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The Drug Policy Alliance recommends eight reforms to make
our drug policies more rational, fiscally responsible, and fair.
The first two recommendations are policy decisions largely within
the discretion of the president; the following three would require
reform of federal law; and the final three involve working with
state governments to reform state law.
Executive Action:
1. Ensure that patients with a valid medical recommendation
have legal access to marijuana of medicinal quality.
- The medical benefits of marijuana for cancer, AIDS, MS and
other patients are well established.
More than 70% of voters support the right of patients to use
marijuana with a doctor's recommendation - including substantial
majorities of Democrats, Republicans, Greens, Libertarians and
Independents.
- Eleven states have adopted medical marijuana laws since 1996
- most of them by a vote of the people. (Alaska, Arizona, California,
Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Nevada, Oregon, Vermont, and
Washington)
- The federal government has repeatedly used its discretion
under federal law to arrest, prosecute and incarcerate medical
marijuana patients, their caregivers and those who produce marijuana
for them - even those operating with the acknowledgement and
support of state and local law enforcement, elected officials
and other authorities.
2. Lift the executive ban on federal funding for syringe
exchange programs, to stem the spread of HIV/AIDS, hepatitis
C and other blood-borne diseases.
- Needle sharing is already responsible, directly or indirectly,
for more than 250,000 HIV infections - and over 50 percent of
all pediatric AIDS cases - in the United States. Policymakers
need only change the laws that create artificial shortages of
sterile syringes among people who inject drugs to begin preventing
new infections immediately.
- An executive order issued by President George H.W. Bush bars
Congress from appropriating any federal funds for needle exchange.
The ban still stands. The U.S. is virtually alone among advanced,
industrialized nations in providing no such funding.
- Every established medical, scientific and legal body to study
the issue concurs in the efficacy of improved access to sterile
syringes in reducing the spread of infectious diseases. These
reports also concur that access to sterile syringes does not
increase drug use. No reports contradict this finding.
In Partnership with the U.S. Congress:
3. End federal mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent
drug offenses.
- Mandatory minimum sentencing schemes contribute to America's
prison building boom. With the national prison population at
roughly 2 million, nearly 500,000 of whom are drug law violators,
federal and state governments have been forced to build an ever
increasing number of prisons.
- Mandatory minimum sentences routinely result in low-level
and first-time offenders serving cruelly long and arbitrary sentences
and have a racially disparate impact on our criminal justice
system.
4. End racially disproportionate penalties on crack cocaine.
- Federal sentencing guidelines enacted by Congress in 1986
mandate that a conviction involving 5 grams of crack draw the
same mandatory minimum prison sentence (5 years) as a conviction
involving 500 grams of powder cocaine, a ratio of 100 to 1.
- By 1990, mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines resulted
in African Americans receiving 93% longer sentences than whites
for cocaine-related convictions. The U.S. Sentencing Commission
found that such sentences "appear to be harsher and more
severe for racial minorities than others as a result of this
law. The current penalty structure results in a perception of
unfairness and inconsistency."
- Though these sentencing guidelines were based on the premise
that crack is more harmful than powder cocaine, the U.S. Sentencing
Commission determined that "powder cocaine and crack cocaine
are two forms of the same drug, containing the same active ingredient."
The form in which it is consumed has been found to be insignificant.
5. End the ban on federal student loans for those with a
drug conviction.
- The drug provision of the Higher Education Act, passed in
1998 by the United States Congress, delays or denies federal
financial aid for higher education for any student convicted
of a misdemeanor or felony drug offense.
- More than 150,000 students have been denied financial aid
since this law's enactment. Thousands more have not even applied
for aid because they believed themselves to be ineligible due
to a prior drug conviction.
- Because black and Latino youth are arrested, prosecuted and
imprisoned at dramatically higher rates for drug crimes, the
provision has a disproportionate effect on youth of color.
In Partnership with the States:
6. Create federal incentives for states to implement treatment
instead of incarceration for people arrested for simple drug
possession.
- According to a study by the RAND Corporation, drug treatment
is 10 times more cost effective than interdiction in reducing
the use of cocaine in the United States. Every additional dollar
invested in substance abuse treatment saves more than $7 in costs
to society. And it would cost 15 times as much to achieve the
same results using increased domestic law enforcement as drug
treatment would cost.
- Surveys consistently show that nearly two out of three Americans
view drug abuse as a medical problem to be handled through treatment
rather than a serious crime that should be handled mainly by
the courts and prison system.
- California's Proposition 36 (2000), a voter-approved initiative
providing low-level non-violent drug offenders treatment instead
of incarceration, has so far diverted more than 37,000 people
away from prison. It has saved the state of California at least
$275 million in its first year.
7. Call for state-level re-enfranchisement of former felons.
- An estimated 4.6 million Americans currently cannot vote
due to laws that disenfranchise individuals with a felony conviction,
often for a nonviolent drug offense.
- In 48 states (with the exception of Maine and Vermont) and
Washington, D.C., prisoners cannot vote; in 33 states felons
on probation or parole are disenfranchised; and in 12 states
a felony conviction can result in a lifetime ban long after the
completion of a sentence.
- Almost 1.4 million African American men, fourteen percent
of the entire adult black male population in the U.S., are currently
denied the right to vote because of a felony conviction - a rate
seven times the national average. In Alabama and Florida, 31%
of all black men are permanently disenfranchised.
8. Support the decriminalization of marijuana. No one should
be incarcerated for the possession of marijuana for personal
use.
- According to a 2002 Time/CNN poll, 72% of Americans
think people arrested for marijuana possession should face fines
and not jail time.
- Every comprehensive, objective government commission that
has examined marijuana throughout the past 100 years has recommended
that adults should not be criminalized for using marijuana.
- Over 76 million American have admitted to trying marijuana.
The vast majority of these users did not become regular users,
try other illicit drugs, or suffer any ill health effects.
- There have been nearly 15 million marijuana arrests in the
United States since 1970, including a record 750,000 arrests
in 2001. Marijuana arrests have more than doubled since 1991,
even as adult use of the drug has continued at the same rate.
About 88% of all marijuana arrests are for possession, not manufacture
or distribution. Each year taxpayers spend between $7.5 billion
and $10 billion to arrest and prosecute individuals for marijuana
violations.
- Cannabis (marijuana and hashish) has been decriminalized
in The Netherlands, England, Canada, Australia, Denmark, Belgium,
Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Luxembourg, Ireland, Austria
and Germany.
- In a 2000 interview, former President Bill Clinton expressed
support for decriminalization, saying "small amounts of
marijuana have been decriminalized in some places, and should
be."
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