For decades the United States has been fighting a losing war against drugs. While budgets have increased dramatically over the last two decades and drug-related incarcerations consistently reach new records, drug problems worsen. Adolescent drug abuse is increasing, overdose deaths are at record levels, heroin and cocaine are cheaper, more pure and more available, and health problems related to drugs, especially the spread of HIV/AIDS, are mounting, while an expensive and ineffective international counter narcotics policy entails growing human rights and environmental costs.  Drug problems can be reduced at less cost if we change course and adopt strategies that work. At a time when the federal budget is limited programs need to re-evaluated and funding needs to go to programs that work. We need new ideas to save lives, we can’t afford to continue to be wrong.

Below are eight steps that are effective methods of controlling drugs and reducing drug-related harms:

1. Shift Resources Into Programs That Work: US drug control strategy has been approached primarily as a law enforcement issue.  Police have done their jobs with record arrests, drug seizures and record incarceration of drug offenders yet drug problems continue to worsen.  Expensive eradication and interdiction campaigns abroad have brought few results and many costs. Yet, two-thirds of the federal drug control budget continues to go to interdiction and law enforcement programs while treatment, prevention, research and education divide the remaining federal drug budget. Government needs to accept that the law enforcement paradigm will never work and shift to treating drug abuse as a health problem with social and economic implications and therefore the solutions are in public health approaches that focuses on addicts and abusers not all users, social services to reduce many of the root causes of abuse and economic strategies to develop alternative markets as well as control drug markets.  The federal drug budget should recognize this by shifting resources to prevention, treatment and education.

2. Make Treatment Available on Request Like Any Other Health Service:  Making treatment services widely available undermines the drug market and reduces the harms from drug abuse.  Treatment needs to be defined broadly to not only include abstinence-based treatment but also easier access to methadone and other alternative maintenance drugs. In addition providing mental health treatment, as well as sex abuse, spousal abuse and child abuse services to face the underlying causes of addiction. Treatment also needs to be user friendly, i.e. designed to meet the needs of special populations, especially, women, children and minorities. Finally, it needs to be focused on abusers and addicts not all drug users. The best way to accomplish this distinction is to allow people who need treatment to choose it, rather than police choosing treatment for people who happen to get caught.

3. Prevent Drug Abuse By Investing in American Youth and Providing Them with Accurate Information: The most effective way to prevent adolescent drug abuse is to invest in youth and keep them interested and involved in life.  Government should increase funding for after school programs, mentor programs, skills building and job training programs and summer jobs for youth. The Higher Education Act provisions denying college aid to students convicted of drug offenses should be repealed, as barriers to education and employment are counterproductive to preventing drug abuse. Education needs to be fact-based, accurate and taught by trained educators and health professionals, not by police.  Resources should be shifted from ineffective programs like the ONDCP media campaign and the DARE program to research to develop a more effective drug education approach and toward programs to keep youth active.

4. Focus Law Enforcement Resources on the Most Dangerous and Violent Criminals: Half of drug arrests in the United States are for marijuana offenses and possession cases. Low-level, non-violent drug offenders are dominating police time, wasting the time of courts and filling US prisons.  The drug war fuels the record breaking over two million prisoner incarceration level in the US. Arrest and incarceration have a devastating impact on individuals and families. The focus of the federal government in drug enforcement should be large cases that cross international and state boundaries. Smaller cases that are intra state should be left to the states. Drug users and small dealers, who essentially deal to support their habit, should be given the choice of treatment instead of prison. Non-violent offenders should be the lowest law enforcement priority.  Urge all prison systems in the U.S. to be less restrictive in granting parole to bona fide nonviolent drug prisoners at review time, less restrictive in granting compassionate release and less restrictive in allowing family visits. These modest changes would give prisoners a motive for good behavior to earn their way out of prison and back to their families and communities.

5. International Drug Control Efforts Should Be Demilitarized and Focus on Economic Development: Focus international drug control efforts on economic development to undermine the incentives for producing drugs, and rely on civilian institutions, not militaries, for eradication and interdiction. Get serious about development initiatives for drug-producing regions, with community-based programs, including attention to marketing so farmers have real choices. Stop all aerial fumigation programs, with their unacceptable environmental and human costs. Channel law enforcement aid where it belongs, through police and other civilian institutions, not the military. Pay attention to human rights concerns in all international drug control programs. Recognize that reducing demand at home is the most effective international strategy because as long as there is a demand, supply will develop.

6. Restore Justice to the US Justice System:  Drug enforcement is racially unfair at every stage of the justice system. Profiling of communities and individuals by police and prosecutorial discretion consistently favors whites.  Disparity between crack and powder cocaine sentencing has a racially unfair impact. False testimony by police to justify searches and convict suspects is too widespread. To restore justice acknowledge the racial unfairness, document it and make it illegal; return sentencing discretion to federal judges by repealing mandatory minimum sentencing and making the Sentencing Guidelines discretionary. End the disparity in crack and powder sentencing by reducing crack sentences to the same as cocaine powder.

7. Respect State’s Rights and Allow New Approaches to Be Tried: The Federal government should work with states that have voted fourteen times for reform measures over the last three election cycles. Reforms have included treatment instead of prison, medical use of marijuana, marijuana decriminalization and stopping abuse of forfeiture laws. The federal government has opposed many of these reforms and taken steps to block them from being implemented. But, the states are laboratories for new approaches that should be tried and, if effective, duplicated in other parts of the United States.

8. Make Prevention of HIV and Other Blood Borne Diseases a Top Priority: HIV/AIDS, Hepatitis-C and other blood borne diseases are rapidly spread through the sharing of contaminated syringes. Needle exchange and syringe deregulation have been shown to be effective ways to reduce the spread of disease without increasing drug abuse. Indeed, these services often lead to reductions in drug abuse by getting hard-core users into treatment.

Supporters include:

National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
Presbyterian Church (USA)
United Church of Christ
Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations
Progressive Jewish Alliance
Rainbow/PUSH Coalition
Religious Society of Friends (Philadelphia Yearly Meeting)