Who is the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition?

Our mission is to reverse the trend of mass incarceration in Colorado. We are a coalition of nearly 7,000 individual members and over 100 faith and community organizations who have united to stop perpetual prison expansion in Colorado through policy and sentence reform.

Our chief areas of interest include drug policy reform, women in prison, racial injustice, the impact of incarceration on children and families, the problems associated with re-entry and stopping the practice of using private prisons in our state.

If you would like to be involved please go to our website and become a member.


Monday, May 28, 2007

Meth 101?

I cannot believe that this actually happened. The DEA held a "Meth 101" class at Metro to show people how easy it is to make methamphetamine. They call it a community awareness class.
Considering that the problem seemingly has finally become more of an importation issue than a local problem, what's the DEA trying to do, bring it back home? It's Fun! It's Easy! It's Toxic!

Cooking methamphetamine takes only a few hours and requires simple household ingredients, like striker plates from matchbooks, the guts of lithium batteries, drain cleaner.

"It's pretty gross," said Matt Leland, who works in career services at the University of Northern Colorado and who recently helped cook the drug in a lab. "If someone was truly interested in manufacturing meth, it would not be that hard."

The Drug Enforcement Administration invited Leland and other citizens - such as software engineers, a teacher, a pastor and a school principal - to make methamphetamine last week in a lab at Metropolitan State College of Denver.

"At first, I thought, 'Man, I cannot believe they showed us how to do

it.' But you can find the recipe on the Internet," Leland said. "It just goes to show anybody who really wants to do it probably could."

The class was held as part of the DEA's first Citizens Academy in order to give the public a close-up view of what the agency does to keep drugs off the street.

Although meth remains a significant problem across the U.S., the number of clandestine labs has dropped because some of the ingredients are harder to obtain.]

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