Category Archives: War On Drugs

My son, Robert, passed away in January 2017. He died of an accidental overdose of opioids. For me and my family, the last five years have been filled with minutes, hours, and days of tremendous sadness with grief gripping every ounce of us. How can we use our horrific loss and heartbreak? We can wield it in anger and bitterness, or we can use it to support life-giving solutions.

Recently I recalled some of my thoughts from the night of Roberts death. I thought of all the moms who lost their sons and daughters in war. Someone had appeared at their doorstep with the horrific life-altering news that their precious child had died in battle. The one held most dear to their heart had passed from this world. I remember thinking they died for a cause.

Our present-day battle is the War on Drugs, where we are using our criminal justice system to handle a health crisis. For the loved ones we lost in its collateral damage, bringing an end to it is perhaps the best way to honor them.

I can't help but wonder what our lost loved ones would say if they were able to speak. Would their message be for more jailing to heal the problem? Would their message be for long sentences? Or would it be listening to the stories of people using drugs and in addiction?

Would our loved ones want more and more punitive reactions? Or would they want us to look for the best way to keep people in the struggle alive and functioning?

What would those who have died want for other people using drugs who are still here?

Perhaps they would challenge us to sit in on an open AA meeting or any support group, coming face to face with people who are in the struggle. Those who are walking the walk. The people in these groups are real people exposing their thoughts and fears. Each one can share and is understood. Being able to totally relate gives strength and courage.

I pray those we have lost have not died in vain. And their legacy collectively can be for more understanding and compassion and less shame. Maybe they will be known in years to come as trailblazers in the fight against the War on Drugs. And their lives will be viewed as a sacrifice to upend the old way of using the criminal justice system to tackle our drug problems. Maybe this is part of the battle. Maybe our loved ones have died for a cause. I feel that would be the most amazing blessing that could develop from this tragedy that is being played out before us.

Will apathy progress us? Will turning a blind eye advance solutions? Will the same old path of punishment lead us to a better place? It hasn't yet. How can we fight for the betterment of those still on earth, those still enveloped in the struggle? I think I know what our loved ones would say. Let's give them a voice.

Lee Malouf is an advocate for health-centered responses to drug use. She can be reached at missyazoo@aol.com

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OPINION: Honor our lost loved ones by ending the war on drugs - HubcitySPOKES.com

The war on drugs has been long, hard-fought and expensive.

Since the 1970s, America has battled wave after wave of new, more lethal drugs hitting our streets from crack cocaine to heroin, crystal meth, OxyContin, fentanyl and synthetics, to name a few. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention puts the death by opioid overdose tally at nearly 500,000 people from 1999 to 2019.

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We can't surrender in war on drugs - Grand Haven Tribune

To the Editor:

Addiction is the only disease that tells you that you dont have a disease.

This is a powerful statement about the disease of addiction. The silent voice and inner thinking that goes on with addiction - what is it exactly that makes it so difficult to stop? Those who do not understand addiction often believe that if the addict/alcoholic just tries hard enough, or just wants to badly enough, they can stop.

Shouldnt their damaging behaviors indicate to the addict/alcoholic that what they are doing to themselves and others in their lives is bad enough to make them want to change?

This lack of understanding results in people who have addictive behaviors being considered immoral, weak, or even cursed with a behavior defect that even incarceration or punishment cannot change. A better understanding of the nature of addiction could correct these damaging misconceptions.

Addiction does not discriminate. It affects people of all ages, races, ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic status, religion or education.

There has never been a drug free society in human history. Drugs and alcohol have been around for more than 10,000 years. Yet, American society continues to fight a War on Drugs that it cannot win.

In 2019, more than 70,000 people died by overdose in the United States. Add to that, about 88,000 Americans die as a result of alcohol every year in the United States, and it is clear that the War on Drugs is not the answer.

Deaths associated with alcohol, drugs and suicide took the lives of 186,783 Americans in 2020, a 20% one-year increase in the combined death rate and the highest number of substance misuse deaths ever recorded for a single year.

The silent killer of addiction is here to stay unless American society re-evaluates its current War on Drugs. Shouldnt we, instead, be focusing more on drug prevention and education? Shouldnt we be focusing our attention on the effects drugs and alcohol can have on the individual, the family, and on our society itself?

