Newark, New Jersey Mayor Cory Booker has previously taken to Twitter to call the War on Drugs a “failure,” but he used a different social media platform this weekend to further criticize America’s approach to drug control.

In a question-and-answer session on the site Reddit, one user asked Booker to respond to the fact that “blacks make up just 14% of all drug users but half of those in prison for drug offenses,” Booker gave a long and thought-out reaction on the reasons the American approach to drug policy has failed so many people.

The so-called war, Booker argued, keeps in place a system of racial bias that negatively impacts communities of color. “I can’t accept that facts like this one do anything but demonstrate the historic and current biases in our criminal justice system,” he said:

Blacks make up less than 15% of our New Jersey’s population but make up more than 60% of our prison population. I can’t accept that facts like this one do anything but demonstrate the historic and current biases in our criminal justice system. …People should not see these facts and this discussion as an indictment of any one race, sector, or occupation, it should be seen as a call to all of us to do the difficult things to make a change because this isn’t a “black” problem this is an American problem.

The so called War on Drugs has not succeeded in making significant reductions in drug use, drug arrests or violence. We are pouring huge amounts of our public resources into this current effort that are bleeding our public treasury and unnecessarily undermining human potential. I see the BILLIONS AND BILLIONS of dollars being poured into the criminal justice system here in New Jersey and it represents big overgrown government at its worst. We should be investing dollars in programs and strategies that work not just to lower crime but work to empower lives.

It anguishes me how we seem to be so content with national and state recidivism rates of around 60% and how a staggering number of young black men are involved in the criminal justice system.

After offering his criticism, Booker went on to outline solutions he’s pushed in Newark, and others he’d like to see continue. The first program he mentioned focuses on fatherhood and tries to coach men into being responsible parents. That involves stopping drug use. But Booker explained he has had trouble securing funding for the program. “I work to raise money for it every year,” he said. “Shouldn’t we be investing in programs like these instead of pouring more and more dollars into programs that fail to achieve societal goals, perpetuate racial disparities and bleed countless tax dollars?”

The mayor also suggested court reform, as well job programs, drug treatment, and legal assistance for drug offenders as a method of helping people stay out of jail. Lastly, Booker pushed for mentor programs — of which he has always been a strong advocate — to help kids never start drugs in the first place. “It takes 4 hours a month to mentor a child,” Booker wrote, “the amount of time most watch TV in a day.”

New York City health workers distributed over 32.7 million free condoms last year in attempt to encourage safer sex. However, the NYPD actively works against the benefits of promoting tools to ensure safer sex by targeting sex workers who have condoms in their possession, using condoms as evidence to arrest people on prostitution charges.

In light of the 19th International AIDS Conference that will be held in Washington, DC later this month, activists are calling on legislators to take concrete steps toward addressing HIV infection. Decriminalizing carrying condoms is part of this initiative, since sex workers are 10 times more likely to be infected with HIV than the general population. Furthermore, sex work is more likely to become a tool of economic survival for disenfranchised populations, such as the estimated 43 percent of trans people who have worked in the sex industry at some point in their lives.

Advocacy groups like the Human Rights Watch (HRW) say it is imperative to promote condom use among this community, rather than aggressively deterring it with threats of arrest:

Police officers confiscate condoms and prosecutors try to enter them as evidence not because it is official policy to do so, but simply because they have not been trained to do otherwise…Categories of evidence — like testimony regarding the sexual history of rape victims — are excluded as a matter of public policy in many legal systems. In this case, the value of condoms for H.I.V. and disease prevention far outweighs any utility they might have in the enforcement of anti-prostitution laws. Law enforcement efforts should not interfere with the right of anyone, including sex workers, to protect his or her own health.

According to HRW’s recent survey on sex workers and condom use, 45.7% of respondents have, at one point or another, decided against carrying condoms for fear that they might get in trouble with the police. In U.S. cities where rates of HIV are close to the rates in some African countries, this is a dangerous precedent.

