In 2013, one out of every 266 people in Illinois was in prison. For African-American residents, it was one in every 68 people. That’s just one of the shocking facts illustrating the serious racial disparity in Illinois’ criminal justice system. About 60 percent of the state’s prison population is black, despite African-American people making up […]
drugs
Posted inNews
Telling their stories
Springfield photographer Adam Smith, left, is producing a documentary film about the homeless people with whom he spent the past three months. Bill Guyer, right, is one of Smith’s subjects in the film. PHOTO BY PATRICK YEAGLE In the middle of the gazebo at Washington Park in Springfield sits a homeless man named Bill Guyer. […]
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Sniffing out trouble
Springfield patrol officer Dave Pletsch prepares for a training search with his dog, Utah, in a building on the Illinois State Fair Grounds. PHOTO BY PATRICK YEAGLE Inside a livestock building on the Illinois State Fairgrounds, a man is hiding stashes of marijuana, methamphetamine, heroin and cocaine in state-owned work vehicles parked inside for the […]
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Drug dogs fail the sniff test
Flip a coin and pick a side. Repeat 50 times. Chances are, you’ll guess the coin toss more often than drug-sniffing police dogs in Springfield found contraband during traffic stops in 2012. Traffic stop data reported by the Springfield Police Department shows the police found contraband in 25 percent of searches prompted by a drug […]
Posted inOpinion
A little knowledge….No 3 in a series
Bill Gardner, posting on The Incidental Economist, Aaron Carroll’s invaluable health care blog, reported the other day on trends in the prescription of Prilosec, Prevacid and other proton pump inhibitors. These drugs are used to treat gastroesophageal reflux disease or GERD, and their prescription for use by infants has exploded. The patients are babies who […]
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We’re all losers in the War on Drugs
The “War on Drugs” launched by President Richard Nixon in the 1970s has had a lasting effect on society that can be felt decades later. For many American families the War on Drugs has created grief, separation and a continuous cycle of poverty. In the film The House I Live In, the drug industry […]
