This Week in History 10/10/03

This Week in History 10/10/03

October 12, 1984: The passage of the Comprehensive Crime Control Act establishes the first federal sentencing guidelines, drastically curtailing judges' discretion in handing down prison terms. Over the next two years drug sentences increase by 71% nationwide.

October 13, 1999: In a series of raids named "Operation Millennium," law enforcement officials in Mexico, Colombia, and Ecuador arrest 31 persons for drug trafficking, including Fabio Ochoa. Ochoa is indicted in a Ft. Lauderdale court for importing cocaine into the United States, and the US requests his extradition in December.

October 14, 1970: President Nixon spearheads the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), the legislation that established today's "schedules" as a means of classifying drugs strictly by their medical value and potential for abuse.

And two from last week in history:

October 7, 1989: "It seems to me we're not really going to get anywhere until we can take the criminality out of the drug business and the incentives for criminality out of it. Frankly, the only way I can think of to accomplish this is to make it possible for addicts to buy drugs at some regulated place at a price that approximates their cost... We need at least to consider and examine forms of controlled legalization of drugs... No politician wants to say what I have just said, not for a minute."
– Former Secretary of State George P. Shultz addressing an alumni gathering at the Stanford Business School where he had returned to the faculty.

October 8, 1932: The Uniform State Narcotics Act was passed, endorsed by the Federal Bureau of Narcotics as an alternative to federal laws; by 1937 every State prohibits marijuana use.