[Courtesy of Drug Policy Alliance] 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: June 25, 2008

CONTACT: Daniel Robelo at (510) 229-5211 or Reena Szczepanski at (505) 983-3277

  United States Conference of Mayors Unanimously Passes Resolution Calling for City-Coordinated Drug Overdose Prevention Efforts

Nation’s Mayors Seek Policy Reforms that Will Save Both Lives and Dollars by Preventing Unnecessary Overdose Deaths 
Mayors Support Increased Access to Opioid Antagonist Medications and Adoption of Good Samaritan Immunity Policies that Shield Individuals Who Report Opioid-Related Health Emergencies from Prosecution

  WASHINGTON - June 25 - On Saturday, the United States Conference of Mayors (USCM) unanimously adopted a resolution supporting policies that could save thousands of lives by treating drug overdoses before they become fatal. “Last year, our nation’s mayors agreed that we must address the problems of substance use and abuse with a public health approach. This year we have continued that work by calling for policies that increase public safety by preventing unnecessary deaths. These policies have saved lives in Santa Fe and will work in other cities,” said Santa Fe Mayor David Coss, who sponsored the resolution at the 76th USCM Annual Meeting in Miami, Florida.

Adopted resolutions become the official policy of the USCM, which speaks as one voice to promote best practices and the most pressing priorities of our nation’s cities. The USCM last year declared the war on drugs a failure and called for a “New Bottom Line” in U.S. drug policy, which should be measured by the number of lives saved rather than the number of people imprisoned. This year’s resolution sets forth a comprehensive strategy for cities and states to reduce overdose morbidity and mortality by:

• Supporting local programs that distribute naloxone – an opiate antagonist medication effective in reversing the respiratory failure that typically causes death from opioid overdose – directly to drug users, their friends, families and communities;
• Urging state governments to adopt emergency “Good Samaritan” immunity policies that shield from prosecution people who are experiencing or have witnessed an accidental or intentional drug overdose and who have contacted 911 to request emergency medical treatment for the victim of drug toxicity or overdose;
• Calling on the National Institute of Drug Abuse and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to urgently fund research to evaluate scientifically the effectiveness of overdose prevention interventions and develop model programs; and
• Calling on the Food and Drug Administration to take all necessary and reasonable steps to facilitate the testing and approval of nasal and/or over-the-counter formulations of naloxone and to consider recommending prescription naloxone concurrent with prescribing strong opioid analgesics.

The mayors’ action responds to the facts that drug overdose is the second leading cause of injury death in the United States and that many overdose fatalities occur because peers delay or forego calling 911 for fear of arrest or police involvement – continually identified by researchers as the most significant barrier to the ideal first response of calling emergency services.

Nearly one hundred colleges and universities have adopted Good Samaritan immunity policies that have proven effective in encouraging students to seek help in the event of an alcohol or other drug overdose. New Mexico recently enacted the first such law in the country – the 911 Good Samaritan Act of 2007 – and similar life-saving legislation is pending in several states across the country, including California, Illinois, Maryland, New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Washington.

“Life-saving medications exist and must be made more widely available in the event of an overdose. At the same time, a victim or witness must not be afraid to ask emergency personnel for assistance. It should never be a crime to save someone’s life. The true crime is condoning policies that prevent victims from receiving that medication,” said Daniel Abrahamson, director of Legal Affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance.

Naloxone can be safely administered by non-medical professionals intravenously, intramuscularly and intranasally. Programs that provide overdose prevention education, rescue breathing training and take-home naloxone have been developed in New Mexico, Connecticut, Northern California, and the cities of Baltimore, New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia and Los Angeles.

In 2000, drug overdoses resulted in $2.24 billion worth of direct medical costs and an estimated $23.7 billion in lost productivity. Naloxone distribution pilot programs are inexpensive and have been added to existing services without the need for increased staff or space. These programs have been shown to save cities money by averting significant health care costs and have already saved several thousand lives.

The resolution is available here.

A federal court in the Argentine capital of Buenos Aires Tuesday decriminalized drug possession in the capital in a ruling that could be altered by the country's high court, but which is in line wi

Public security officials in Beijing, the Chinese capital and host city for this year's summer Olympics, announced a pre-Olympic drug crackdown Wednesday, according to

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New York Gov.

