WBEZ | drugs

Pill round-up: MWRD wants your unused medication

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 17:21:00 -0500

Valium, adderall, warfarin — if it’s common medication in the general population, it’s a common water contaminant. Pharmaceutical products routinely enter the ecosystem, altering the behavior of fish and tainting the drinking water supplies of 40 million Americans.

To help cut back on that contamination, The Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago (MWRD) is participating in a national drug “take-back” event, inviting Chicagoans to anonymously dispose of their unused and unwanted medication.

MWRD has participated in all five national drug collection events, which are organized nationally by the Drug Enforcement Administration. For the first time, MWRD will weigh Saturday’s haul to assess the program’s reach.

Spring prescription drug collection date set for April 27; three drop-off sites at MWRD facilities. twitter.com/MWRDGC/status/…
— MWRD (@MWRDGC) February 28, 2013

Drugs still make their way into our water, said Thomas Granato of MWRD’s monitoring and research division, once they’ve passed through the body. But destroying unused medication eliminates a preventable source of the pollution.

Granato said it’s not currently possible for the District to remove pharmceutical contaminants from wastewater once they’ve made it out into the environment. MWRD hands the medication they collect over to police, who have it incinerated.

Collection will be at the main gate of MWRD’s three treatment facilities, from 10 a.m. until 2 p.m.

O’Brien Water Reclamation Plant, 3500 Howard Street, Skokie, Ill.
Stickney Water Reclamation Plant, 6001 W. Pershing Rd., Cicero, Ill.
Calumet Water Reclamation Plant, 400 E. 130^th St., Chicago.

Reporter's Notebook: If Illinois legalizes marijuana, how could that affect the economics of the drug trade among gangs?

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 15:06:00 -0500

Curious City is a news-gathering experiment designed to satisfy the public's curiosity. People submit questions, vote for their favorites, and WBEZ reports out the winning questions in real time, on Facebook, Twitter and the timeline above.

Siva Iyer from Elmhurt asked: If Illinois legalizes marijuana, how could that affect the economics of the drug trade among gangs? WBEZ reporter Natalie Moore investigates.

Where do you think we should start this investigation? How would you answer this? Comment below!

Has the idea of ticketing pot gone up in smoke?

Wed, 16 Jan 2013 05:00:00 -0600

Did Chicago’s change in its marijuana law work?

That’s what the Chicago’s City Council and Mayor Rahm Emanuel will have to ask themselves as the tally of last year’s “pot tickets” trickled in last week.

If you don’t follow Chicago’s highly-scrutinized politics of pot, let’s rewind. Back in June 2012, City Council voted 43 to 3 to effectively decriminalize the possession of small amounts of pot. So, by August of last year, Chicago police had the option of treating such possession as a ticketable offense — not just an arrestable one.

Backers hailed the change as a way to divert police resources to where they're most needed.

“I commend the City Council for passing this ordinance that will hold people accountable while freeing up police officers to focus their time and efforts on crime prevention,” Mayor Rahm Emanuel said in a statement, issued after the law’s passage.

If you don’t follow the logic, here’s the rationale for the policy change.

In 2011 the Chicago Police Department tallied 95,774 arrests for an estimated 350,374 crimes, which ranged from murders and shootings to burglaries and assaults, according to city data. That same year, the Chicago Police Department made 20,082 arrests for possession of cannabis for amounts under 30 grams. In other words, nearly one out of every five arrests made by Chicago cops that year involved possession of small amounts of pot.

Aldermen and others argued that the sheer number of pot arrests distracted the department from the city’s ongoing battle against violence. They also weren’t happy that pot arrests disproportionately swept up black youth. In a scathing editorial, Ald. Joe Moreno (1st) claimed “White people smoke marijuana as much as black and Latino people, yet 78% of those arrested in Chicago are minorities. 90% of those convicted are minorities.”

And, there was another argument: Ticketing weed-smokers could both save and raise some serious cash.

On the savings front, proponents of decriminalizing pot-possession pointed to the cost of arresting and prosecuting offenders. The Chicago Reader reported that Cook County spent nearly $78 million on arrests and prosecutions. All that for questionable results, as the conviction rate was abysmal, even by Mayor Emanuel’s own admission.

“We cannot afford to take our officers off the streets for hours at a time only to see over 80 percent of the marijuana cases dismissed in court,” the mayor said after aldermen passed the ticketing amendment last year.

Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy estimated that the new ordinance would free up more than 20,000 hours of police time each year, the equivalent of about $1 million in savings, the Chicago Tribune reported.

