize organizations run by drug users or sex workers, TDN had to invite a registered NGO to be the principal recipient.

The proposal was a long shot. No group had ever secured such a grant with their government actively trying to kill them. But to everyone’s shock and jubilation—and after concerted activism by TTAG, TDN, and international allies like HealthGAP Coalition, who helped advocate to the Global Fund Board—the Global Fund approved the funding.

The project represented the first large-scale harm reduction investment in Thailand, and the team hoped it would lay the groundwork for the government to eventually take over such services. 

“I was so excited when we got the money,” recalled Ott. “I thought, ‘Our friends will not die in the streets anymore.’”

TDN activists struggled to meet the strict, quantifiable grant deliverables imposed. Burnout spread among over-worked outreach workers.

Unfortunately, that happiness was short-lived. With a huge amount of funding to disburse and ambitious deliverables to meet, tensions arose between TDN and the NGO that had agreed to manage the grant over how best to use the money.

Despite their hard work and passion for the cause, TDN activists struggled to meet the strict, quantifiable grant deliverables imposed. Burnout spread among over-worked outreach workers. Tension and petty squabbles arose. Some people who had stopped using illicit drugs began using again. All of them continued to suffer at the hands of the government, through prison, police brutality and coerced treatment. 

“After a year I felt like, ‘This is shit,’” Ott said. “This killed us.”

Rekindling the Flame

Thaksin declared an end to his drug war in December 2003, 10 months after it began. But although widespread and visible extrajudicial killings ended, people who use drugs in Thailand are still under siege.

Under successive prime ministers, long prison sentences and forced drug treatment remain the norm. In 2017 the government approved a “harm reduction” approach to drug policy and agreed to treat drug use as a public health issue. But this proposal is still being batted back and forth between the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Health, with neither wanting responsibility for a stigmatized population.

But Thai drug users haven’t given up. In November 2019, I attended an assembly in Bangkok, the first of five meetings designed to revitalize the activist spirit of Thai people who use drugs. Several of TDN’s founders were there.

“We are having this meeting because we want to build another movement,” said Ott, who was at the assembly. “We want to get drug users excited about organizing. We want to see a new generation.”

I was excited myself—and honored—to witness the birth of a new organization, now called Thai Network of People Who Use Drugs (TNPUD). The group of about 35 people who use drugs began the assembly in high spirits. They laughed and called out jokes to each other as a representative from Ozone Foundation, the NGO financing the meeting, led introductions.

The facilitators did the majority of the talking.

Over the course of the day, participants discussed problems with compulsory treatment centers, “clean” villages where drug users are forcefully removed, marijuana legalization, police corruption, harm reduction, and other issues affecting their lives.

But as the day wore on, much of the initial energy faded. Although the two Ozone Foundation employees who facilitated the meeting repeatedly emphasized that TNPUD would be drug-user led, with Ozone serving only as a consultant, the facilitators did the majority of the talking.

Several participants asked Ozone what the drug user networks should look like, rather than discussing amongst themselves what their role should be. To me, it felt like history repeating itself—another NGO, albeit one with good intentions, attempting to spearhead a movement of people who use drugs. 

Give Drug Users the Reins

The experiences in Thailand echo challenges faced by many drug user-led movements around the world.

Activists who may be excellent at mobilizing and advocacy often lack grant management experience and may have to depend on allies to secure financing. Tensions often arise between those who want to take down power structures and those who prefer to work within existing frameworks. Many groups that form during a moment of crisis quickly fizzle once the work becomes formal and tedious. Burnout is common among peers who are expected to comply with rigid grant deliverables that do not reflect the reality of outreach work.

Of course, grant foundations should prioritize funding for user-led advocacy and service delivery. The question is how to provide this funding in a way that supports activists, but does not stifle creativity and drain energy.

Support means taking a back seat and allowing the most impacted people to lead.

To Kaplan, one of the key lessons from Thailand is the importance of helping newly formed activist groups develop sustainable leadership and organizational structure.

“We didn’t have time to build leadership,” she said of TDN. “We just had to take it and run with it … There was so much advocacy to do and it felt like there was no time to think about the organizational stuff.”

She recommends that funders avoid imposing overly burdensome reporting requirements on grassroots organizations. “Sometimes funders demand quantitative goals without recognizing the extraordinary amount of preparatory groundwork that people have to lay to build up new movements,” she said.

She also encourages groups seeking funding to be more forceful with donors about their needs. “You have power and agency. You have to tell the donors what you need,” she said. “Don’t be afraid to say, ‘We can do this work but we need long-term support.’ We need development and capacity-building, not just program money.”

To Ott, the most important lesson from Thailand is that if activist groups and NGOs must work together on a grant, drug users should be holding the reins.

“These movements must be led by drug users,” he said, “but we need more support.”  

Unfortunately, “support” can come with strings attached that weaken the agency of people who use drugs. For funders, allies and NGOs truly committed to drug policy reform, flexibility and humility are essential. Support means taking a back seat and allowing the most impacted people to lead.

Photographs by Tessie Castillo.

The post The Rise and Fall of Drug-User Activism in Thailand appeared first on Filter.

Jama was once a farmer herself. But plunging food prices and debt-slavery to agricultural corporations that sell farm equipment and seeds forced her to seek an alternative income. By selling yaba, she made enough money to support her family.

Like many poor farmers across the world, Jama was trapped in a dangerous intersection of economic and drug policies. Free trade agreements and competition from giant agro-businesses drive many small farmers to use drugs for increased productivity, or to sell them for survival. But the governments behind these economic policies also criminalize the use and sale of drugs, filling their prisons with the poor.

“We slept 50 women to a room on mats on the floor.”

At age 25, Jama was caught and thrown into an overcrowded prison in Chiang Mai, the largest city in northern Thailand. She was incarcerated for 10 years.

I met her, now 38, at her current workplace: the Women’s Massage Center for Ex-Prisoners in downtown Chiang Mai. Speaking through an interpreter, she described her imprisonment.

“We slept 50 women to a room on mats on the floor,” she said. “Sometimes the food was rotten.”

She spoke of the hardships of separation from her family and trouble finding work after release. Many women, she said, go back to selling yaba because no one will hire people with criminal records.

A Global Trend

Stories like Jama’s are increasingly common. Worldwide, men still make up 93 percent of the prison population. But in the past two decades, the population of women prisoners has increased at more than double the rate of men—53 percent and 20 percent, respectively. (It’s important to note that many countries’ statistics, on which such international figures are based, refer only to cisgender women, or leave it unclear whether transgender women are included.)

Most of the increase is accounted for by low-level, nonviolent drug-law violations.

These increases are most pronounced in Latin America and Southeast Asia, regions that already suffer from severe prison overcrowding and inhumane conditions. Some countries, such as El Salvador, have seen their population of women prisoners rise as much as ten-fold.

Most of the increase in arrests of women is accounted for by low-level, nonviolent drug-law violations. In Brazil, Peru, Venezuela and the Philippines, over 60 percent of women in prison are incarcerated for a drug offense. In Thailand, that number is 82 percent.

No comprehensive study exists on the reasons behind the increase in women’s incarceration on such charges. But I asked Gloria Lai, regional director for Asia at the International Drug Policy Consortium, about likely factors.

“It could be enhanced law enforcement operations or new strategies from people who operate the supply chain,” she suggested. “It could also be that more women are relied upon as the sole breadwinner of a family now, and there is pressure to take care of children and elderly dependents.”

A Controversial Massage Program

The main Chiang Mai women’s prison houses a controversial massage school. Each day, women with three-and-a-half years or less of their sentence remaining are bused into an older prison in downtown Chiang Mai where they provide massages to paying tourists.

Visiting this downtown facility was one of the most bizarre experiences of my career. The prison courtyard is a lush garden of gurgling fountains, orchids draped over tree trunks and shaded café tables. At the entrance stands a heart-shaped wicker porch swing under a cheerful sign that reads “Welcome to prison.”

People walk around freely. Some prisoners in powder blue jumpsuits take care of the grounds. Others, in beige uniforms, usher tourists into massage rooms. A wooden fence surrounds the complex, but there are no gates.

Tourists enjoy lunch at wicker tables as flute music drifts from speakers hidden in the foliage. The only evidence of prison—besides the trippy sign—is the presence of a couple of bored-looking corrections officers who sit behind a desk near the massage parlor entrance.

My feelings about the place were conflicted. On the one hand, the beauty and relaxed atmosphere of the courtyard seemed preferable to the steel bars and over-crowded conditions of the regular prison, where these women still sleep at night.

When I asked Jama, who worked here while she was incarcerated, about her experience, she said that most women are anxious to work at the massage parlor because it provides them with job skills to use after release.

This echoes a message I have often heard from incarcerated people in the United States. Prison conditions can be so boring and abusive that even working for a pittance for the very system that chains them can seem preferable to doing nothing. And yet, the idea of “job training” in prison clashes with the realities of a market that routinely denies employment to anyone with a criminal record.

I don’t like how the massages are marketed. In some gag-worthy online reviews, bloggers crow about the exhilaration of being close to criminals.

I felt somewhat better about the Chiang Mai prison when I learned that the massage therapists receive 50 percent of net profits—far superior to the pennies per hour that US prisoners make—but I don’t like how the massages are marketed.