Finally, shouldnt we be focusing on community-based services that would allow addicts/alcoholics every opportunity to find treatment for their addiction, help them with housing, employment and education in order for them to become active members of their community?

We do not treat other diseases by shaming and incarcerating the people who have them. We treat them with compassion and give them the care they need to get better.

Many of our family members, friends, co-workers and members of our communities are in the grip of a deadly disease, the silent killer known as addiction. How many more of these people do we need to lose to overdose, alcohol-related deaths, and/or suicide before something is done about this matter?

I would like to hear your views and opinions on how to better serve those struggling with addiction. I may be reached by letter at 559 West Broadway Street, Winona, MN 55987 or by email at gottahavehope38@gmail.com.

Respectfully submitted,Mark JacobsonPeer Support SpecialistWinona, MN

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Letter to the Editor: The silent killer | The Standard Newspaper - Waukon Standard

Lysergic acid diethylamide, otherwise known as LSD, was discovered in 1943 by Albert Hofmann at Sandoz Pharmaceuticals in neutral Switzerland. Hofmanns research involved synthesizing plant compounds for medicinal use. Hofmann ingested 250 micrograms and became the first person to take an LSD trip. The shy chemist reported to colleagues the mind-blowing effects.

After World War II ended, the pharmaceutical industry (and the CIA) knocked on Hofmanns laboratory door.

The first wave in substantial psychedelics research and application occurred in the 1950s and 1960s, when pioneers such as Timothy Leary pursued groundbreaking studies and brought public renown to LSD and psilocybin, the psychoactive substance in magic mushrooms. U.S. spy agencies also sought (unsuccessfully and scandalously) to weaponize the drug.

But starting in 1970 and for the ensuing half century, the field of psychedelics lay dead in the water, a victim of the War on Drugs.

Today, thats rapidly changing, as a new generation of psychonauts (as they sometimes call themselves) comes to the fore. Think of it as Psychedelics 2.0.

Were in the midst of the second wave in psychedelics. The potential for social change, as well as for investment profits, are enormous. Ill get to the financial angle, in a minute.

The Johns Hopkins seal of approval

Psychedelics are shedding their countercultural baggage and becoming respectable. These drugs have evolved from acid heads in Haight-Ashbury to technicians in lab coats.

The latest case in point: The Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research announced on July 20 significant new initiatives into the study of psychedelics.

The Johns Hopkins center has launched a study to assess whether psilocybin is safe and effective for improving fatigue, pain, mood, and quality of life in people with post-treatment Lyme Disease.

Lyme Disease, which is spread by ticks, can be debilitating, with symptoms that include fever, swollen joints, tiredness, rashes, loss of muscle movement, severe headaches, and heart palpitations. No human vaccines for Lyme Disease are currently available.

In the field of medical research, Johns Hopkins is as prestigious as it gets. The Johns Hopkins center also announced that its seeking volunteer participants for continuing studies of psilocybin in Anorexia Nervosa, Alzheimers Disease, and co-occurring alcohol use and depression.

Once upon a time in America

In the early to mid-1960s, psychedelic drugs and marijuana were widely associated with peace, love and understanding. To the middle class, long-haired hippies seemed harmless. But the 1967 Summer of Love morphed into the 1969 Manson murders. By the end of the decade, as the social fabric frayed and street violence erupted, the public mood darkened toward psychedelics, pot, and the people who partook of these drugs.

The embrace of psychedelics by anti-war activists, non-conformists, and the New Left prompted the authorities to launch a crackdown, not to fight a health scourge as purported, but to exert social control. President Nixon couldnt ban protest, but he could use drugs as a pretext to persecute his political opponents.

Along with marijuana, psychedelics were banned at the federal level as Schedule I drugs by the Controlled Substances Act of 1970. Government propaganda discredited these drugs as extremely dangerous. Thousands of promising clinical studies on psychedelics were buried and forgotten.

But over the past five years or so, the ice has begun to thaw. The movement to legalize marijuana has accelerated, prompting the scientific establishment to reexamine psychedelics.

For psychedelics, the decades-long dark age has given way to a renaissance.

