Black State Legislators Condemn Drug War

Black State Legislators Condemn Drug War, Seek Alternatives
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/369/nbcsl.shtml

The nation's largest organization representing African-American state legislators has condemned the war on drugs and is demanding alternative policies less harmful to black communities. The move marks the second time in recent months that black leadership organizations have belatedly recognized the disproportionate impact of drug prohibition on their communities and called for a new direction. In October, an amalgamation of black professional associations, the National African-American Drug Policy Coalition, came together to seek similar changes in state and federal drug policy (http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/359/naadpc.shtml).

At its annual meeting in Philadelphia in December, the National Black Caucus of State Legislators (http://www.nbcsl.com) passed a resolution condemning the drug war and committing its members to repeal mandatory minimum sentences and support diverting nonviolent drug offenders into treatment. Introduced by delegate Salima Marriott of Maryland, the resolution puts the NBCSL on record as calling the drug war a failure. "The war on drugs has failed, and while states have continually increased their expenditures to wage the war on drugs, policies which rely heavily on arrest and incarceration have proven costly and ineffective at addressing these issues," the resolution read in part.

"The war on drugs is failing everybody, but no one is being devastated by it like African Americans,"said Michael Blain, director of public policy at the Drug Policy Alliance (http://www.drugpolicy.org). "That is why it is so historic that the people who represent the communities who have the most to gain from reform are taking the lead in addressing this problem and finding solutions."

That African Americans suffer disproportionately from drug prohibition is beyond doubt. Not only do blacks go to jail for drug offenses at a rate 13 times that of whites despite having similar drug use rates, as Human Rights Watch, among others, has pointed out, and not only do blacks make up 59% of those convicted of drug crimes in the US despite being only 12.2% of the population, but black urban communities suffer the brunt of both drug law enforcement and the community disruption caused by prohibition.

DPA worked NBCSL members to get the resolution passed, and if members abide by the resolution, DPA will continue to be involved. As the text of the measure notes, members are committed to "work with the Drug Policy Alliance to create NBCSL seminars that provide a thorough overview on harm reduction principles and legislative reform initiatives."

In a series of preliminary "whereases," the NBCSL cited the drug war as "a major force" driving mass incarceration in the US, a cause of "the general criminalization of communities of color in the US," a waste of tax dollars desperately needed elsewhere, and an impediment to harm reduction strategies (broadly defined to include access to affordable community-based drug treatment, as well as education and prevention).

Continuing that its common goal is "to advocate those policies which increase the health and welfare of our communities, and to reduce the unacceptable racial disparities both in criminal justice and in access to drug treatment and other services" and that it seeks to reduce the imprisonment of non-violent drug offenders, the NBCSL then took a giant step forward by formally stating that drug users are not demons but members of the larger community. "We believe that nonviolent substance abusers are not menaces to our communities but rather a troubled yet integral part of our community who need to be reclaimed," the NBCSL said.

After the preamble came the meat of the resolution. According to the document, the NBCSL will:

* Introduce and support legislation which will repeal mandatory minimum sentences, divert nonviolent drug offenders out of prison and into community-based treatment, and stop the flow of people needing treatment or transitional services from recidivating solely for positive urines.
* Ensure that this new legislation includes quantifiable, measurable goals, and is measured by a standard that reduces the effects of substance abuse and addiction and the harm of unjust drug policies while increasing public safety, thereby creating a New Bottom Line.
* Create state task forces to research and report on the allocation of state expenditures for all public education and health services and the war on drugs so that states can understand the real cost of the war on drugs in the state budgets and in their communities.
* Seek to advance a drug policy agenda that prioritizes a public health, not a criminal justice approach, to drug policy.

Through their national organization, black state legislators have now committed themselves to ending the war on drugs as it actually exists. But the proof is in the pudding. In the coming months, we will be looking for signs that this resolution is more than just another piece of paper.

 

This could be your most idiotic post ever, and that is saying something.

Do you have anything of substance to talk about or are you going to continue to rely on tired cliches (Just Say No is pretty analagous to your post) for your "argument" in support of prohibition?

Besides, the people involved in passing this resolution are not NORML or stopthedrugwar.com, they are black state legislators who see the disproportionate impact that the drug war has had on people of color.

Not even a good attempt, rookie. You keep saying that a debate between us would look something like the Pistons playing a high school basketball team. I am starting to agree with you, but it certainly looks like I would be the Pistons in that analogy.

 

As was pointed out in the article, 59% of the people incarcerated for drugs are African-American even though they are only 12.2% of the drug users. The drug war has indisputably come down more heavily on people of color.

 

Once again, you miss (or deliberately avoid) the point. Using the very same logic you use, I could easily say that if there were no prohibition on drugs, they would not be found guilty in a court of law.

It seems to me that we have proven definitively that incarcerating drug users will not reduce drug use in the least. Despite massive increases in funding and length of sentences, overall drug use has not dropped a whit since the 1970s (when statistics were first collected) and over half of our young people have used drugs before they left high school every single year since Nixon coined the term "War on Drugs."

I would argue that the best way to reduce their incarceration rate is to remove the counterproductive, wasteful policy that has completely failed to have any positive impact.

You are deluded. People have used drugs since the beginning of time. If, during your legendary forays to Treasures, you consume alcohol then you are exhibiting exactly the same "weak[ness]" that you decry here.

Why is it right for the government to label one substance (alcohol) as permissable while another (mar1juana) that has been proven to be far less harmful gets labeled as a substance that will draw you jail time?

For what, exactly? For choosing an intoxicant that is unpopular?

If someone is a drug ABUSER, they should be in treatment (not prison, treatment). If someone chooses to use a substance and is able to do so responsibly (as the VAST majority of drug users are), why is it your place (or the government's) to say that those people should be in jail?

You are quite obviously in over your head on this argument. It is amusing for me, but the most amusing part is the fact that you probably don't even see that you are simply embarrassing yourself.

 

I have also seen people (many, many more than just two) lose their lives, livelihoods, and families by abusing drugs (cocaine was the most frequent drug of choice, but I have seen my share of heroin addicts as well). I just know that we will be able to more easily detect and treat people who exhibit problem usage if our drug policy has a healthcare and education focus rather than being driven by the criminal justice system. The CJ system has not had any impact whatsoever on rates of use or addiction and has caused a host of problems that either nobody foresaw or nobody cared about.

WRT cocaine, one of the major effects of regulation of sales would be a fundamental change in methods of ingestion. When cocaine was legal, virtually all consumption was mixtures of cocaine and (generally) beverages. This was the first version of Coca-Cola (where do you think the Coca came from?) as well as a wine mixture called Vin Mariani. IOW, one of the ways that drug use would change is that crack and powder usage would eventually decline to virtually nil since those methods of consumption are so much more dangerous than the limited amounts you could get from the aforementioned mixtures.

In addition, if purchases were tracked by a computer designed to identify probable cases of abuse, we could target treatment at people who need it and, with the money we would take from the coffers of the mafia et. al., we would be able to treat those problem users before they get to the point where they commit REAL crimes because of drugs.

 

If I were to come up with a policy for this country, it would include both tobacco and alcohol and the number one goal, over and above ALL other considerations, would be reducing the access that our young people have to these substances. The statistic that is most positively correlated with lower rates of drug use is the age that one first starts using mind altering chemicals (including alcohol). The older you are when you start, the lower the probability that you will experience problem usage in the future.

We need to focus our drug policy on reducing the access that our young people have to drugs. The secondary consideration would be treating people who experience problem usage. These goals are realistic if we regulate the sales of currently illegal drugs.