In some gag-worthy online reviews, bloggers crow about the exhilaration of being close to criminals. Prison massage parlors are trendy in Thailand, perhaps designed more to excite tourists than to benefit incarcerated people.

What’s more, in 2016 Thailand passed a law prohibiting formerly incarcerated women from working in massage parlors until one year after release, which throws the government’s commitment to reform into serious question.

I wasn’t allowed to speak to anyone inside the prison, but by wandering past nearby shops, I stumbled upon the Women’s Massage Center for Ex-Prisoners. Here I met Jama.

I also met Thunyanun Yajom, who spent 17 years as a correctional officer in the Chiang Mai prison. Yajom supervised the training for the prison massage center, but grew frustrated because even very skilled women were still having trouble finding work after release.

“They trained well, but after they got out nobody gave them work, so they go to prison again,” she told me. In 2014, Yajom quit the prison to start her own massage center, which now has five locations and over 50 employees—all formerly incarcerated women. 

Thunyanun Yajom

The Bangkok Rules—And Their Flaws

In 2010 the United Nations formally recognized the social repercussions of imprisoning women—who, globally, are much more likely than men to be caregivers—by voting to adopt the Bangkok Rules, a set of resolutions aimed at improving standards for incarcerated women and their children.

The impetus came from Thai Princess Bajrakitiyabha, who became involved in women’s incarceration after witnessing inhumane conditions in a Bangkok prison in 2001. In 2006, she helped launch a project in Thailand to assist women with emotional support, healthcare and job training both during and after prison. In 2008, she began advocating for global policy change.

The resulting set of 70 Rules for best practices in women’s prisons cover everything from reproductive healthcare to non-invasive searches, prohibition of shackles during childbirth, protection from sexual violence and prison nurseries.

Critics rightly point out that the healthcare recommendations and special considerations under the Bangkok Rules apply almost exclusively to pregnant women and mothers. No mention is made of non-reproductive healthcare such as menopause, breast cancer or uterine cancer.

It does seem that the architects of the Bangkok Rules have noticed their mistake.

Nor is there any mention of the specific needs of trans women, such as access to hormone therapy and gender-appropriate health exams and housing. Given the Rules’ origin in Thai advocacy, this omission is glaring. Thailand’s capital, Bangkok, is considered a global mecca for trans women, and the country ranks second in the world for gender reassignment surgery.

It does seem that the architects of the Bangkok Rules have noticed their mistake. In 2018, Princess Bajrakitiyabha teamed up with the Thai Ministry of Justice and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) to review conditions for transgender prisoners in Thailand, whose population has shot up 181 percent since 2006. Thai transgender prisoners are routinely denied hormone therapy, forbidden from using bras or chest binders, housed in prisons that don’t reflect their gender, and subjected to humiliating searches in front of cisgender prisoners.

As a result of the review, the UNDP is currently creating new guidelines for incarcerated transgender women and men.

Not all countries have embraced the Bangkok Rules, even in their flawed present form. Several US states still shackle women during childbirth—though the practice was banned this year at the federal level—and the majority of incarcerated people who give birth are immediately separated from their children. 

Positive Efforts, But Not Sufficient

Even Thailand doesn’t implement its own policies in every prison, though the country has set up certain “model prisons” that attempt to provide safer and more humane conditions for cisgender women. One of these prisons is the Chiang Mai Woman Correctional Institution, where Jama served her sentence.

Yajom said that after the Bangkok Rules were adopted, conditions at the women’s prison improved somewhat. Internet was provided for video chats with lawyers and family. The prison developed a nursery where women can care for their infants for a year before the child is placed with relatives or foster care. There are training classes to teach skills like textiles, weaving and general education.

But improved conditions inside a prison do not necessarily translate into a better environment outside it. The International Drug Policy Consortium (IDPC) has ongoing projects around the world that aim to prevent women’s imprisonment and improve conditions for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated women. Gloria Lai is working on one such project across Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines.

“We try to mobilize allies who work on women’s rights and prison issues to advocate for reforms such as decriminalization of drugs for personal use, but it is up to the countries to decide how they want to respond,” said Lai. “We are trying to show the human side of the women who end up in prison. That gets people involved.”

IDPC recommends civil society engagement with governments to discuss the adoption of appropriate sentencing policies. They encourage the use of alternatives to incarceration and promote the inclusion of formerly incarcerated women so that their voices are heard in policy processes that affect them.

Significant change will only come if we stop criminalizing drugs, and fight for gender and social equality.

These efforts are positive, but to me, they are not sufficient. Most programs aimed at reducing incarceration or helping formerly incarcerated people find housing and work are mere Band-aids on larger problems: the drug war and social inequalities.

Women’s incarceration rates are rising not because of increases in crime or drug use, but because of devastating economic policies, over-policing and multiple layers of stigma and discrimination. Women around the world are trapped into hard choices. Significant change will only come if we stop criminalizing drugs, fight for gender and social equality, and free people to respond to life’s challenges as they consider best.

All photos by Tessie Castillo.

The post Incarcerated Women in Thailand Face Issues Seen Worldwide appeared first on Filter.

For months Bexy searched frantically for clues to Manuel’s disappearance. Perhaps his small boat had sunk in the rough seas. Perhaps he had fallen prey to the pirates who prowl the water stealing boat motors, leaving fishermen stranded miles from shore. Neighbors advised Bexy to move on. Her husband was surely dead.

Then, eight months after Manuel had gone missing, Bexy’s phone rang.

“Mi amor, perdoname [My love, I’m sorry],” said a man. Through the static, Bexy barely recognized her husband’s voice. Her heart stopped.

“You won’t believe this,” Manuel said. “But I’m in the United States. In prison.”

During the day, through scorching sun and pounding rain, the detainees were chained on deck, fed little and made to defecate in buckets. At night, they were shackled below deck.

Before the call dropped, Bexy learned the hazardous details of Manuel’s journey. Desperate to find money to rebuild their home, he had agreed to transport cocaine to the US in his boat. Colombian drug smugglers had promised him $10,000 for the two-week trip.

Manuel had sailed to Colombia with two other men to pick up the cargo before heading out to sea. But the US Coast Guard, which patrols the Pacific coasts of Central and South America, intercepted his boat off the coast of Guatemala and captured the men.

For four months, Manuel was held on board the Coast Guard ship as it crawled slowly to the United States, picking up human cargo as it went.

During the day, through scorching sun and pounding rain, the detainees were chained on deck, fed little and made to defecate in buckets. At night, they were shackled below deck, tossed about in the belly of the boat. By the time the ship made land in Florida, Manuel had lost all sense of time.

In Florida, federal prosecutors charged Manuel and his co-defendants with attempting to smuggle cocaine into the United States. They sentenced him to 14 years in prison.

***

Six years after Manuel’s capture, I met Bexy near her home in Manta. We gathered in a neighbor’s living room along with a dozen other women who have a husband or son serving time in the United States for drug-law violations. Over the past several years, the US Coast Guard has picked up hundreds of Ecuadorian fishermen and imprisoned them in the United States.

The Maritime Drug Enforcement Act, enacted in 2006, declares it a crime against the United States to transport drugs in international waters—even without proof that the boats are headed to the US. The US has signed agreements with dozens of countries, including Ecuador, that allow US officials to board foreign vessels, detain suspected smugglers and prosecute them in the United States.

I met with a dozen women in Manta with incarcerated loved ones. But their support group numbers over 200.

At first, the US Coast Guard captured around 200 foreigners at sea per year. But in 2012, under the leadership of General John Kelly, former Chief of Staff to President Trump, the US Department of Defense launched Operation Martillo to crack down on drug smuggling along the Pacific coast. Nearly overnight, US Coast Guard detentions tripled. From 2012 to 2018 the Coast Guard intercepted 1,066 tons of cocaine and detained 3,277 people suspected of smuggling—700 of them from Ecuador.

The repercussions of Operation Martillo have hit Ecuador’s impoverished coast hard. I met with a dozen women in Manta with incarcerated loved ones, but their support group, Organization de Mujeres de Pescadores en el Extranjero (OMPE, Organizations of Wives of Fishermen Abroad), numbers over 200.

We met at the home of Elena Velez, who founded OMPE in 2017 after her son Johony was captured. At first I had trouble finding her house. In Manta, an expanse of wealthy, gated communities with armed guards and barbed wire fencing gives way to a maze of rutted, dirt roads and cane-slat houses whose flimsy structures look like matchsticks. I wandered the unmarked roads asking for directions, but thankfully, everyone in the neighborhood knows Elena Velez.

Outside the home of Elena Velez.

Elena Velez is a connector, a fixer and a force. She blasts into rooms, talking, planning, hugging, corralling, filling every corner with her presence. With a personality that more than compensates for her short stature, the 63-year-old has the energy of a child, the compassion of a saint and a bark fiercer than her two beloved dogs.

Through OMPE, she organizes workshops so that women who have lost their bread-winning husbands can learn new economic skills. She rides the public bus to cities hours away to urge officials to take action against the disappearances. Every day she receives up to a dozen calls from men imprisoned in the United States, asking for help or answers.