In that same article, the Chicago Tribune said the mayor’s office refused to give an estimate on ticket revenues, but City Hall stressed savings in man-hours and cops’ overtime. The paper, using 2011 data, estimated the city stood to raise anywhere from $4.5 million to $9 million. Alderman Danny Solis (25th) was one of the bill’s sponsors, and argued that the city could take in as much as $7 million.

So, as City Hall looked through its crystal ball last summer, it saw a seemingly small change in local pot policy accomplishing quite a bit: the policy would free cops to do more important work, it would put a dent in violence, and it would boost city coffers.

But now that real data are trickling in about the policy, maybe that vision was unrealistic.

The tally

Two sources have been tracking the number of tickets issued for cannabis since last August. The first — the Department of Administrative Hearings — is tasked with handling citations, including ones issued for possession of cannabis. Responding to a WBEZ Freedom of Information Act request, that department said there were 380 tickets issued for cannabis in 2012 between the time the law went into effect and Dec. 31. The other source — the Chicago Police Department — said that total stands at 395.

The Department of Administrative Hearings was not immediately available, but here’s a stab at clearing up the discrepancy. The CPD figures are more up to date than those available from DAH (via FOIA) or the city’s data portal site, as the police can access records that contain more refined categories. However, we use the figure of 380 because — as the police department says — after a ticket is issued, tracking is actually up to DAH.

The city’s data portal site only lists pot possessions for amounts greater or less than 30 grams, and does not differentiate arrests made for persons possessing under 15 grams, the amount the ordinance sets as the limit that the police can issue tickets.

(The map below details locations of arrests for pot possessions as well as the locations for tickets issued.)

2012 Pot arrests for 30 grams or less

2012 tickets issued for cannabis under 15 grams

Regardless, how do the numbers stack up compared to City Hall’s stated goals?

Right now, it looks like city's got some catching up to do when it comes to replacing marijuana arrests with marijuana tickets. Of all police actions relating to possessing small amounts of pot, just 2 percent are from tickets, while the other 98 percent stem from arrests.

Administrative judges found that 138 of those 380 issued tickets came to nothing, meaning the people ticketed were ultimately held not liable, and the fines were dropped.

The bottom line is that the city’s coffers didn’t exactly swell, as the tickets that did stick netted just $98,000.

Pot arrests did plunge after the law went into effect, but there wasn’t a one-for-one replacement of tickets for arrests. As if by an occult hand, marijuana arrests had been going down (on average, 2 to 4 percent per month) in Chicago prior to the City Council’s change in policy. However, one estimate puts the drop in pot possession arrests in August 2012 at nearly 45 percent, compared to the same month in other years.

“Since the ordinance went into effect, arrests for possession of 10 grams or less of cannabis accounted for a total of 4,745 arrests and the issuance of 395 administrative notices of violations (ANOVs), as compared to 7,772 arrests for the time frame 4 August through 23 December 2011,” said the police department’s Melissa Stratton.

That’s a drop of 3,027 arrests year-over-year for that period. But, again, DAH only dealt with 380 tickets by the end of 2012.

The policy on the ground

The shortfall in marijuana tickets is likely due to how the new policy was implemented. Shortly after the law’s passage, the police department issued a special order (related to the alternative cannabis enforcement program) that laid out how to issue tickets. The gist was that cops could issue tickets in some circumstances, but make arrests in others.

“Our officers enforce the marijuana law as part of their daily duties. While issuing a citation for marijuana possession under 10 grams saves time for our officers, in certain situations our officers are required to make a physical arrest,” said Melissa Stratton, Director of News Affairs at the Chicago Police Department.

The amendment that makes pot-ticketing possible in the first place spans three pages, but the CPD special order comprises nine. One page details “aggravating factors” that could lead to an arrest.

The first is whether subjects are “in the act of smoking cannabis.” This means residents caught in the act get the cuffs instead of getting a ticket. Other factors that bump possession from a ticket to an arrest include driving while under the influence. Smoking on school grounds, in parks and at beaches will also get you arrested.

Stratton said the presence of personal identification makes a difference, too. Tickets require subjects to present ID. If a subject doesn’t have one, he or she is arrested instead.

And, the amount of pot involved matters, too. Exactly how much will bump an infraction from a ticket to an arrest? Anything over 15 grams. For comparison, consider that a typical joint weighs between 0.2 and 0.8 grams. A little arithmetic suggests somebody could carry the equivalent of 15-20 joints and still be under 15 grams.