Marijuana and psychedelics remain banned at the federal level, but an increasing number of states and localities are lifting restrictions on pot, LSD, psilocybin, and other psychoactive substances.

Watch This Video: Big Pharmas Long, Strange Trip

Many biotech firms that are researching psychedelics also are looking into marijuana. Indeed, some scientists apply a broad definition of psychedelics that includes cannabis, even though weeds compounds and effects on the brain are very different from those of classic psychedelics such as LSD and psilocybin. (The term psychedelic derives from the Greek for mind-manifesting.)

Show me the money

Lets discuss these trends in terms of cold hard cash. According to the latest research by InsightAce Analytic, the global psychedelic therapeutics market was valued at US$ 3.61 billion in 2021, and its projected to reach US$ 8.31 billion by 2028, for a compound annual growth rate of 13.2% during the forecast period of 2022-2028.

The InsightAce Analytic report anticipates a surge in psychedelic drug approvals and new product launches, as well as rising financial investment in research.

The following chart shows the status of psychedelic clinical trials with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), according to treatment goals:

Intriguingly, much of this research is highlighting how psychedelic drugs occupy the nexus of science and spirituality. The empirical properties of psychedelics (e.g., alleviating depression or physical pain) cant be separated from the mystical insights gleaned from tripping.

Were seeing the mainstreaming of psychedelics into society and culture, not just medicine. The investment opportunities are vast.

Meanwhile, the canards about psychedelics are falling by the wayside. Doctors are telling us that its impossible to die from an overdose of LSD or psilocybin. Neither drug is addictive, and emergency room admissions because of psychedelics are extremely rare.

Yes, the proverbial bad trip can occur (depending on that individuals psychological makeup or mood at the time), but there are no recorded instances of them occurring in controlled settings under the guidance of counselors or psychotherapists.

Dont leave money on the table. You need to invest in the massive, unstoppable trends Ive just described. Thats why I urge you to read my new book: The Wide World of Weed and Psychedelics.

My book is your definitive guide for making money in the thriving cannabis and psychedelics industries. Want to catch the second wave? Get your free copy of my book.

John Persinos is the editorial director of Investing Daily.

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Get Ready For The Second Wave in Psychedelics - Investing Daily - Investing Daily

The New York cannabis industry plans to prioritize those whove been disproportionately impacted by the War on Drugs.

On Thursday, the citys cannabis regulators approved rules that make it possible to start accepting retail applications from injured parties.

RELATED: New Yorks Draft Conditional Retail Regulations Raise Practical Concerns

The regulations explain that, in order to qualify, applicants must have experience operating a qualifying business and must have faced a conviction for a drug-related offense before the state legalized marijuana. Applicants can also qualify for a conditional adult-use marijuana retail license if they have a close family member that was convicted with a drug-related offense.

While good intentioned, these regulations have been criticized in the past due to how limiting they might end up being. A person thats been impacted by the war on drugs may have had encounters with the law in the past, something that makes it difficult for them to also have experience managing and running a business.

New York legalized marijuana on March 31 2021, and has been working on how to implement it fairly and profitably over the past year. While its legal to consume marijuana and possess up to three ounces of cannabis, the sale remains illegal, a topic that has created some confusion in the state, especially since new businesses continue to appear in the form of trucks, pop ups and brick and mortar, taking advantage of the marijuana boom.

Responsible authorities have tried to control these businesses by sending out cease and desist letters while still trying to keep the police uninvolved.

RELATED: New York Senate Just Approved This Critical Marijuana Bill

Sale of untested products put lives at risk, said Tremain Wright, chair of New Yorks Cannabis Control Board. I implore these illegal store operators, and any other stores pretending to be legal operations, to stop selling cannabis products immediately.

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NY To Begin Accepting Cannabis Applications From People Harmed By War On Drugs - The Fresh Toast

When people think about steroid or PED use, its often under the umbrella of professional sports. Bodybuilders, football players, even cyclists have all been caught using banned steroid substances in the past. But the truth of the matter is that steroids have grown to become an everyman drug. Its not just athletes. Its regular folk who use them as well. This was broken down in detail with the release of Vice News video How Steroids Became More Popular Than Heroin. But how accurate are the claims made in this video? In our latest GI Exclusive, the Anabolic Doc watches and reacts with his knowledge of all things steroids.