Elena’s home is made of cinderblock, which means she is one of the lucky ones, though the rooms are still separated by curtains; doors are a luxury in this neighborhood. She convened the meeting between me and the other women in her living room, and sat, stood, paced, exclaimed and answered phone calls from men in prison throughout.

I first asked the women about life before their loved ones’ capture. Maria Chavez Cedeno, whose face, at 69, is weathered from hardship and poverty, told me that her son Vicente made $50 to $100 per fishing trip, which would typically last 15-25 days. Often, he made nothing.

“Sometimes [he] came home from fishing without even money to wash his dirty fishing clothes,” she said. In 2016, the US Coast Guard picked up Vicente with cocaine in his boat. He is now serving 10 years at a private prison in Pennsylvania.

Bexy Guerrero lives in a cane-slat house with a dirt floor and no plumbing. When I asked how she survived with five children and her husband gone, she replied, “Sometimes I eat and sometimes I don’t.”

Drug smuggling trips, called vueltas, can earn fishermen $10,000 to $30,000 per trip—life-changing sums.

The per capita income for fishermen in this area is $132 a month. According to the women, drug smuggling trips, called vueltas, can earn fishermen $10,000 to $30,000 per trip—life-changing sums that may enable them to move their family to a gated-community home in Manta, put kids in private school, start a business or move to a wealthier region.

Shirley Salto Cedeno, 27, whose husband Emiliano is serving time at a private prison in Georgia, said that Emiliano wanted to take the risk to provide for their three children. Before he left, the couple had argued. Shirley thought the trip was too dangerous.

“Just one vuelta,” Emiliano had pleaded with her. “Then we can build a new life.”

Women and children in Manta. This group includes Elena (far left), Bexy (in pink), Shirley (to Bexy’s right) and Maria (far right).

According to the people I interviewed, “Just one vuelta,” could be the motto for poor families in Manta. Nearly every fisherman has been offered the chance to make a drug run. Local fixers, typically with connections to Colombian smugglers, offer rewards to those willing to smuggle cocaine up the Pacific coast to Mexico or California.

Many fishermen, knowing the risks of smuggling, refuse to take vueltas. But catastrophe can push them to reconsider.

Of those who agree, many succeed. Hungry neighbors watch while the successful fishermen move from crowded, dirt-floor apartments to large, cinder-block houses with amenities like internet. Some throw neighborhood block parties with free drinks for all, which attracts the attention of police and can lead to dire consequences.

“Everybody knows where the money came from,” said Shirley, the sassiest member of the group. “Drug money is Manta’s dirty secret.”

Many fishermen, knowing the risks of smuggling, refuse to take vueltas. But catastrophe can push them to reconsider. Nearly half of the families I interviewed said their loved one had made a vuelta in 2016—the year a magnitude 7.8 earthquake leveled Ecuador’s coast, leaving thousands of families homeless.

Shirley’s husband, Emiliano, took a vuelta after the couple lost their home to the earthquake. A US Coast Guard helicopter flying over the ocean spotted his boat and shot the motor so he couldn’t escape. After being captured, Emiliano spent two months aboard the ship, detained without a lawyer or a trial, held in legal suspension until the ship finished patrolling the Central American coast and deposited the men in Florida.

Most foreigners picked up at sea are prosecuted in Florida. Geographically, this makes little sense because Florida is much further from the Pacific ocean than western US states, and getting there requires more time and resources. But the Ninth Circuit federal judicial district, which covers the western United States, mandates that prosecutors prove that smugglers were destined for the US in order to convict them. The Eleventh Circuit, which covers Florida, requires no such proof. Thus, Florida is the preferred state for prosecuting drug smugglers.

Her youngest child, a two-year-old, stopped speaking after his father disappeared.

Among the women I interviewed, their men’s sentences range from nine to 14 years. Their absence is both financially and emotionally devastating to the families they leave behind. Several women struggle to talk through tears.

One woman, who had given birth to a daughter only days before her husband’s capture, was so distraught that she couldn’t care for the child and had to send her to relatives. Another tells me her youngest child, a two-year-old, stopped speaking after his father disappeared.

When all the women had told their stories and gone home, Elena Velez and I were left alone. While I interviewed the other women, Elena had been a pillar of strength and encouragement as she bustled about tending to their needs. But once we were alone and it was Elena’s turn to talk, I saw a different side of her.

Elena’s son Johony was captured in 2016, the year before she founded OMPE. Like many, he took a vuelta after Elena lost her home in the earthquake. She has never forgiven herself for the fact that Johony made the trip to buy her a new home.

She showed me drawings and letters he wrote to her, in which he begs forgiveness for the suffering he has caused.

Elena with Johony’s letters.

At times she seemed angry with him for taking this risk without telling her. Other times, grief took over, her tough veneer cracked and she started to cry. Mostly, she looked tired. “He would come home and open the fridge and say, ‘Mom, what happened in the fridge. Did poverty visit?’ Then he would take me out to buy vegetables and shampoo.” 

As we talked and I saw the pain of a parent’s loss etched onto her face, I was reminded of the parents in the United States who have also lost a child, sometimes involving the very drugs that these fishermen were attempting to deliver (particularly if fentanyl is introduced later in the supply chain). I wondered if the captures are making any difference to those families. 

Has Operation Martillo succeeded in slowing the flow of cocaine into the United States? Is the $8 million the US spends each year to arrest foreign nationals at sea—and the millions more we spend to incarcerate them—having any impact at all?

Since Operation Martillo began, the total tonnage of cocaine smuggled into the US by sea has more than quadrupled. 

Years of covering drug policy have taught me that supply-side interventions rarely succeed in reducing drug availability or use. Nevertheless, I scoured the US Coast Guard archives for information on the impact of Operation Martillo.

Before 2012, the year Operation Martillo began, the US Coast Guard was detaining around 200 suspected smugglers per year in international waters. It was intercepting around 80 tons of cocaine annually, or an estimated 12 percent of the total amount of cocaine suspected to enter the United States via the Pacific ocean.

After 2012, the number of foreigners captured at sea tripled. The US Coast Guard now intercepts about 200 metric tons of cocaine per year. Yet this amount represents only 7.3 percent of the cocaine trafficked in the US from the Pacific, because since Operation Martillo began, the total tonnage of cocaine smuggled into the US by sea has more than quadrupled.  

There is a simple economic explanation for this. With the increased risk of being caught, traffickers will offer more money to fishermen who attempt a vuelta, and thus more fishermen will go. All along the Pacific coast, from Ecuador to El Salvador to Guatemala to Mexico, there is no shortage of people desperate to escape poverty and violence by any means possible. To the real profiteers—who would never be so foolish as to smuggle drugs themselves—poor fishermen are plentiful and expendable. 

Ironically, much of the poverty and violence that drives people to take vueltas results from the United States’ own policies. Our international trade agreements put millions of farmers out of business and our drug war tactics increase profitability for cartels, which leads to violence amongst rivals jostling for power. We are also the world’s largest per capita consumer of illicit drugs, yet we punish others for satisfying our appetite.

Poor fishermen and their families are collateral damage in the drug war. Their suffering is a win for the cartels, who succeed in smuggling 93 percent of their drugs into the United States while sacrificing only a few hundred disposable fishermen. Their capture is a win for the Coast Guard, which can request more funding to detain “narco-traffickers” while filling their boats with the poor. 

Fishermen in Manta preparing to leave port.

For people like Elena Velez, the profiteering and power-play that exist on an international level have real consequences.

“Some days I want to give up,” she admits. “But then I look around at the faces of the other women and I know I have to keep going.”

All photographs by Tessie Castillo.

The post  The Ecuadorian Fishermen Snatched Away by US Drug Warriors  appeared first on Filter.

As a courtesy, he agreed to attend one meeting. Government officials laid out a shocking proposition. The new President, Rafael Correa, of PAIS Alliance, a center-left party, wanted to decriminalize drug use. Would Velez lead national reform efforts?

At first, Velez declined. But officials insisted that the government needed his connections to private industry and skills bringing together diverse actors to solve problems. They explained the issues with overcrowded prisons and lack of drug treatment programs. Velez finally accepted.

When I met Rodrigo Velez in Guayaquil, Ecuador, the mystery surrounding his appointment became clear. What Velez lacks in experience, he makes up for in passion. The charismatic 60-year-old with salt-and-pepper hair loves to problem-solve, to connect people, and to pound new ideas into old institutions—sometimes literally. Throughout our interview, he slammed his fist onto the table for emphasis.

Rodrigo Velez meeting with colleagues. Photo courtesy of Velez.

Ecuador’s new task force launched in 2008. Velez used his connections and charisma to gather industry leaders, academics, researchers and international law experts. One glaring omission from this group, however, was people directly impacted by drug policy and criminalization. Strict class divisions in Ecuador ensure that few policymakers invite marginalized populations to the table.

The team studied global drug policy, visited local prisons and created a research agency to drive policy decisions. Within months they proposed a plan. Ecuador needed a constitutional amendment to declare illicit drug use a public health issue and decriminalize it. They also recommended releasing people with low-level drug charges from prison.

For people who use drugs habitually and problematically, “in no case shall their criminalization or infringement of their rights be allowed.”