State Sen. Velmanette Montgomery (D-Brooklyn) introduced legislation in April that would make New York to be the first state to ban police officers from confiscating condoms as evidence for prostitution cases. Montgomery explained that her bill is not meant to endorse prostitution, but rather address the high rates of HIV infection in New York. The bill is currently pending in the New York State Assembly.

As many foreclosed-upon Americans face tough times, a new study shows that the housing crisis has had another dangerous side effect: child abuse. The study — which will be published in the August issue of Pediatrics — shows that the number of hospital-documented child abuse cases corresponds with increases in the mortgage delinquency rate. According to the study:

Between 2000 and 2009, rates of physical abuse and high-risk traumatic brain injury (TBI) admissions increased by 0.79% and 3.1% per year, respectively… Abuse and high-risk TBI admission rates were associated with the current mortgage delinquency rate and with the change in delinquency and foreclosure rates from the previous year.

Essentially, the study found that for every 1 percent increase in the 90-day mortgage delinquency rate, there was a 3 percent increase in the rate of child abuse requiring hospital admission. Researchers collected data from from about 40 U.S. hospitals and connected the information to unemployment, foreclosure, and mortgage delinquency figures in each hospital’s geographic region.

The study’s lead researcher, Dr. Joanne Wood, said she started the study because her colleagues were seeing an increase in cases of child abuse requiring hospitalization. Wood discovered that children whose families had a more insecure housing situation were far more likely to be abused.

Wood’s findings come at a time when many states are attempting to pass foreclosure reforms and homeowner protection measures, but are being met with fierce opposition from banks.

– Steven Perlberg

Buried in the House Farm Bill, approved by the House Agriculture Committee on Friday, is the agribusiness industry’s latest attempt to shed regulations restricting new genetically engineered (GE) crops. While the bill’s massive food stamps cuts elicited widespread outcry, the industry quietly inserted provisions to rush new crops onto the market after only a cursory review of their safety.

Three sections (10011, 10013, and 10014) tucked into the middle of the bulky bill work together to eliminate any real review of GE crops. This “Monsanto Rider” got its name from the corporation with a choke-hold on most of the country’s staple crops;  Monsanto owns the patents to genetically engineered strains of soybean, corn, sugar beet and cotton, to name a few, as well as many controversial chemical herbicides. Here are some of the rider’s most egregious game-changers:

• Environmental law does not apply. Review of GE crop impacts under the National Environmental Policy Act, Endangered Species Act, or any other environmental law is outlawed. Monsanto has particular beef with NEPA; in 2010 a federal court forced the USDA to conduct a study of Monsanto’s “Round-up Ready” alfalfa, which banned farmers from planting or selling the crop for four years. The USDA eventually approved the crop, even after finding that “gene flow” between GM and non-GM alfalfa is “probable,” threatening organic dairy producers and other users of non-GMO alfalfa, and that there is strong potential for the creation of Roundup-resistant “superweeds” that require ever-higher doses of toxic herbicides.
• No outside scrutiny allowed. The bill makes the USDA the sole authority on GE crops, immunizing applications from review by other federal agencies or outside groups. Furthermore, the USDA is not allowed to accept money to fund a study from anyone who petitions for additional analysis — even if a judge orders one.
• Impossible deadlines. While the USDA has never denied a single application for GE crop approval, the industry is making sure that they never will. Currently, new crops can at least be slowed down by lengthy environmental studies and expert review. But the House Farm Bill forces the USDA to approve or deny any application within one year (with an optional extension of 180 days).
• Approval time bombs. If the USDA fails to meet the deadline, the crop gets automatically approved for commercialization, entirely skipping the review process.

Monsanto paid well for these radical additions. OpenSecrets.org reported that in the first three months of this year, the corporation spent $1.4 million lobbying Washington. Last year, Monsanto spent about $6.3 million total, more than any other agribusiness firm except the tobacco company Altria. Even if the Farm Bill provisions are killed in the Senate, another “Monsanto Rider” was already inserted into the FY 2013 Agriculture Appropriations bill. The company also recently took its aspirations across borders to Mexico, where political pressure has pushed the government to give Monsanto’s genetically modified corn a planting permit.