But, again, arrest rates suggest officers aren't making the most of their power to bump some ticketable infractions into arrests. The reason may be that cops are just opting to make fewer arrests, albeit surreptitiously, as reported by the Chicago Reader’s Mick Dumke last October.

“The numbers suggest that at first some officers tried the ticketing process. In the first week of the new policy, 27 tickets were issued citywide. By week six, though, the number had fallen to eight,” he wrote then.

Is this what City Council wanted?

Chicago’s not racking up that many pot-related tickets, but in some ways aldermen are getting one thing they hoped for: police seem to be easing back on pot arrests.

However, the change in policy promised more than that. Recall that idea of distraction; if police would only spend less time chasing weed-tokers, they could spend more time fighting violent crime.

That remains to be seen. Murders continued to climb after the close of 2012’s long, hot summer of violence and, by year’s end, the homicide tally reached a recent high of 507. Shootings were up, too.

Gun shootings, or aggravated batteries with a firearm, reached 1,737 in 2011. Police made 148 shootings-related arrests, leaving the arrest rate for that year at 8.5 percent.

The picture was different in 2012. The city saw 1,884 such incidents last year, but police made just 93 shooting-related arrests, with an attendant arrest rate of 4.9 percent.

The mayor's office deferred to the police department for comment on the tickets. Calls to several aldermen were also not returned.

It may be ironic that a City Hall that meticulously tracks — and often touts — numbers related to garbage pickups, snow-zone towing and other minutia hasn’t weighed in on whether its major change in drug policy has made the city safer or richer.

Mexican poet leads march against drug war

Tue, 04 Sep 2012 00:01:00 -0500

Led by a renowned Mexican poet, a four-mile march through Chicago’s West Side on Monday evening called for an end to the U.S. war on drugs. Javier Sicilia, whose 24-year-old son was killed last year by Mexican drug traffickers in Cuernavaca, blames the drug war for tens of thousands of violent deaths in that country.

Sicilia says the war has been devastating north of the border too. To make that point, he is leading a month-long bus caravan through the United States. His group joined hundreds of Chicago activists on the march, which began in the city’s Little Village neighborhood and ended in West Garfield Park.

“These are African-Americans and Latinos who have been criminalized,” he told WBEZ in Spanish, motioning to bystanders watching the march. “They are more vulnerable because there is a drug war.”

Sicilia said the war on drugs, which dates back to President Richard Nixon’s administration, has fueled mass incarceration and street violence in the United States.

He compared that bloodshed to Chicago gangster violence during Prohibition almost a century ago. But the drug war has deeper effects, Sicilia said, “because the scale is international and the weaponry is more powerful.”

Sicilia said authorities should treat drug use as an issue of public health, not criminality.

The caravan is scheduled to wrap up in Washington next week.

That time Mayor Daley 'threatened' Mick Dumke — and other stories from The Reader's political reporter

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 10:01:47 -0500

In this episode of the Interview Show, Chicago Reader political reporter Mick Dumke talks the politics — and racial bias — of marijuana arrests in Chicago, Mayor Emanuel's fierce grip on power and the infamous incident when former Mayor Daley expressed his desire to shove a gun up in his ass.

The next Interview Show is this Friday, April 6, with actor Brian Dennehy, rapper King Louie, Chicago Opera Theater general director Brian Dennehy and more. At The Hideout, 6:30 p.m. to 8 p.m.

McCarthy says war on drugs needs some tweaking

Mon, 05 Dec 2011 22:06:00 -0600

Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy said Monday law enforcement is getting the war on drugs wrong, and they've been getting it wrong for a long time. In a speech to civic and business leaders McCarthy said law enforcement has been focused on drug dealers.

"We seize product. We put it on the table. We put up an organizational chart. We say look, we've done a great job. We arrested all these drug dealers. We seized all of these kilos of cocaine. We walk away and by the time we turn the corner there's somebody else standing there, right?" McCarthy said.

McCarthy said as long as somebody goes to that corner to buy drugs, a supplier will show up. "What happens if two suppliers show up?" McCarthy asked. "We might have actually caused violence by our narcotics enforcement because now those two guys are going to be in competition for the same spot."

McCarthy said police have to get rid of the demand for drugs by staying on that corner so that when customers arrive to buy drugs, there's just police and eventually they'll stop shopping there, the market will be gone and the dealers will have no reason to be there and they'll stay away, too.

Experimental drug reverses effects of toxic wild mushrooms

Fri, 30 Sep 2011 09:10:00 -0500

Maybe it's something about this funky, rainy weather that has people chowing down on strange mushrooms. Regardless, for unlucky foragers who have consumed a poisonous mushroom, a drug still in clinical trials may avert potentially deadly consequences.