In May 2022, Vice News released a new episode in their series News On Drugs. This particular episode focused on steroid use and how it has become a sort of epidemic across the mass population. Steroids and PEDs are a major topic of discussion in the bodybuilding world. Often times, mainstream media gloss over or misconstrue facts that niche industries such as bodybuilding understand in more detail because of how directly steroid use affects the industry.

Thats why there was no better expert than Dr. Thomas OConnor, aka the Anabolic Doc, to watch and react to this recent video. The Vice video has made its rounds and gone somewhat viral with hundreds of thousands of views. What can we learn from this video and what is misunderstood? The Anabolic Doc has often bridged the gap between strength sports and the larger medical world when it comes to steroids. So his expertise in this is perfect for a reaction video. Lets jump into it.

ABOVE: The Vice News video How Steroids Became More Popular Than Heroin that the Anabolic Doc watched and reacted to.

The first segment of the video discusses the war on drugs and how the current action against steroids in the US is to keep it criminalized and prosecute anyone who buys or sells them not prescribed by a doctor. Much like the larger war on drugs the Anabolic Doc finds this to be a failed war. Even worse, it prevents effective education and change to help improve our overall health. Long term steroid users are often quietly suffering even if the substance abuse doesnt lead to a fatality.

The Anabolic Doc agrees with the core notion of the video. Steroids are no longer just a pro athletes drug. Its common place among regular folk. The doctor estimates that 15-20 million people use steroids in the US alone. This is far above the data stated in the Vice News video which was sourced from data gathered in 2010.

With that in mind, all effort must be made to prevent steroid use as being supremely illegal and taboo. This current tactic simply makes users hide their drug use, not seek help when they need it, and get their information from flawed or nefarious sources.

The Vice News video also states that a big problem is steroids being lumped in with other hard drugs such as heroin. This is a mistake. It makes steroid users feel labeled as heavy drug users which makes them feel like they need to keep it a secret and avoid medical guidance.

The Anabolic Doc believes that decriminalizing steroids is a big first step to helping make for a healthier society. The second step is convincing the larger medical culture that steroids should be treated differently than heroin. More education must be put into who steroid users are so that the medical community as a whole can better treat users and prevent future abuse.

Bottom line: the overall culture on how steroids and steroid users are seen needs to change. Yes, steroids are harmful to our overall culture and health but it shouldnt be demonized. This wont lead to change. We can reduce abuse through openness and education.

There is a brief segment of the Vice News video that starts discussing concepts such as roid rage, sharing needles, and penis shrinking. This part is a bit of a mixed bag, with the professional correcting the interviewer on some misconceptions but also getting some facts wrong herself.

The Anabolic Doc points out that the expert being interviewed is not a medical professional but instead a criminologist. So he understands why some of this misconceptions might have slipped through. This is why the doctor wanted to spend some time reacting to the video to straighten some stereotypes out.

The Anabolic Doc debunks the concept of roid rage stating, If youre an asshole then youll be an asshole on steroids. He further compares it to the backwards way men may speak about a womans period.

Most people in todays society know it is rude to use a period to invalidate a womans mood. This is true for steroid use and the stereotype of roid rage. Yes, steroids vastly change your hormones, just like a period. And yes, it can lead to mood swings. But its not intrinsically related to rage. It affects every individual differently.

The Anabolic Doc also debunks the notion that steroid users line up and share needles at gyms. This may have been true decades ago when health information was less available. But in todays society, most steroid users know how to be safe with clean needles and injections. This ties into lumping steroid users into the larger hard drug narrative. It creates a demonized vision of drug use where strung out users are sharing dirty needles and living in squalor. Its just not true. Theres no data to support it.

Ultimately, the Vice News video brings attention to a core fact about steroids that many people arent aware of that regular folk use these substances very frequently. Its not longer an athlete drug. The Anabolic Doc commends the video for detailing this fact and finds it encouraging that its catching waves. Changing the public perception of steroid usage is a big step towards changing how its handled.

However, the Anabolic Doc finds it important to fact check some of the misconceptions presented in the video. While it does an overall good job, much like science, these details need to be peer reviewed for viewers to be best informed.

