A forty-two-yr-antique man changed into placed on trial for ownership of mescaline on the market or deliver, but the defense claimed that the fabric might be derived from a cactus bought legally at any plant save in Cork for €35.
Alexander Rojas Rey pleaded not guilty to fees of ownership of mescaline and ownership of the substance for sale or supply opposite the Misuse of Drugs Act at his rental at River Towers, Lee Road, Cork, on January 23, 2018. A lot of the statistics of the case were not disputed among the parties. The key issue becomes whether or not the substance was a proscribed drug.
Dermot Sheehan, prosecution barrister, submitted to the jury:
And Mr. Sheehan stated that mescaline was a proscribed drug and became on the list of such tablets. Peter O’Flynn, the defense barrister, reminded the jury that the defense changed into moving into any plant save and buy any such cactus. He stated they had finished so and purchased a cactus for €35, which become introduced to Cork Circuit Criminal Court. The defense barrister stated the State’s professional witness stated the plant contained mescaline. Mr. O’Flynn said the State should remedy the state of affairs without a doubt via including the list of prohibited materials any cactus containing mescaline, however, had not achieved so. The defence barrister said the defendant stated that he drinks a tonic made from hot water and the cloth he found.
Mr. O’Flynn stated: “There has been no proof of him profiting in any way from having this plant cloth. I say you need to have a doubt approximately him being in ownership of a controlled drug.” Judge McCourt added the jury out to clarify: “The accused admits he turned into in possession of a substance. His defense is that the substance becomes not a controlled drug in the meaning of the regulation.” A man on the jury became discharged as he becomes unable to return to Cork Circuit Criminal Court for the trial the day gone by. By agreement of all parties, the case proceeded earlier than a jury of eleven — seven men and 4 women. Michael Massing’s The Fix’s dust jacket summarizes his thesis in bold red letters: “Under the Nixon Administration, America Had an Effective Drug Policy. WE SHOULD RESTORE IT. (Nixon Was Right).”
That is a pretty extraordinary claim to make regarding an administration that gained office in large part through the “Southern Strategy” that had at its heart Nixon’s declaration of a “War on Drugs” and whose policies created the cocaine epidemic that caused so many new concerns a decade later. At most, I would agree that the Nixon administration’s pursuit of a fundamentally bad policy included some worthwhile efforts that every subsequent administration has devalued. This was not because Nixon or his closest advisers were right about drug policy but because Nixon was more interested in foreign policy issues. His benign neglect of domestic policy allowed some positive developments to blossom in the midst of the mire of incompetence and corruption that characterized his presidency.
Perceptively concluding that “policies being formulated in Washington today bear little relation to what is taking place on the street,” Massing attempts to depict the real effects of drug policy at the street level. Unfortunately, he doesn’t rely on the epidemiologic evidence or read the careful analyses conducted by researchers like myself who have systematically examined what is truly taking place on the street. Instead, he relies on the journalist’s usual — and usually misleading — tool of dramatic anecdotes. Massing’s anecdotal case is presented through the stories of Raphael Flores and Yvonne Hamilton. Flores runs Hot Line Cares, a drop-in center for addicts in Spanish Harlem. Hot Line Cares, which Flores founded in 1970, is essentially just a cramped office in an otherwise abandoned tenement where Flores and his staff advise and assist addicts who want to get into treatment. Given the fragmented state of drug abuse treatment in New York City and most other American communities, it is no easy to connect addicts with appropriate care and even harder to connect them with adequate aftercare. Massing writes, “If a Holiday Inn is full, it will at least call the Ramada down the street to see if it has a vacancy. Not so two treatment programs.”
