Resolution on Drug Law Reform

The following is the text of the resolution by the Coalition for National Drug Policy Change:

WHEREAS the overall situation regarding the use of drugs in our society and the crime and misery that accompanies it has continued to deteriorate for several decades; and

WHEREAS our society has continued to attempt, at enormous financial cost and loss of civil liberties, to resolve drug problems through the criminal justice system, with the accompanying increases of prisons and numbers of inmates; and

WHEREAS, the huge untaxed revenues generated by the illicit drug trade are undermining legitimate governments worldwide; and

WHEREAS the present system has spawned a cycle of hostility by the incarceration of disproportionate numbers of African-Americans, Hispanics, and other minority groups;

WHEREAS the number of people who have contracted AIDS, hepatitis, and other diseases from contaminated hypodermic needles is epidemic under our present system; and

WHEREAS in our society’s zeal to pursue our criminal approach, legitimate medical uses for the relief of pain and suffering of patients have been suppressed.

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that our society must recognize drug use and abuse as the medical and social problems that they are and that they must be treated with medical and social solutions; and

FURTHER BE IT RESOLVED that an objective commission be immediately empowered by the President and by Congress to recommend revisions of the drug laws of these United States in order to reduce the harm our current policies are causing.