In July 2008, Ecuador released 2,221 people from prison accused of small-scale drug transport. Most were women. That October, the nation of 16 million ratified a new constitution. It declared addiction a public health problem, and the government promised to invest in prevention and treatment. Article 364 states that for people who use drugs habitually and problematically, “in no case shall their criminalization or infringement of their rights be allowed.”

Thrilled at their success, the team dove into the next task. They merged the penal codes around drug use, made sentencing laws more proportionate to crimes (previously, a person caught with 3 grams of marijuana faced 15 years in prison, a higher sentence than for rape) and generally reduced the role of the criminal justice system in drug policy.

A Controversial Personal Use-“Trafficking” Divide

In 2014, they rolled out the new penal code and a table that distinguished quantities of drugs for “personal consumption” from “trafficking” amounts.

The new rules permitted possession of up to one gram of heroin for personal consumption. Possession of over one gram, considered small-scale trafficking, carried a sentence of two-to-six months in prison. Residents could own two grams of cocaine for personal use, while small-scale trafficking charges kicked in at 50 grams. For cannabis, the table set personal consumption at up to 10 grams and small-scale trafficking at 300 grams or more. Penalties rose with medium-scale, high-scale and large-scale trafficking, and sentences maxed out at 10-to-13 years.

Clearly, while this reduced criminalization significantly, it did not come close to ending criminalization. The tables sparked intense debate across the country. Some skeptics pointed out that many people use over a gram of heroin daily. Limiting possession amounts forces them to buy heroin a little at a time, increasing their potentially risky contact with illicit markets.

“Prison was hell … Nothing is going to change here.”

Marcos Cerrano Chalen, a 32-year-old man whom I interviewed at his relative’s home, grew up in the small coastal village of Posorja. His neighborhood earned the nickname “Little Colombia,” he said, because almost all its residents use cocaine. At 18 years old, he began using cocaine problematically.

Ecuador enacted drug policy reforms three years later, but Chalen said that for people like him, nothing changed. 

“Police get weekly stipends from the narcos,” he told me. “Nothing is going to change here.”

Chalen has endured Ecuador’s notorious treatment system—he described rehabs where hungry patients are forced to watch others eat food. During his four stints in prison, he slept in 10-by-20-foot cells with up to 18 other people and tried to avoid the roving eyes of prisoners who use newcomers for grunt work and sexual favors.

“Prison was hell,” he said. “The traffickers carried weapons and killed each other over drug territory. They paid police to look away.”

While many police were silent about prison abuse, they paid close attention to policy reforms, particularly the new tables on drug consumption. Many law enforcement claimed some traffickers used the tables to their benefit.

How Public Opinion Turned

“There was a problem with interpreting the tables,” said Major Diego Bolanos, a narcotics investigator whom I interviewed at his office in Manta, Ecuador. “Some sellers were taking advantage of the tables, carrying just under the small-scale amount to sell.”

Law enforcement coined these sellers “micro-traffickers,” a term then popularized by the media and politicians. Public opinion turned. It was one thing to treat drug addiction as a health problem, but sellers needed harsh punishment, people said. 

The reforms were “a shock for the public,” Alexandra Delgado, a psychologist who specializes in drug policy research, told Filter. “There is a lot of religiosity and morality in Ecuador. They call drug users delinquents and sinners. People don’t understand the difference between drug use and problematic drug use.” 

Even President Rafael Correa, former champion of the public health approach to drug use, began railing against micro-traffickers—despite no evidence that drug use or sale had increased since the 2008 reforms. 

“The easiest solution for politicians is to give in to populism and put more people in prison.”

The debate on “consumers” versus “traffickers,” echoes a similar controversy in the United States. Last year I wrote for Filter about the racially charged dangers of drawing a hard line between users and sellers. Many people who use drugs also sell them, and many people who sell drugs also use them. 

The emphasis on punishing sellers—which in practice almost always applies to low-level sellers since high-level dealers are harder to find—is a ruse to revitalize the drug war. The tactic is working. Many US states are charging drug sellers with murder if a customer overdoses. In Ecuador, the “micro-traffickers” narrative shifted public discourse back towards punishment.

“The easiest solution for politicians is to give in to populism and put more people in prison,” attorney Daniel Kuri, a professor of Criminology in Guayaquil, Ecuador, told Filter. “Building a school gets more votes than building a drug treatment center.”

By 2015, Velez and his team were under pressure to produce new tables with lower possession allowances and higher trafficking penalties. In protest, the team resigned.

“We communicated badly to the population,” admitted Velez. “The political sectors took advantage of the bad communication to claim that the tables encouraged people to consume drugs.”

In October 2015, the government put out a new table. The small-scale trafficking threshold for cocaine, previously set at 50 grams, plummeted to one, while penalties rose from a maximum of six months to a maximum of three years. The marijuana trafficking level dropped from 300 grams to 20. Trafficking charges for heroin kicked in at a minuscule 0.1 grams.

Learning From Past Mistakes

The rollback discouraged Velez and his team, but today they are using past mistakes to build a stronger case for reform.

“Our biggest mistake was not educating people,” said Max Paredes, an investigator with Parametria, an organization dedicated to producing data on drug trends in Ecuador. “People have the same stigma against drugs they had 20 or 30 years ago … Politicians depend on the citizens. If the public says life in prison for anyone who commits a crime, politicians will start bringing it up.”

Velez agrees. “When an election is coming, politicians offer whatever. People put their thumbs up or down like the Roman Colosseum.” He believes that educating the public means changing the language used to describe drug use and reaching out to families.

I would add that including people most affected by punitive policy in decision-making is also critical to success. The best people to lead reform efforts are those with the most to gain.

Providing relevant data is also part of education. Velez admits that although his team used evidence from other countries to build a case for reform, little data on drug trends exists in Ecuador. According to Daniel Kuri, successive governments have stalled efforts to collect such data. They fear the results might reflect poorly on their policies. 

The national government may have also sabotaged its own reforms by not allocating funds towards addiction prevention and treatment. For example, Manabi Province, where I lived for two months in Ecuador, has only 171 state-funded beds for 1.5 million people. Private, uncertified rehabs fill in the gaps. Many use coercive or abusive tactics, such as locking patients into confinement rooms during withdrawal. 

“The government let us work, but they didn’t complement it with other programs such as harm reduction and public health programs,” said Velez. Programs “strong enough to support and advance the political movement” were needed.

Lack of coordination with law enforcement also hurt reform efforts. In 2008, the constitution changed, but enforcement tactics did not.

“Police are indoctrinated to repress crime and rewarded for how many people they arrest,” said Velez. “The more traffickers they catch, the more their departments can ask for resources.” He argues that advocates must help police to recognize benefits of drug policy reform to their work. For example, de-emphasizing drugs allows law enforcement to focus on violent crime.

“We have to stop thinking of drug policy reform as being about drugs. [It] is really about social transformation and learning to live with diversity.”

Alexandra Delgado thinks advocates have to change the conversation around drugs to win new allies.

“We have to stop thinking of drug policy as being about drugs,” she said. “We have to think about people, communities and contexts. We have to consider the environment in which drug use takes place and the reasons behind it. Drug policy reform is really about social transformation and learning to live with diversity.”

In 2017, Lenin Moreno, formerly vice president under Correa, became head of state. Not much has changed on drug policy since he took office.

Velez envisions a country where the government’s job is to regulate drugs and warn citizens of potential side effects—as we do now with alcohol, tobacco, medicine and food products—but not to prohibit them.

“Not all drug use is addiction,” he said (indeed, most is not). “People should have the freedom to decide what they consume.”

For Ecuador, that vision looks farther away than it did 10 years ago, but advocates aren’t giving up. La lucha sigue. The fight continues. 

Photo of Quito, capital of Ecuador, by César Viteri on Unsplash

The post Ecuador’s Drug Decriminalization Bid Has Lessons for the World appeared first on Filter.

Menthol is a mint-flavored compound that reduces the harsh taste of smoke inhalation. While menthols make up 35 percent of the overall cigarette market, an entrenched racial disparity exists, at least in part as a result of targeted marketing by tobacco companies: 89 percent of black smokers prefer menthols. Smokers, like any people who use drugs, are unlikely to respond to bans by suddenly changing their preferences. Prohibiting the sale of these cigarettes could therefore further criminalize communities of color.

On September 19, members of the Law Enforcement Action Partnership (LEAP*) and the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives (NOBLE) held a webinar to advocate against menthol bans.

Major Neill Franklin, executive director of LEAP, explained that if we prevent convenience stores and gas stations from selling menthols, many ordinary people will purchase the cigarettes from neighboring jurisdictions and sell them in the prohibited area for a higher price.

“We know that laws are enforced in a way that targets people of color. [Menthol bans] create more space for that to happen.”

“We know [these bans] will result in an illicit underground market of menthol cigarettes in the black community,” he said, citing the increased riskiness of unregulated products that applies in any drug market. “If you have a robust underground market for these products, your health problems are going to double, triple within a matter of days.”

These concerns aren’t just theoretical. According to Charles Hawthorne of the Harm Reduction Coalition, the city of San Francisco, which banned menthol sales last June, has already seen its illicit market expand.

“Criminalization creates more situations for people to interact with police,” he told Filter. “We already know that laws are enforced in a way that targets people of color. [Menthol bans] create more space for that to happen.”

