Charles Shaw

Charles Shaw is a writer and activist living in the Bay Area of San Francisco. He is the author of Exile Nation: Drugs, Prisons, Politics and Spirituality, and the Director of The Exile Nation Project. Charles serves as editor for the Dictionary of Ethical Politics and the oD Drug Policy Forum.

oD Drug Policy Forum: Front Line Report - Week of June 28, 2010

A weekly summary of news and developments in drug policy and criminal justice reform in the US and UK.

By Charles Shaw

/ 28 Jun 2010

oD Drug Policy Forum: Front Line Report - Week of June 14, 2010

A weekly summary of what's going on in drug policy and criminal justice reform in the US & UK.

By Charles Shaw

/ 15 Jun 2010

The Cannabis Papers: a citizen’s guide to cannabinoids

Taking their inspiration from "The Federalist Papers," a group of Illinois reformers have penned a series of 36 essays to detail the role of cannabinoids in Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

By Charles Shaw

/ 14 Jun 2010

The failed politics of sentencing reform

In his exceptional white paper, American drug policy expert Eric Sterling of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation sets the stage for comprehensive sentencing reform, describes the current situation involving the War on Drugs, and critiques Federal drug law enforcement and its tragic misdirection

By Charles Shaw

/ 7 Jun 2010

Essential Reading on the US Prison-Industrial Complex

Three must-reads on prison and race in America

By Charles Shaw

/ 26 May 2010

Psychedelic Nostalgia: Barlow on the early days of LSD

Former Grateful Dead lyricist John Perry Barlow's reminiscences on the introduction of LSD to the American consciousness.

By Charles Shaw

/ 24 May 2010

A Virulent Outbreak of Rational Thought

Two UK based organizations are charting a course through the miasma of international drug policy by publishing detailed road maps for legalization. It invites the question: Where are the Americans?

By Charles Shaw

/ 20 May 2010

The bizarre universe of drug prohibition: an introduction to the oD Drug Policy Forum

International drug policy is at a tipping point. Emerging from a forty year repressive dark age following the excesses of the 1960s, has the world learned enough to craft a saner, more compassionate approach to drug use?

By Charles Shaw

/ 14 May 2010

"Dead Time"

Criminalisation of narcotics has little impact on consumption but creates a criminal class and a professional lobby of law-enforcers. Shaw describes this process from the inside.

By Charles Shaw

/ 6 Jan 2010

DEP Contributors Offer New Models for Financial and Economic Systems

In her OD piece from a few weeks ago, "The End of Financial Capitalism," Saskia Sassen wrote that it was too late to save the global financial system.

By Charles Shaw

/ 20 Apr 2009

Chicago: tale of two cities

There have always been at least two Chicagos wrestling within America's great heartland metropolis. The election of Barack Obama and the recent criminal indictment of Governor Rod Blagojevich

By Charles Shaw

/ 15 Dec 2008