Doctors at Georgetown University Hospital have treated four people in the last month with the experimental drug silibinin after they ate toxic mushrooms picked in Virginia and Maryland. The first two men to check in for poisoning have recovered.

The other two women are in fair condition, Dr. Jacqueline Laurin, a liver specialist, tells Shots.

The wet weather that has doused the mid-Atlantic recently has created a nursery-like environment for the Amanita mushroom family — the genus responsible for most mushroom-related illnesses. Some of the toxic species sprouting in backyards and fields are dubbed with names seemingly inspired by metal bands, such as "Death Cap" and "Destroying Angel."

About two weeks ago, a man in Maryland and another one in Virginia mistook the toxic fungi for harmless varieties and scarfed them down. A few hours later, the men were suffering from severe nausea, vomiting and diarrhea.

When ingested, poisonous Amanita mushrooms release toxins that damage liver cells, or hepatocytes, and can cause complete liver failure.

Laurin treated all four patients with the drug after reading a research paper detailing its effectiveness. Silibinin, sold as Legalon in Europe, was approved for the treatment of mushroom poisoning there. The drug comes from the milk thistle plant and works by stopping amatoxins from reaching the liver.

Laurin initially got approval from the hospital's Institutional Review Board for a one-time emergency use of the drug, which is in its final stages of testing for U.S. approval. With help from the local Poison Control Center, she contacted the lead researcher of the clinical study in Santa Cruz, Calif. The drug was expedited to her and she eventually got approval to use it for a month.

Before silibinin, doctors used penicillin to treat mushroom poisoning. It doesn't pack the same punch, though, as the promising trial drug, according to Laurin.

She says she hopes the FDA will approve silbinin soon. In any event, she recommends people don't eat mushrooms unless they're 100 percent sure they're safe.

Revisiting the code of 'The Brickyard'

Tue, 20 Sep 2011 15:15:00 -0500

The local drug scene in Chicago was not just king pins and cartels. Drugs can erode day-to-day life; and for some, drugs consume most of life. Back in 2008, sociologist Greg Scott introduced listeners to a place where addicts got their fix; a place many called home. Known as “The Brickyard,” a community of addicts formed a community in the grounds of a legitimate brick salvage company on Cicero Avenue in Chicago. Scott was there to learn more about the code by which those in the community lived. Learning to abide by that code was, for many, a matter of life and death.

Greg Scott is a sociologist at DePaul University in Chicago. He also runs Sawbuck Productions, a multi-media production company. This story first aired in 2008 as part of Eight Forty-Eight's series The Brickyard.

Music Button: Sinister Luck Ensemble, "Small of the Back", from the album Anniversary, (Perishable)

Buzz kill: Marijuana genome sequenced for health, not highs

Fri, 19 Aug 2011 08:06:00 -0500

Stoners and scientists alike may be stoked to learn that a startup biotech company has completed the DNA sequence of Cannabis sativa, or marijuana. But here's something that could ruin a high: The company hopes the data will help scientists breed pot plants without much THC, the mind-altering chemical in the plant. The goal is instead to maximize other compounds that may have therapeutic benefits.

Kevin McKernan, founder and chief executive officer of the company, called Medicinal Genomics, says Cannabis sativa has 84 other compounds that could fight pain or possibly even shrink tumors. But anti-marijuana laws make it difficult for scientists to breed and study the plant in most countries. That's one reason he decided to publish his data for free on Amazon's EC2, a public data cloud.

McKernan, who has an office in Massachusetts and a lab in the Netherlands, where he can legally gather DNA from marijuana plants, has spent most of his career studying tumors in humans. But he tells Shots he had several friends with cancer who asked him about medical marijuana and whether it might do them some good. That got him interested in the emerging medical research on pot's healing properties.

Then he heard about a drug called Sativex, a Cannabis-derived drug developed by a German pharmaceutical company to treat muscle stiffness from multiple sclerosis. Sativex contains THC and another cannabanoid called CBD, which the company says keeps the psychoactive effects of THC in check. The drug is now available in the United Kingdom, Spain and Germany, and it's in trials to see if it works for cancer pain.

McKernan says Sativex might just be one of the first in a line of future pharmaceuticals using cannabis compounds for a variety of serious illnesses.

"We know which genes govern CBD and THC, but not the other 83 compounds," McKernan tells Shots. "Now that we've sequenced this genome, we can sequence other strains, and then we can tie the differences in DNA to different traits."

