1000s of Katrina victims denied help because of way prior drug charges

[donsu]

http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=10660


Punishment Delayed
Thousands of Katrina victims are being denied help -- because of long-ago drug convictions.


-snip-

Samson and her family are among possibly thousands of Hurricane Katrina victims who are being denied help because of past drug convictions. Tough-on-crime laws passed mostly in the 1990s bar drug felons -- though not other kinds of offenders -- from receiving a range of federal assistance, from student loans to cash welfare, now known as Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF). The issue is pressing enough that several members of Congress introduced a bill early this month to temporarily restore such aid to residents of Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, and Texas, who have had their lives disrupted by hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

-snip-

A recent report by the federal Government Accountability Office found that the aid cutoffs were hammering tens of thousands of Americans even before the hurricanes. The report estimated that 41,000 students were denied college assistance during the 2003-2004 academic year because of drug convictions. The GAO’s researchers only received data from 15 of the nation’s 3,000 public housing agencies, but just in that handful found that almost 1,500 families had been denied housing because one of their members had a drug record. The aid bans, the report notes, disproportionately fall on women, who are more likely than male offenders to be both poor and responsible for children.

-snip-

States have the leeway to soften or entirely opt out of the bans on TANF and food stamps, and most have done so in recent years. Louisiana, for instance, allows drug offenders to apply for these benefits after a year’s waiting period, provided they submit to ongoing drug testing. But in Texas, Alabama, and Mississippi, which have plenty of their own victims and are now home to many Louisiana evacuees, the bans apply for life. (Texas has, at least, waived the ban on emergency food stamps -- but not TANF -- for Katrina evacuees.)

-snip-

The bill has 10 co-sponsors and is supported by dozens of civil rights and drug reform groups, including the ACLU, the NAACP, and Human Rights Watch. Still, it faces an uphill battle in the Republican-dominated Congress. “Right now, the prospects aren’t good,” concedes Piper.
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[Angry Girl]

1. The U.S. drug laws AGAIN/STILL used for racist ends

The original anti-marijuana laws came into being for rascist reasons. Nothing has changed except that TV makes it easier for people to believe drugs are baaaad in and of themselves....

And wasn't the U.S. Constitution written on hemp paper?

The marijuana laws were racist from the start.
http://www.masscann.org/facts/racist.htm

Why is Marijuana Illegal?
A brief history of the criminalization of cannabis
http://blogs.salon.com/0002762/stories/2003/12/22/whyIsMarijuanaIllegal.html

"Reefer Madness"
Ethnic prejudice was also behind marijuana laws, which were first enacted in the Southwest and South of the USA. Around and after World War I many poor Mexican immigrants escaping from the turmoil of the Mexican revolution started coming into America and brought with them the habit of smoking hemp, which also became popular amongst Blacks, especially the musicians in New Orleans who around 1910 created a new style of music called Jazz. Partly this popularity was because of high prices of black-market alcohol after 1919.

These minorities then became the target of a racist propaganda campaign by the "yellow press" newspapers which depicted marijuana as a "killer weed", a drug so dangerous that it would turn ordinary people into crazy blood-thirsty killers. The public was told that marijuana drives people insane and makes them uncontrollably violent. None of the claims that led to marijuana prohibition was ever substantiated, but when the claims were repeated often enough people believed them anyway.
http://www.taima.org/en/drug.htm

Symbolism and racism in drug history and policy
http://journalsonline.tandf.co.uk/(qeefveqathkldi451wq10b55)/app/home/contribution.asp?referrer=parent&backto=issue,7,15;journal,29,46;linkingpublicationresults,1:102207,1

The History of the Non-Medical Use of Drugs in the United States
by Charles Whitebread, Professor of Law, USC Law School
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/History/whiteb1.htm

VIRGINIA LAW REVIEW
VOLUME 56 OCTOBER 1970 NUMBER 6
THE FORBIDDEN FRUIT AND THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE: AN INQUIRY INTO THE LEGAL HISTORY OF AMERICAN MARIJUANA PROHIBITION
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/Library/studies/vlr/vlrtoc.htm

Grow More Pot
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Congress/2503/lyrics01.html