You can watch Dr. Thomas OConnors full reaction to the Vice News video in our latest GI Exclusive above.

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The Anabolic Doc Reaction To VICE Video: How Steroids Became More Popular Than Heroin - Generation Iron Fitness Network

New York City 2020. In the shadow of the COVID-19 epidemic are two others: the opioid and overdose epidemics. Since the start of these epidemics, there have been thousands of deaths from overdoses, even when the people who OD dont even know theyve consumed opioids.

What is the difference between the two? The opioid epidemic is the epidemic of people knowingly abusing opioids. The overdose epidemic is the epidemic of people overdosing from fentanyl analogues and other opioids unknowingly, such as overdoses when non-opioid drugs are tainted by dangerous opioids such as acrylfentanyl, acetylfentanyl, ohmefentanyl and carfentanil.

What are the preventative measures to keep people from overdosing on opioids, knowingly or unknowingly? One is to keep naloxone (Narcan, Evzio) on hand to ensure that users can have their overdoses reversed. Another is to keep fentanyl test strips on hand, to catch the presence of fentanyl or most fentanyl analogues before one uses tainted substances. These methods save lives. But they require people being ready ahead of time. So what can consistently save the lives of drug addicts and others with Substance Use Disorder?

Safe consumption sites

The operation and usage of safe consumption sites are places that addicted people can go to to keep from overdosing. These provide clean needles, fentanyl test strips, naloxone rescues. Some even provide methadone and buprenorphine referrals or treatment. Around the world where these services are offered, peoples lives have been saved in more than one way.

Safe consumption site, OnPoint NYC, East Harlem location. Credit: New York Harm Reduction Educators

Whether its being rescued with Narcan or saved from the risk of HIV and hepatitis B and C, the sites work to serve working and oppressed people with Substance Use Disorder.

In the U.S., there has been a so-called War on Drugs that began in the 1980s under President Ronald Reagan, continued under the Clinton administration in the 1990s, the George W. Bush administration in the 2000s and the Trump administration in the 2010s. The decades of anti-drug measures were in fact a war on communities of color, with many young people sent to jail for life.

Now theres good news from the Journal of the American Medical Association. In a July 15 research letter to the JAMA Open Network, there is proof that safe consumption sites in the U.S. work here, just like in other countries. (tinyurl.com/4eyhbtx4)

Despite the continued demonization of people who use drugs, the city of New York authorized the two safe consumption sites by OnPoint NYC: one in East Harlem and the other in Washington Heights. From the JAMA report, its now known that within the first two months of operations of the two sites, 613 people used the services almost 6,000 times.

Opioid overdoses required 19 naloxone and 35 oxygen interventions, while overall overdose prevention strategies were used 125 times overall. Other than overdose interventions, additional services were utilized at OnPoints two locations: naloxone distribution, counseling, hepatitis C virus testing, HIV testing, medical care and holistic services such as acupuncture.

The sites give a wide variety of services to the most oppressed and crushed people and provide them with love for themselves. A popular phrase used in addiction and recovery is We will love you until you learn to love yourself. The services provided at the sites demonstrate the power of that process for the actively using addict.

This is only the beginning of studies into the usefulness of safe consumption sites in the United States. And the future looks promising, indeed.

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Safe consumption sites: End the war on people who use drugs! - Workers World

Editor,

Pockets of Shillong are witnessing a rise in drug-related crimes. In the past weeks the law enforcers conducted counter-narcotics programs using community-based intelligence which has worked wonders on a temporary scale but this is a long war which will test the mettle of governments now and later. In this game of interests the lines are blurred from traffickers to a porous border along the North Eastern corridor. What we have not witnessed is the rise of rival cartels backed by corrupt states similar to situations in Mexico or Honduras. Unemployment is a matter of grave concern as each year students are getting out of institutions with degrees but no jobs. Technically, the distribution channels of narcotics are gaining ground in cyberspace too.Legalisation and decriminalization have always been on the cards but whether they will be implemented in letter and spirit is a debatable matter. We cannot be swayed by the capital punishment in Singapore or the failed Plan Colombia to draw a roadmap for ourselves, but the answer lies deeper than the series Narcos. Antony Loewensteins Pills, Powder and Smoke (Inside the Bloody War on Drugs) weaves it beautifully on this powerful multi-billion dollar industry which will not yield submissively.