1 in 9 African American Males, 1 in 100 Adults in Prisons and Jails Highlights Need for Criminal Justice Reform Now!

Please join Congressman Danny K. Davis and other members of Congress, TASC's Center for Justice, Open Society Policy Center Legal Action Center, Sentencing Project, Council for State Governments and others at this national press conference to highlight the recently released Pew Charitable Trust report and its implications for criminal justice reform.

Please join us for "An Evening with the Congressional Black Caucus," a briefing and Q on A on racial profiling and driving while black.

Panelists include:

Gregory Carr, PhD, Howard University
Alexander Williams, Judge, U.S. District Court, District of Maryland

In his weekly radio address last Saturday, Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa proposed pardoning lo

Brazilian activist Luis Paulo Guanabara emcees and reads statement from Fernando Gabeira, Member of Parliament, Brazil, opening session of Out from the Shadows: Ending Drug Prohibition in the 21st Century, February 2003, via YouTube:

Ronaldo Alfaro, Member of Parliament, Costa Rica, "Movimiento Libertario" party, parliamentarians panel, Out from the Shadows: Ending Drug Prohibition in the 21st Century, February 2003, via YouTube:

Marco Cappato, Member European Parliament and leader with Italy's nonviolent Radicali movement, was a major partner in our 2003 conference, Out from the Shadows: Ending Drug Prohibition in the 21st Century. Following is video footage of his keynote address, via YouTube (three files).

part 1 of 3:

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom has harshly criticized current drug policies, calling them unworkable and counterproductive.

Pete Guither has a typically observant post noting the lack of serious drug policy discussion among top-tier political bloggers:

Obviously, to drug policy reformers, the war on drugs is one of the critical issues of our time -- it affects everything, from criminal justice and fundamental Constitutional rights to education to foreign policy to poverty and the inner cities, and on and on.

So it can be baffling to note the degree to which serious discussions about the drug war tend to be missing from the major political blogs on the right and the left.

Worse yet, the reluctance of established political blogs to enter the drug policy debate is dwarfed by the longstanding refusal of mainstream journalists and politicians to do so. Drug reporting in the mainstream press is an ongoing abomination, with exceptions so rare that they provoke widespread fascination when they occur.

Why then is America's political culture so desperate to avoid discussing this issue? Pete argues correctly that both parties have been so consistently bad on drug policy that neither side has moral standing to condemn the other. He's talking about bloggers, but this idea has broad implications. So long as both parties remain essentially comfortable wasting billions in tax dollars on a failed drug control strategy, there is no incentive to exhaust political capital challenging the status quo.

D.C. radio personality Kojo Nnamdi offered a complementary theory this morning on NPR, which I find equally helpful. Referencing the same excellent Washington Post story mentioned in Pete's post, Nnamdi suggested that politicians realize something is wrong, but are unsure what else to propose. There's a lot to this when you consider how ignorant most politicians are about the finer points of the war on drugs. As obvious as it is to many of us that progress can't occur until the drug war ends, this conversation is dark territory for a politician with aggressive enemies and a flimsy grip on the subject matter. Nor are they eager to familiarize themselves with an issue that lacks apparent traction and is perceived (often erroneously, but still) as politically suicidal.

Reformers struggle to explain how we'll overcome these obstacles, and I'm skeptical of anyone who thinks they've figured it out. Our watershed moment will arrive, I believe, through events beyond our control. Recent discussion of the drug war's role in financing terror provides just one example of how new priorities can raise doubts about the old ones.

The future will bring many unexpected changes, but it will never redeem drug prohibition and its infinitely corrupting, ruinous legacy. I don't know what it will take to finally put this horrible war on trial, but I'm certain we'll find out.

For Immediate Release: May 16, 2007
Contacts: Scott McLarty, Media Coordinator, 202-518-5624, mclarty@greens.org & Starlene Rankin, Media Coordinator, 916-995-3805, starlene@gp.org

*Greens call for realistic debate in the 2008 Presidential race on the War on Drugs
*Democratic and Republican politicians are ignoring the human and economic devastation caused by failed drug policies, unjust laws, and targeting of young people, the poor, and African Americans and Latinos, say Green Party leaders

WASHINGTON, DC -- Green Party leaders called for a national discussion on how the US's 'war on drugs' has turned into a war on young people, the poor, and African Americans, Latinos, and other people of color.