Advocates for menthol bans cite evidence that over the past decades, while overall cigarette consumption has declined among adults, menthol cigarette use has increased, particularly among youth.

Major Neill Franklin. Photo by Gage Skidmore via Flickr/Creative Commons

Major Franklin said banning the sale of menthols will not protect youth. “With a ban you will put more cigarettes into the hands of young people,” he said, explaining that the regulated market, which restricts sales and requires ID for purchase, protects youth more than the underground market—through which anyone can buy cigarettes on a street corner. What’s more, he added, illicit market entrepreneurs recruit kids to sell their products.

With these bans, “I guarantee you will see use go up around kids,” he said.

Commissioner Jiles Ship, president of NOBLE, worries that in addition to driving youth towards unregulated products, banning the sale of menthols will increase negative interactions between the black community and police. “Whether it is real or perceived, there is a distrust of local police,” he said. The bans “will have a counter effect and further damage community-police relations.”

He recommends instead that communities concerned about smoking continue to use what works: Education, limited smoke-free areas, and tobacco cessation campaigns have drastically decreased smoking rates over the past few decades.

He also suggests that states follow New Jersey’s example and develop a policy of looking at community impact whenever a new public safety issue is up for debate—including whether the new law would have a disparate impact on vulnerable populations.

“We don’t need another Eric Garner situation,” he said, referring to a black man killed by police in 2014 for selling loose cigarettes in New York.

History has shown that simply banning products we don’t like doesn’t keep them away from youth or adults.

Yvette McDowell, a former prosecutor from Pasadena, California, said, “Let’s team up with youth in communities of color to create robust educational campaigns around smoking. Let’s invest money in these communities. Whenever you get young people involved in issues that impact them, you will have much better results.”

History has shown that simply banning products we don’t like doesn’t keep them away from youth or adults. We tried it with alcohol and saw the mafia pick up control of the market. We continue to ban many drugs, driving profits into the hands of cartels and gangs without any drop in rates of use.

For several decades, we’ve taken a different approach with cigarettes, choosing evidence-based educational campaigns over prohibition. It’s working. Smoking is not as “cool”—or as prevalent—among youth or adults as it was a generation ago. But banning cigarettes has the potential to reverse this progress.

*LEAP is the fiscal sponsor of The Influence Foundation, which operates Filter.

Top photo via Wikimedia Commons

The post Banning Menthol Cigarettes Criminalizes Black Communities, Say Advocates appeared first on Filter.

On the other end of the line, Officer Peter Muyshondt closed his eyes and breathed deeply. Not again.

“Thanks for the heads-up,” Muyshondt replied in Dutch, the dominant language in his hometown of Antwerp, Belgium. “I’ll be down to see him.”

He hung up the phone, overcome with anger and disappointment. It was embarrassing enough to drive by Antwerp’s most notorious drug corner each day in his police cruiser, watching his little brother Tom breaking the laws Muyshondt was sworn to uphold. But to visit Tom in jail each time he got arrested, to pretend he didn’t notice the stares and whispers of fellow law enforcement as they gossiped about the officer with a criminal brother… It was more than he could take sometimes.

With a sigh, Muyshondt headed to the jail. After security checks, he sat across from his brother in the visiting booth and picked up the receiver, their only communication through the thick plexiglas wall. He meant to reprimand Tom, but one look at his brother’s cheeky grin and Muyshondt couldn’t stop the smile that spread across his face.

“So, the good guy finally showed up to visit the bad guy!” Tom joked.

Muyshondt laughed, and suddenly, they were kids again, two brothers sowing mischief over the rural county where they grew up in central Belgium, trying to protect each other from the volatility of their home life. As teenagers, they had each found their escape: Peter, to a regimented military high school where discipline and rules helped him cope with a chaotic childhood; Tom, to a life in which drugs helped him do the same.

At that time, “I was really believing that my brother being punished by criminal court would help get him off addiction,” Muyshondt told Filter in an interview in Brussels. Still, he admits that watching his brother go through the cycle of drugs and prison made him question police tactics. 

When you have a family member who uses drugs “you are getting information you don’t want that is right in your face [and] you start to reflect,” he said. Seeing his brother behind bars, he thought for the first time what a dangerous place jail could be, what violence or predation might be waiting for his brother in every cell or shower stall, and then he considered how many other people’s brothers he had put there, without concern for their safety.

“Frustration and anger against everything and nothing.”

Despite the risks of incarceration and unregulated street drugs, Muyshondt believed his brother would pull through. So he wasn’t expecting the call in July 2006 informing him that Tom had died of an overdose. 

A week earlier, Muyshondt had visited Tom at a rehab facility. As usual, the two had laughed and joked—in this case about the birdhouse-making classes that Tom was forced to attend as part of his therapy.

Muyshondt described his feelings at learning of his brother’s death as “frustration and anger against everything and nothing.”

A Legitimate and Vital Strand of Reform

Tom’s death marked a turning point in Muyshondt’s attitude towards drugs and drug policy. No longer did he think that punishment would stop a person from using. In fact, he didn’t think that drugs themselves were the problem. Instead, he began to speak out publicly against prohibition, which spawns a lucrative illicit market, and locks people like his brother into a perpetual cycle of prison and the streets.

“Prohibition isn’t working,” said Muyshondt, who has written two books condemning the ineffectiveness of policing against drugs. He argues that only legalization and regulation of drugs will dry up the illicit market and allow communities to focus on preventing addiction.

The notion that working to change police officers’ views is an important strand of the reform movement is highly controversial for many in the harm reduction community. Many people, including those who have had traumatic experiences at the hands of the police or know others who have, view engagement with police as inappropriate, or even as “collaboration.”

Recognizing these realities does not contradict the urgency of also seeking deeper, systemic change.

When I wrote about police harm reduction work and the surrounding controversies for Filter last year, I received a flood of responses, many of them critical. Some on social media accused me of “shilling” for law enforcement.

I’m not. If harm reduction is about meeting people and situations “where they’re at,” and striving to improve things by not making the perfect the enemy of the good, these are difficult conversations that we need to have.

Police cause great harm in the course of the drug war, which they help to sustain through their advocacy, and officers’ conversions therefore reduce harms. And for many sections of the population, current or former officers’ advocacy against the drug war is particularly compelling. Recognizing these realities does not contradict the urgency of also seeking deeper, systemic change.

Muyshondt’s story may be unique because he had a brother to help open his eyes to the realities of why people use drugs and how prohibition increases overdose deaths. But in other ways, his story is similar to those of others who have become advocates for drug policy reform during or after long careers in law enforcement.

Many, if not most, people get into police work because they want to serve communities by fighting crime. But as the years go by, starry-eyed optimism often gives way to doubt as they see the same people arrested again and again, as the drug dealer they took out is quickly replaced by another, as they realize that prison is more a brutal training ground for illicit behavior than a deterrent. 

From left to right: Peter Muyshondt, harm reduction workers Dominique Delhauteur and Marylene Tommaso, and the author in front of the Saf ti safe consumption room in Liege, Belgium. Photo courtesy of Tessie Castillo.

A New Jersey Narcotics Officer

Many officers are willing or able to ignore the internal voice asking whether what they are doing is really working. But tragedy can be the catalyst to turn doubts into action.

Lieutenant Detective Nick Bucci joined the New Jersey State Police in the late 1960s, right before President Nixon declared his infamous War on Drugs. In a phone interview, Bucci told Filter that the narcotics squad where he worked swelled from seven officers to about 75 nearly overnight, thanks to an influx of drug war money.

Bucci admits that racial profiling was a big part of police tactics in his department.

He and his colleagues began profiling cars near the George Washington Bridge. “You see a car coming across the bridge at 2 pm with three guys in it and you follow them, wait for them to not signal when they change a lane, then you signal them to pull over and the next thing you know they are throwing stuff out the window,” he said.

Bucci admits that racial profiling was a big part of police tactics in his department. When officers wanted to boost their arrest portfolio, they’d head down to the open-air drug markets in inner cities where it was easy to round up black people who used and sold drugs there.

Asked if the officers ever felt guilty about exploiting an already-vulnerable population, Bucci replied, “[The officers] wanted to get promoted, and to get promoted you had to make arrests.”

Bucci eventually became a Lieutenant Commander, with two dozen narcotics officers taking orders from him. They organized sting operations and arrested people for crimes ranging from possession of marijuana blunts to cocaine trafficking. It was dangerous work. Bucci lost a partner during a shootout at a meth lab raid.

Although he enjoyed policing for the most part, a few observations kept bothering him over the years. For instance, although he and his men made hundreds of arrests for drug crimes, the drug market continued to thrive, even expand. Drugs were becoming cheaper and more plentiful. Worse, violence was escalating.

“Every time we made an arrest, someone else took over the market,” he said. “And every time someone else took over the market, they did it with a gun.” It’s a phenomenon that has been described as the “freelancer effect.”

A Culture of Conformity

Bucci wasn’t the only officer with questions. At times, subordinates would approach him with doubts about whether their work was truly making a positive difference. Though he harbored the same doubts, as a senior officer Bucci didn’t hesitate to remind them that their job was to enforce the law, not question it.