Opening up access to the data is especially important for a plant like Cannabis, McKernan says, because many scientists who'd like to study it in the U.S. and other countries can't get a license to grow it.

"A lot of people who want to contribute to this field can't, but now that this information is available, a lot of research can get done without growing any plants," McKernan said.

From drug dealing to diploma, a teen's struggle

Mon, 25 Jul 2011 13:55:00 -0500

First of a five-part series

No statistic in education is more damning than the nation's dropout rate. Almost 4 million students start ninth grade every year. One in four won't graduate.

About half of those who drop out every year are black. Most will end up unemployed, and by their mid-30s, six out of 10 will have spent time in prison. In Chicago, one young man dropped out, spent time in jail and is now getting a second chance.

For a kid who's been hustling and gang-banging on the streets of South Chicago for much of his life, 19-year-old Patrick Lundvick doesn't look menacing at all.

He's chubby, about 5-feet-8 inches tall, with a mop of curly black hair, light green eyes and a friendly disposition. Lundvick grew up poor and was an only child, raised by a single mom who couldn't always be there for him.

"It's always been like that," he says. "I did everything on my own."

A Dropout At 15

His decision to drop out of school at the age of 15 was his own, too. After going through 9th grade twice, he stopped going to school.

"You think, 'Alright, well, my friends are doing it, so I'm gonna do it,'" he says.

Lundvick didn't set foot in school for three years. When his mother finally found out, she shipped him off to a boot camp. But, he kept coming back to the streets where he got another kind of education: learning the drug trade.

"You can see a corner store," he says. "In your eyes, that's just a normal corner store. But, when I look at it, I see money. I see my normal custies — customers. Your whole perception changes, even when you lose people. Like, I've already had three of my best friends shot dead. One of them, I actually had to witness," he says.

It was a $75,000 cocaine deal gone bad, Lundvick says.

"I had one of my guys right here on 38th and Paulina. He was shot in the neck, laid out. These streets is no joke," he says.

To the police, though, Lundvick was just another small-time thug.

A 'Job' Selling Drugs

"A cop sees me. They want to stop and look — you know, 'Who's that? That's Phantom, grab him, grab him,'" he says. "Phantom" is the name he goes by.

Lundvick was 16 the first time he went to jail for selling drugs. It was the first "job" he ever had, and it was a gateway to a life of crime.

"Arson, attempted robbery, armed robbery. I got caught stealing a boat off the river. I was on house arrest for four months, not allowed near water," he says.

That was last September. All told, Lundvick has spent more than two years in jail. No one suffered more than his mother.

"Every time I was in a pair of handcuffs, or I was brought home by the cops, or she got that phone call from me at lockup, [she would say], 'When are you going to stop?'" he says.

Lundvick says he has stopped. He's now free on probation and enrolled in Youth Connection, which runs 22 charter schools in Chicago that deal exclusively with dropouts.

A Star Pupil

Lundvick is a star pupil. He's good with computers and unlike most dropouts, he's never had trouble with reading or math. But even if he gets his high school diploma, he has no illusions that his search for a good job and a better life will be easy.

"Your criminal record will hurt you, no matter what," Lundvick says. "Say you go for a job interview and the boss just looks at you, and decides not to give you a change. Well, keep going back every week to just say, 'Hey, have you filled the position yet?' Show him you're not just out there on the streets, no. Everyone can change — everyone."

Getting people to buy that, of course, is another matter. The numbers tell a different story. Over half of the prison population in Illinois is made up of black male dropouts who couldn't — or didn't — want to change.

Those who work with dropouts say the reason shouldn't surprise anyone.

"The problem, overwhelmingly, from my point of view, is poverty," says Jack Wuest, who heads the Chicago-based Alternative Schools Network. His organization is devoted to rescuing dropouts and teaching them job skills.

"There's no real healthy economy in a lot of the neighborhoods. Jobs have left in mass numbers," Wuest says. "Eleven percent of black teens in the city had jobs. That's a jobless rate of 89 percent. It's devastating."

A Second Chance

Meanwhile, schools and alternative programs for dropouts in Chicago are filled to capacity. These programs are supposed to give young people a second chance, and for that, Lundvick is grateful. But for all his talk of turning a new leaf, he's unwilling to make a clean break from his past and the drug dealers and gang-bangers he still calls his friends.

"I can't say I will not hang out with the people I know, 'cause some of the people that are in that life, have saved my life," he says.

He says the two years he spent in jail and losing friends to drugs and violence forced him to open his eyes. Someday soon, he says, his mother will see him in college, with a nice home, making an honest living.

He expects to earn his high school diploma in January.