"The human and economic devastation caused by the war on drugs is missing from the range of debate among both Democratic and Republican presidential candidates. Politicians from these parties, when asked about drug policies, prefer to posture about law and order and endorse failed measures. These politicians don't realize that going along to get along makes one complicit said Cliff Thornton, Green candidate for Governor of Connecticut in 2006 and co-founder of Efficacy, Inc. , which promotes major reforms in drug policy.

Greens cited a study by the American Civil Liberties Union ("Cracks in the System: Twenty Years of Unjust Federal Crack Cocaine Law," October 2006, ), 37% of people arrested, 59% of people convicted, and 74% of those sent to prison are African American, even though only 15% of drug users are African American.

The Associated Press has reported that "a record 7 million people -- or one in every 32 American adults -- were behind bars, on probation or on parole by the end of last year, according to the Justice Department.... From 1995 to 2003, inmates in federal prison for drug offenses have accounted for 49 percent of total prison population growth."

In state prisons, 260,000 people were serving sentences on nonviolent drug charges in 2005, of whom more than 70% were African American or Latino . The Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that nearly one in eight drug prisoners (45,000 Americans) are behind bars for marijuana-related offenses.

Green leaders also strongly criticized the punitive denial of financial aid to students with drug convictions, and supported Students for a Sensible Drug Policy in their effort to persuade Congress to reinstate such aid.

"The war on drugs is an excuse to ignore the US Constitution's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment, with long prison sentences for minor and nonviolent offenses. The drug war is meant to be waged, not won," added Mr. Thornton. "This is in part a result of pressure on elected officials from the private prison industry lobby, which seeks to build new prisons and fill up cells in order to win government giveaways and increase corporate profits. The Green Party calls for a public debate that challenges the rhetoric of Democratic and Republican politicians who are under influence of these companies, and that recognizes how the war on drugs has only resulted in more crime and violence."

"We need to stop spending $50 billion a year on the drug war, and use that money for treatment. We need to repeal mandatory sentencing laws, which override judges' discretion in determining prison time, and 'three strikes' laws that send people -- mostly the poor and people of color -- away for life on nonviolent and minor felonies," said Kevin Zeese, 2006 candidate for the US Senate candidate in Maryland and president of Common Sense for Drug Policy .

The Green Party's national platform endorses decriminalization of victimless crimes, such as the possession of small amounts of marijuana; an end to the war on drugs; expanded drug counseling and treatment; and an end to arrest of 'medical marijuana' arrests and prosecution.

"Law enforcement should focus efforts on organized crime, including the laundering of drug money at banks, rather than on street-level drug trade, in which kids who get arrested -- or killed -- are quickly replaced," said Nan Garrett, Co-Chair of the National Women's Caucus of the Green Party and 2002 candidate for Governor of Georgia. "Addictive use should be treated as a medical and social problem. Locking up addicts in stressed prison environments, with minimal effort to address the addiction itself, and then freeing them to go back into the same circumstances that led to their abuse of drugs has only aggravated the problem of addiction. Greens endorse rational solutions to the problems of drug abuse that are based on science and health, compassion for addicts and their families, reduction of harm rather than moral judgment, and respect for basic civil liberties and principles of justice."

On May 15, the United States Sentencing Commission (USSC) updated its 2002 Report to Congress on Federal Cocaine Sentencing. The USSC report once again finds that there is no rationale for the sentencing differences between the two forms of the drug. Under current law, possessing or selling 5 grams of crack cocaine results in the same five-year mandatory minimum sentence as selling 500 grams of powder cocaine. The law harshly punishes low-level offenders, and has had a disparate impact on African-American and low-income communities. Join us in a frank discussion on avenues for reform of this unjust law.

On May 15, the United States Sentencing Commission (USSC) updated its 2002 Report to Congress on Federal Cocaine Sentencing. The USSC report once again finds that there is no rationale for the sentencing differences between the two forms of the drug. Under current law, possessing or selling 5 grams of crack cocaine results in the same five-year mandatory minimum sentence as selling 500 grams of powder cocaine. The law harshly punishes low-level offenders, and has had a disparate impact on African-American and low-income communities. Join us in a frank discussion on avenues for reform of this unjust law.

The drug war should be reevaluated in a global context, former US Senator Lincoln Chafee (R-RI) told attendees at the Students for Sensible Drug Policy<