This illustrates why it is so difficult to create change within law enforcement. Anyone who works at a job where they truly care about the mission knows how easy it is to ignore or dismiss information that runs counter to that mission. Many people, perhaps most, if they find themselves of minority opinion, will choose to leave the organization rather than stay and stir up trouble.

This phenomenon of self-selection is not unique to law enforcement. A Christian who suddenly doubts her faith may leave the church rather than stay and persuade others to renounce their beliefs. A nonprofit employee who starts to question his work will more likely quit than remain to change the organization’s mission.

Like the military, law enforcement officers are taught to follow orders, not to question them.

Within policing, this natural process is compounded by the fact that law enforcement is structured in such a way to especially discourage individuality or change. Like the military (and no wonder there is such cross-pollination between the two), law enforcement officers are taught to follow orders, not to question them.

Additionally, financial and career incentives are built into law enforcement such that officers and departments are rewarded based on numbers of arrests or numbers of drug seizures, not on whether these tactics do anything to prevent chaotic drug use.

But despite the entrenched status quo, many officers can and do change their minds about the drug war. Nick Bucci, who once ordered his subordinates to do their jobs without questioning, is one such case. The moment of reckoning came when his officers were conducting a raid on a house that had recently received a shipment of five pounds of marijuana. During the raid, the 25-year-old buyer got scared and fled on foot. One of the officers shot him dead.

Though he was still a few years short of his retirement pension, Bucci turned in his badge. He was done.

“We are never going to stop [drugs],” said Bucci. “Every time you make a marijuana arrest … that person will lose his driver’s license and employment. If they live in subsidized housing, they will get kicked out of that … police should not be policing morality.”

Bucci now works for Law Enforcement Action Partnership (LEAP*), a group of active and retired law enforcement who are raising awareness about the failures of the drug war and urging alternative drug policy rooted in evidence and efficacy.

An Undercover Operator

On the other side of the Atlantic ocean, Nic Castle, a retired Police Constable from Cheshire in the United Kingdom, is also traveling the country for LEAP, talking to his fellow officers about the need for change.

Interestingly, Castle began his career in harm reduction, running a needle exchange and methadone program in Lancashire before joining the police force to help drug users (as he saw it at the time) by locking up their dealers.

Due to his past experience, Castle was quickly assigned as an undercover cop. His job was to befriend drug users, gain their trust, and try to convince them to give up the locations of their dealers. Ironically, he was good at this because he liked and sympathized with people who used drugs—an attitude that didn’t carry over into much of the police force.

“A lot of police officers saw [drug users] as scumbags who deserve what they get. This was linked in with race,” he told Filter. “My ideology was always that they may be a drug user but they are still human beings.”

Castle would listen to the stories of the people he met on the streets and learn about their journeys to homelessness and addiction. “Most people take drugs because something happened to them,” he said. “They are victims of crime, mental health, finances.”

“We were taking people that needed help and what did we do? We kicked them when they were down.”

After building rapport with someone, he was usually able to convince them to buy drugs for him, in exchange for half. In time, he might get introduced to a dealer. Castle and his fellow officers would spend months in a given community, building trust and creating a list of people engaged in drug crimes. It was a risky job, not only for him, but for all the drug users with whom he interacted.

“Users were living under a level of threat all the time,” he said. “If they introduced the police to someone or gave up information to the police … they would get assaulted.”

Castle’s undercover operations resulted in hundreds of arrests, but to his chagrin, when his colleagues took the careful information on the drug markets that he had provided, they would usually arrest the very people he had befriended—the ones who had poured out heart-wringing stories, ignorant of the fact that they were talking to someone who would soon betray them. Because they had purchased drugs and delivered them to Castle, many of his contacts were tried as drug suppliers, earning sentences of four-to-five years in prison.

Finally, by 2006, seeing how much damage he was doing to people who needed help, Castle was fed up. He turned in his badge and renounced police work.

“I believed that what I did was morally wrong and that the people that the War on Drugs was attacking were often the people who needed help and support,” said Castle, who grew emotional over the phone as our interview wound to a close. “[The police] were taking people that needed help and what did we do? We kicked them when they were down.”

Today Castle travels the UK talking to other police about the problems with drug prohibition. “By fighting a war we were creating more violence and giving more power to the gangsters that were running [the drug markets],” he said.

Hearts and Minds

Like Muyshondt and Bucci, Castle believes that the key to changing police hearts and minds about the drug war is for them to receive the message from fellow officers.

“Police need to open their eyes and acknowledge not only does [the drug war] not work, but we have helped create the problem,” said Castle. “In talking to police officers that have finished and retired, I am surprised at how many actually feel that way.”

Bucci says he makes progress with police by pointing out the self-perpetuating cycle of the drug war: Saddling someone with a criminal record makes them unable to participate in the mainstream workforce and more likely to turn to the illicit market out of economic necessity—a fact which, incredibly, Bucci says, few law enforcement seem aware of.

A few conversations among law enforcement, many of whom are already retired, might not seem like enough of a catalyst for sweeping change. Certainly, it’s not the only way to challenge the drug war.

We can and should also reform drug laws, address systemic racism within society and law enforcement, dismantle the systems of perverse financial incentives that keep the drug war entrenched in the criminal justice system, and replicate the work of state and countries that have already decriminalized or legalized some drugs.

We need a critical mass of law enforcement to do what Muyshondt, Bucci and Castle have done—first, stop doing harm. Then make amends.

But two approaches can simultaneously be valuable. With law enforcement actively fighting against these changes, as they often do, it will be hard to see progress. At the very least, we need a critical mass of law enforcement to do what Muyshondt, Bucci and Castle have done—first, stop doing harm. Then make amends.

“Police are easy followers,” said Muyshondt with characteristic bluntness. He seems to believe that if the winds of change shift direction on drugs, law enforcement will follow the new trends as devotedly as they now follow current ones.

Castle believes that in order to change police hearts and minds, we have to change the entire conversation about drugs. We have to “open up about the real issues,” he said. “The problems with child abuse, domestic violence, financial problems because people can’t earn enough money to be able to live in certain areas of the country. Until we start saying that these are the problems that lead to drugs for a lot of people, we are not going to get a true picture.”

Systemic change, even revolution, starts with individual conversations. At first it might not seem like a few new allies would have much effect on the system as a whole, but those allies are the dry brush waiting for a spark. The job of active and retired law enforcement who know the truth about the War on Drugs is to lay that brush, so when the fire finally catches, there will be no stopping it.

* LEAP is the fiscal sponsor of The Influence Foundation, which operates Filter.

Top photo via Wikimedia Commons

The post When Cops Turn Against the Drug War appeared first on Filter.

Coming from North Carolina, where harm reduction programs have barely begun to take root, I considered the European tour akin to visiting the motherland. Finally I would see “real” harm reduction programs, evolved after decades of fine-tuning. But Europe also showed me something I hadn’t expected.

“Everything has been professionalized, so the basic idea of harm reduction has faded away.”

Every program I visited was clean and medical, government-funded and seamlessly integrated into public health policy. But to my surprise, I saw little evidence of drug user-led activism. The edgy, scrappy side of harm reduction⁠—that agitation for change so visible in the United States⁠—seemed absent.

In Western Europe “everything has been professionalized, so the basic idea of harm reduction has faded away,” said Katrin Schiffer of Correlation European Harm Reduction Network, whom I interviewed at her office in Amsterdam. “Even the people who work in harm reduction have trouble explaining what it is.”

At first I wondered if these programs had always lacked an active drug user component. But after interviewing experts in several countries and researching the history of European harm reduction, I found that drug user-led activism was critical to launching the programs that exist today.

A Proud History of Activist-Driven Harm Reduction

Until the late 20th century, Europe approached drug policy like the rest of the world—with handcuffs, prisons and stigma. During the 1970s these repressive policies collided with an influx of imported heroin, and the subsequent arrival of HIV ignited a public health catastrophe. By 1985, more than half of people injecting drugs in some cities had contracted HIV—52 percent in Geneva, Switzerland; 60 percent in Milan, Italy; 62 percent in Paris, France. 

Dutch harm reductionist Jean-Paul Grund recalls that during the ‘70s, the drug market around Centraal train station in Amsterdam was so out of control that police posted signs telling people to enter at their own risk. 

“In Rotterdam and Amsterdam heroin was introduced in ’72 and it quickly grew into significant street scenes,” he said during an interview at his home in Rotterdam. He described buzzing crowds of people near Centraal train station “buying drugs, using drugs, selling drugs.”

During the 1980s open-air drug markets emerged across Europe. In Frankfurt, Germany over a thousand people bought and sold drugs each day at Taunusanlage Park. Zurich, Switzerland became infamous for its drug scene in the “Platzspitze,” or needle-park, where several thousand drug users gathered daily. Pockets of heavy public drug use, called “supermarkets,” sprang up all over Lisbon, Portugal. 

But today, public drug use in these cities has all but disappeared. In Amsterdam I strolled the neighborhood around Centraal, now a thriving scene of glittering canals, tree-lined streets and bicycle lanes. And it was Dutch drug users who played a critical role in this turnaround.

“We took over their office with a list of demands, and we didn’t leave until we had some agreement.”

Grund recalls that in 1981, activists from a drug user union in Rotterdam stormed the national office in charge of drug treatment centers to demand better access to methadone.

