The Final Call

U.S. drug policy gets average grade

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Washington - America’s drug policy received an average grade for its efforts over the past year to reform, if not end, the “War on Drugs” from the Institute of the Black World 21st Century (IBW).  This so-called war according to many critics has failed miserably and turned out to be a “war against poor and powerless Black people across the country.” 

“Over the past year, the Institute of the Black World 21st Century has invested a significant amount of time and resources in research, advocacy and organizing around the War on Drugs,” said Dr. Ron Daniels, IBW’s President.

“A  year ago, hundreds of protestors from New York, Boston, Pittsburgh, Baltimore and Washington, D.C. came together in the Nation’s Capital to proclaim that we have suffered long enough and that the time had come to bring an end to an ill-conceived and destructive policy/strategy.”
Forty-three years after President Lyndon Johnson declared ‘War on Drugs’, IBW released a “report card”, July 31, on the government’s response to their demands made a year ago.

“Our report which gives the Administration a C grade finds a mixed record of some significant steps taken by the White House and the Justice Department over the past 12 months along with persistent and unacceptable inaction and foot-dragging in a number of critical areas,” said Dr. Daniels.
The IBW Report Card is a summary of significant developments in official drug policy reform and the growing social movements to end the War on Drugs.

Last month 80 organizations came together and wrote a letter to call for an end to the war on drugs in the name of protecting children from the U.S. and Latin American children who are rushing to escape the violent drug trade in their homelands by coming to this country unaccompanied.

The letter highlights how the drug war foments violence and destroys opportunities for livelihood in Latin America while, simultaneously in the U.S., mass incarceration driven by overly-punitive drug laws tears apart families and communities, leaving children – particularly children of color – vulnerable.

In the face of this spiraling tragedy that continues to disproportionately consume the lives and futures of Black and Brown children, it is imperative to end the nefarious militarization and mass incarceration occurring in the name of the war on drugs states the report. So often, repressive drug policies are touted as measures to protect the welfare of our children, but in reality, they do little more than serve as one great big Child Endangerment Act, the report continued.

On behalf of the children, it is time to rethink the war on drugs say advocates.

“The quality of a society can and should be measured by how its most vulnerable are treated, beginning with our children,” said Asha Bandele of the Drug Policy Alliance, the organization that coordinated the letter. “Children have every right to expect that we will care for, love and nurture them into maturity. The drug war is among the policies that disrupts our responsibility to that calling.” 
Half of the “War on Drugs” is a war on marijuana and Black people are arrested at five to nine times the rate of Whites for marijuana possession even though the rates of marijuana consumption are roughly the same between Blacks and Whites.

Other marijuana data compiled over the last year continues to reflect a persistent pattern of disproportionate and racially imbalanced punitive practices for drug-related offenses.

•The following illustrates such facts: The U.S. spends more than $51 billion annually on the war on drugs.

•Number of people arrested in 2012 in the U.S. on nonviolent drug charges: 1.55 million.

•Number of Americans incarcerated in 2012 in federal, state and local prisons and jails: 2,228,400 or 1 in every 108 adults, the highest incarceration rate in the world.

•Proportion of people incarcerated for a drug offense in state prison that are Black or Latino, although these groups use and sell drugs at similar rates as Whites: 61 percent.

IBW is using this report card to repeat its demands of a year ago that President Obama should enact a number of solutions including: intensify efforts to eliminate the disparity in sentencing between powdered and crack cocaine, issue Executive Orders terminating the War on Drugs and replacing it with a national initiative that treats drugs and drug addiction as a public health issue and also ending the practice of using incarcerated persons as prison labor. Other suggestions include: allocating more federal funds for drug education, counseling and treatment and  forming a Presidential Commission to initiate a National Dialogue on the regulation and taxation of drugs. And lastly to mobilize moral and political support for direct public sector jobs and sustainable economic development programs with priority inclusion of formerly incarcerated persons targeted to transform distressed Black communities.