“We met at the railway station and marched over there,” he said. The union “took over their office with a list of demands, and we didn’t leave until we had some agreement.”

Soon after, the Netherlands began rolling out mobile methadone clinics—low-threshold services offering treatment to opioid users from buses. Eventually, the union even began dispensing methadone from its own office. Then in 1984, members of another drug user union, MDHG, began distributing sterile syringes to their peers in Amsterdam—launching the world’s first official needle exchange program. 

Throughout the 1980s and ‘90s, countries across Western Europe implemented a series of innovative harm reduction programs that are now replicated worldwide. 

These initiatives have achieved remarkable results everywhere you look.

The first safe consumption site, where participants can use illicit drugs under the supervision of trained staff, opened in Bern, Switzerland in 1986. Researchers credit these programs with reducing overdose deaths, lowering disease transmission rates and alleviating drug use in public areas. 

The Swiss also pioneered heroin-assisted treatment (HAT) in 1994, allowing doctors to prescribe heroin to heavily dependent people for whom other treatment methods had proven ineffective. HAT results include lower overdose rates and reduced disease transmission, as well as disengaging people from illegal activities associated with acquiring street heroin. 

Then in 2001, Portugal took the plunge to decriminalize the personal possession of all drugs. 

These initiatives have achieved remarkable results everywhere you look. In the Netherlands, HIV prevalence among people who inject drugs dropped from 28 percent in the 1980s to near zero today—prompting the 2016 UNGASS Country Progress Report to declare that people who inject there “are not considered a major risk group” for HIV. 

Since the widespread adoption of harm reduction, Switzerland has seen a 64 percent decline in drug-related deaths. The percentage of new HIV cases originating from injection drug use also plummeted from 50.7 percent during the ‘90s to 2 percent in 2014. 

Portugal’s decriminalization experiment has resulted in lower rates of problematic and injection drug use, fewer HIV transmissions and a general decline in past-year and past-month use of illicit drugs.

Diminished Activism and Unaddressed Problems

But Europe’s prime innovative years reached their zenith long ago. Of course drug-user led activism still exists—particularly in the former Soviet Bloc, where harsh drug policies are igniting action. But in Western and Central Europe, drug user organizing has largely lost its presence and power.

“Harm reduction interventions in the main in Western Europe are delivered either by national health services or by non-governmental agencies that focus on health interventions,” said Niamh Eastwood, executive director of Release, the UK’s center of expertise on drugs and drug laws. Harm reduction “has become more contained within the medical model … at the expense of funding for grassroots activism.”

Europeans seem aware of the missing activism component. As early as 2006, the European Commission issued a paper emphasizing the need for more civic involvement in creating and implementing drug policy. A report by the Civil Society Forum on Drugs in 2018 admitted that when it comes to developing national drug strategies and action plans, “user groups are not only less prevalent in the member states than other types of [civil society organizations] but their level of involvement is also generally lower.”

Eastwood said that the source and size of budgets partly explain the decline of user-led activism. When services are provided by large-scale organizations with big, government-sourced budgets, it “can create a sense of fear of pushing the boundary around harm reduction initiatives,” she explained. Organizations “may be more risk-adverse concerning not just innovative approaches but also approaches that wouldn’t fall technically within the legal system of the country.”

A staff nurse told me that “drug users don’t know how to inject properly.”

Harm reduction programs in Western Europe are almost all government-funded, even when private organizations run them. For example, a nonprofit called TADAM manages Belgium’s first and only safe consumption space on government funds. Drug consumption spaces are illegal in Belgium, but you’d never guess it from the gleaming ventilation systems in the facility’s smoking room, the staff of doctors, nurses and social workers, and a level of sterility to rival a surgeon’s operating table. 

But I didn’t see any evidence of peers or drug user empowerment. Not only that, but some staff seemed downright appalled at the idea. 

A staff nurse who led the tour of the site told me that the facility hired medical personnel because “drug users don’t know how to inject properly.”

Such a statement might lead US harm reductionists to sharpen their pitchforks. But during my trip I frequently encountered paternalistic attitudes towards drug users. (To be fair, I also met people who work to empower drug users and are frustrated at the complacency of many European harm reduction programs.)

None of the safe consumption sites I encountered in Belgium, Switzerland or the Netherlands offers take-home naloxone to laypeople. There are legal barriers—only 10 of the European Union’s 28 countries allow this—but efforts to challenge these laws appear rare. Some staff even dismissed widespread naloxone access—which unequivocally saves lives and doesn’t cause harms—as “dangerous” because of supposed encouragement of opioid use among polydrug users, or as a “flavor of the week.” 

Jean-Paul Grund described this attitude as a combination of misinformation about naloxone, distrust of drug users and lack of urgency, since Western Europe is not experiencing an overdose crisis at North American levels. 

“Europeans are accustomed to not seeing drug use.”

Overdose deaths are still a problem in Europe, however. In fact, Grund heads a global team, Stop Overdose Now, to bring overdose prevention tools to active drug users. The group is currently developing two digital apps: OD Buster, to connect people to naloxone-carrying volunteers in their area; and FenChecker, an interactive map where people can check for the local presence of fentanyl. Both apps are scheduled to launch in fall 2019.

Stop Overdose Now is one of many examples of current innovation efforts in Europe. But activism as a whole has largely faded from drug user services. Ironically, the success of harm reduction programs may be partly to blame. 

Katrin Schiffer at Correlation explained that many harm reduction programs were designed not only to improve the health and safety of drug users, but also to reduce incidences of public drug use. As a results of efforts to move drug use indoors and away from the public eye, people who use drugs have become invisible. 

“Reach is further but the involvement and dignity and respect [of people who use drugs] are often the cost of that.” 

In countries where harm reduction programs have existed for a long time, “Europeans are accustomed to not seeing drug use,” said Schiffer. “They are accustomed to nice neighborhoods. Public space is becoming more exclusive, which is unacceptable, because public space should be for everyone.”

Western European harm reduction presents an interesting paradox. On the one hand, the widespread availability of effective harm reduction programs is laudable. Drug-related disease rates are low. Overdose rates are low. A variety of treatment options, from abstinence to methadone to prescription heroin, are available in many areas at no cost. Integrated care models⁠—ones that recognize the complex stew of social, economic, psychological and familial circumstances that contribute to problematic drug use⁠—are common. Gone are the days of begging for funding scraps to support a meager staff. 

But these far-reaching successes have come at a price. 

“In the US what you’ve got is local initiatives that are run by people who are directly impacted, but they are very small-scale and their reach isn’t very far,” said Niamh Eastwood. In Western Europe, “the reach is further but the issues of involvement and dignity and respect [of people who use drugs] are often the cost of that.” 

Lessons for America

Medical programs reduce health-related harm. But without activism, highly damaging structures—the remaining bad drug policies and inequalities—are left unchallenged. In the absence of large-scale public health crises, impetus for progress can evaporate.

In most of Western Europe, as across the world, drug users are still stigmatized, still criminalized, still marginalized, still considered second-class citizens. This will not change without user-led advocacy.

Ironically, during my time in Europe, my home state of North Carolina succeeded in passing legislation to remove a ban on state funding for syringes. For three years we had fought to lift that ban, urging the government to allocate resources to protect its citizens from harm. But my European tour put that victory in a different light. 

Among America’s drug-user activist groups and unions, there is widespread fear of harm reduction being co-opted.

Over the past several years in the US, largely due to the overdose crisis, harm reduction has catapulted from pariah status to a mainstream public health term. State after state has adopted 911 Good Samaritan laws, naloxone take-home programs, syringe exchange and low-threshold medication-assisted treatment programs. Campaigns to open safe consumption spaces are well underway in several cities. Local and state governments are allocating funding to harm reduction organizations, and new programs are developing in previously hostile territory. 

But amidst the fever of progress, tensions boil. Among America’s drug-user activist groups and unions, there is widespread fear of harm reduction being co-opted by the public health system, social workers and professionals without personal experience with drugs. I’ve written about this tension at past harm reduction conferences. 

If Western Europe offers a glimpse into America’s future, then US activists’ fear is more than justifiable. As harm reduction programs succeed in managing the negative consequences of drug use and the sense of crisis fades, as funding shifts to governments and professional organizations, it will be too easy for activism to dissolve into complacence. 

The harm reduction movement must make a conscious effort to ensure that in pursuit of expansion, it doesn’t lose its roots.

Image by Filter

The post When Harm Reduction Expansion Stifles Activism: A Lesson From Europe appeared first on Filter.

“I just decided it was time to move things forward,” says Cooper, an African American trans woman from Georgia. “I realized that I might be the person and the agency that would be able to do the things that folks really need and want most.”

Cooper has her work cut out for her. According to a report released by the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE) in 2015, the unemployment rate for trans people was 15 percent, triple the national rate, while the unemployment rate for trans people of color was 20 percent. Twenty-nine percent of trans respondents reported living in poverty, with 12 percent reporting an annual household income under $10,000.

Such economic and social stresses contribute to high rates of drug use among transgender people. According to the report, 29 percent of trans survey participants reported illicit drug use or prescription misuse in the past month, a rate nearly triple that of the US population (10 percent). This indicates a need for services, but unfortunately, few harm reduction programs are designed with trans folks in mind.

Robyn Learned, a white trans woman who works with the Gender Health Center in Sacramento, California, says that the Center started distributing syringes to trans folks in 2016 after realizing that many trans or gender non-conforming people did not feel welcome at traditional harm reduction programs.

A trans person of color who uses drugs is targeted by the acute stigmatization of multiple identities, often generating layer upon layer of trauma.

As Learned explains, harm reduction programs are designed to address the needs of people who use drugs, a heavily stigmatized population. Yet drug use is only ever one layer of a person’s identity, and many bear additional burdens of stigma and oppression. People of color who use drugs are further marginalized by racism. A woman of color who uses drugs will additionally experience misogyny. And a trans person of color who uses drugs is targeted by the acute stigmatization of multiple identities, often generating layer upon layer of trauma.

Statistics on HIV and poverty rates illustrate this concept. A 2019 review of transgender women, for example, reported that an estimated 14 percent have HIV. But while white trans women report a 7 percent HIV rate, the rate leaps to 26 percent for Latina trans women and 44 percent for Black trans women.

And while trans people are overall more than twice as likely to be living in poverty as the general US population (12 percent), poverty rates for trans folks who identify as Latinx, American Indian, multiracial or Black hover around 40 percent.

Seeing the Bigger Picture

Shawn Demmons, an African American trans man and former chair of the board of directors at the Transgender Law Center, currently works for the Center of Excellence for Transgender Health in San Francisco. He specializes in training community-based organizations on how to engage people who identify as transgender in health care, with particular emphasis on the marginalizing intersections of social, economic and political factors.

Demmons says that in order for harm reduction organizations to address the needs of the trans population, “you need to think more holistically about what people’s needs are.” He explains, “You are looking at disparities in income, education, access to housing, access to safe spaces, access to health care.”

Demmons recommends that service organizations cultivate relationships with community partners who work on housing, healthcare access, employment, legal aid, political activism and other related issues. Ideally, these linkages should not be mere referrals, but strong partnerships that recognize the critical role of each component in addressing overall wellness.

“Feelings of danger are constantly surrounding people.”

In addition to social, economic and political challenges, trans people who use drugs often face severe trauma and harassment in their daily lives. For example, many trans people who enter facilities that are strictly divided by gender, such as inpatient drug treatment programs, jails and prisons, are misgendered, or placed in a facility that does not correspond to their gender identity. In particular, for trans women placed in a cisgender male facilities, violence, harassment and even rape are common.

“[For] folks of trans experience there can be relentless trauma and microaggressions,” says Tori Cooper. “Feelings of danger [are] constantly surrounding people.”

In fact, 39 percent of NCTE survey respondents reported experiencing serious psychological distress in the past month, compared to 5 percent among the general population. Additionally, 40 percent of trans respondents had attempted suicide—nearly nine times the rate of the general population.

Staff at harm reduction and health-focused organizations should “have some knowledge of trauma-informed care,” says Demmons. For example, if staff is working with a trans woman of color, “you can almost guarantee that she has experienced racism, transphobia [and] violence.” It’s important to ensure that staff “are able to assess for those things and that they are not providing care in a way that could create more harm for that person.”

Barriers and False Assumptions

The trauma resulting from the harassment and violence that many trans women, especially women of color, often experience in their daily lives creates barriers to accessing care. There is an all-too-justified fear of facing discrimination and stigmatization from healthcare providers.

Trans men, though many also face daily harassment and discrimination, often have trouble accessing healthcare or harm reduction services for different reasons. Shawn Demmons explains that while trans women often suffer because they are seen and harassed for their appearance, trans men often suffer because they are not seen at all.

It is common for providers to make presumptions about trans men—such as assuming that their sexual preference is for heterosexual women.

Trans men “are invisible,” says Demmons. He offers examples of men who are afraid to talk to medical providers about gynecological issues because they don’t want to expose the fact that they are transgender. They therefore lose important opportunities for preventative care.

Demmons also says it is common for providers to make presumptions about trans men—such as assuming that their sexual preference is for heterosexual women. A study published in AIDS Patient Care and STDs confirms this tendency among providers.

In general, ignorance of the complexity and variety of sexual experience among trans people can lead to inaccurate risk assessment and lack of access to appropriate preventative services. For example, studies on clinical health and sexual orientation of trans men undergoing masculinizing hormone therapy have indicated that testosterone can play a significant role in shifting trans men’s sexual partners from women to men who have sex with men, with important implications for preventative sexual health. (The studies acknowledge that it is unclear whether testosterone facilitates this shift, or if trans men become more willing to explore existing sexual preferences as a result of increased comfort with their bodies and identities as they transition.)

Demmons emphasizes that harm reduction and other health providers should always ask, rather than assume, a person’s sexual behavior—and continue to ask throughout the person’s engagement in the program.

Stimulants and Safe Sex

“There is the potential for an emerging epidemic of HIV if you are having sexual partners in a population we know has high prevalence of HIV,” Demmons says. Risks associated with sexual behaviors around drug use, especially stimulants, should be factored in with increased libido reported by trans men on hormone therapy and with new sexual behaviors experienced by trans people in transition.

From a harm reduction perspective, says Tori Cooper, if a person is taking one or more substances that increase sexual arousal or behaviors, “that will put them at increased risk for HIV and STDs.”

 Data from the 2015 National Survey on Drug User Health indicates higher use of stimulants among sexual minority and transgender adults. That year cocaine use was 183 percent higher among sexual minority adults than among their sexual majority counterparts, while methamphetamine use was 283 percent higher. A Canadian study, which measured cocaine and amphetamine use among transgender people in Ontario, found rates of use 325 percent and 550 percent higher, respectively, than for the general population.

Another Canadian study published in 2011 demonstrated a link between methamphetamine use and unprotected sex among gay, bisexual and transgender individuals. Methamphetamine use during sex can increase the risk of HIV and other STDs by delaying orgasm and drying the mucous membranes, which can cause tearing and infection.

Trans Leadership and Good Practice

Transgender people, especially those who use drugs, face a variety of risks in all spheres of life. But by adopting a holistic and inclusive approach to wellness, harm reduction and health-focused organizations can create programs that engage and empower them.

Trans folks are the experts on their life.

The process starts by hiring trans folks in program management and organizational leadership. Trans people in leadership positions, and particularly trans people of color who use drugs, will help ensure that those who experience multiple layers of marginalized identity have opportunities to engage in harm reduction services and advocacy around issues that affect them.

Trans folks “are the experts on their life,” says Learned. “If you give them the freedom and the space and the support to be able to express that to you, they will be much more able to have agency to help themselves with any decision they need to make.”

Cooper adds, “If the folks who are most affected are not making the policies, then they are not going to create the policies that are most effective.”

Cisgender staff should be trained on how to appropriately engage with transgender individuals, which can include everything from gender affirmation and proper pronoun use to trauma-informed care and the knowledge to discuss hormone therapy with clients and make appropriate referrals.

For Tori Cooper, engagement starts the moment a person walks in the door. “Number one is affirm people’s gender or their gender presentation or their gender identity,” she says. “If someone tells you they are a woman, then you respond to them accordingly,” because that “automatically adds a layer of respect to the situation.”

Demmons recommends that staff ask all participants about gender identity and pronouns. Including all participants would help avoid situations in which only people perceived as trans are asked about their gender identity and would also facilitate a cultural shift towards recognizing the fluid nature of gender. He also adds that intake forms should include non-binary options, and that program locations should offer gender-neutral restrooms.

Other examples of trans-specific harm reduction include education and resources on silicon injections, hormone therapy and stimulant use. According to a 2015 report on amphetamine use by Harm Reduction International, recommendations include providing safe smoking materials such as pipes, lip balm and burn salve, teaching and encouraging alternative use methods such as smoking (as opposed to injection), and offering water, juice, healthy food, toothpaste and toothbrushes to protect against dehydration and poor nutrition and to promote dental hygiene.

Staff should also work with transgender clients who use stimulants and engage in sex work—work undertaken by 10.8 percent of respondents to the 2015 National Transgender Discrimination Survey, with rates twice as high among trans women than trans men, and much higher among trans people of color than white trans people—to create plans to manage use, avoid binging and promote safer sexual behavior. These discussions should include information on the use of condoms and lubrication, and how to confront real-world challenges associated with sex work, lack of housing and domestic violence.

Although there are many specific ways in which harm reduction organizations can offer help, resources and information for transgender people, simply creating spaces where trans people feel acknowledged and comfortable is a vital first step.

Effective engagement is “not necessarily [about] building anything specific for trans [people],” says Robyn Learned. “It’s more [about] building a place that is known to be inclusive and open to them and they will find you.”

Harm reduction programs are designed to reach vulnerable populations, but many do not yet sufficiently break down barriers to care for people who are marginalized not only by drug use, but by multiple identities and other factors. Robyn Learned challenges harm reduction programs to measure success particularly through their ability to engage trans women of color who are homeless or participate in sex work.

“If you can serve them well, then you can serve everyone well,” she says.

 It’s a challenge to which harm reductionists need to rise.

Photo of transmasculine person vaping by Zackary Drucker via the Gender Spectrum Collection at Broadly

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