Yours etc.,

Christopher Gatphoh,

Via email

Editor,

Apropos the letter Plight of NEHU students by Wilbert Thangkhiew (ST, July 15, 2022) I wholeheartedly endorse the views of the author. Being a victim of the issues highlighted issues in Wilberts letter, its even more frustrating to realise that youre not the only person struggling but a part of a larger disgruntled group. NEHU has become a den of politics for personal vendetta and vested interests. Many Vice-Chancellors have come and gone and we, the indigenous people, who have had multiple generations graduating from this university, feel sorry to witness the gradual downfall of this once esteemed institution. From having professors under CBI scanner for taking bribes from research scholars in broad daylight, disruptive forces meddling with everyday affairs to officials guilty of dereliction of duty from time immemorial, it seems NEHU has come a full circle with the appointment of the current Vice Chancellor.The VC is always out of station and a simple task of issuing a bonafide certificate takes more than two weeks to process. Whenever someone tries to raise an important issue there is an acting VC in office with no responsibility. Perhaps, employees in NEHU have gone into retirement mode with the VC eternally being away from the helm of affairs. So, the question is, are all VCs expected to be in Delhi for the majority of their tenures? I believe hefty salary and facilities makes the man affluent enough to neglect his primary duty of serving the state and the nation through quality education. The grapevine is abuzz that the VC has constructed a new chamber for himself from taxpayers money while vehemently giving false assurances of improving hostel facilities amidst crunch for funds.The Tura Campus has received step-motherly treatment with false assurances time and again. The question to be asked is how did NEHU find itself in such a situation of giving a 15- day time frame to casual workers, 7- day time frame to Tura Campus and again 15- day time frame to the students to meet their demands which has lapsed a long time ago?I hence urge the Chief Minister, all stakeholders and particularly the Chief Rector- the Honble Governor to initiate an academic audit to draw a comparison of how many days the VC has been in station and the reasons for his travels out of state. This culture of having institutional leaders being a law unto themselves should be done away with once and for all. And still, if the VC does not understand, which seems very likely, we do have a popular English coaching institute- Avenues in Shillong.

Yours etc.,

Benny Shira,

Tura

More here:

War on narcotics - The Shillong Times

Its been a little over two years since the tragic murder of George Floyd, and what was arguably the largest civil rights protests in United States history. Since May of 2020, hashtags and icons have been used to commemorate him, but he was so much more than a face on a mural. He was a father, partner, athlete, and friend who constantly strove for a better life, as chronicled in His Name Is George Floyd: One Mans Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice. The book builds off of a series in The Washington Post in October 2020 called George Floyd's America. Robert Samuels, a national enterprise reporter at The Washington Post, co-wrote the book with colleague Toluse Olorunnipa, a political enterprise and investigations reporter. Samuels joins WITHpod for a personal look at how systemic racism impacted Floyds life, his familys social mobility, his legacy and more. Samuels also discusses how even despite all of the seemingly endless challenges Floyd faced, he still held on to his vision for a better world.

Note: This is a rough transcript please excuse any typos.

Robert Samuels: A lot of folks who believe that to get by in life you simply need to get by, there's not a lot of ambition, George Floyd wasn't one of those people though.

From early on, he started telling his sister that he didn't want to rule the world, he didn't want to change the world, but he wanted to do something to touch the world.

Chris Hayes: Hello and welcome to "Why Is This Happening?" with me, your host, Chris Hayes.

It's been a little over two years since the death of George Floyd, a man in Minneapolis who was buying something at a store, had the police called on him for possibly passing a counterfeit 20. And the police showed up, and as you know, Derek Chauvin ended up kneeling on George Floyd's neck as a crowd of onlookers watched and raised alarms and screamed out for help and recorded on their phones until George Floyd was no longer able to breathe, as he said, "I can't breathe, I can't breathe," and ended up dying.

And in the wake of that, the United States saw the largest civil rights protests, racial justice protests it had seen in over a generation and by some metrics ever if you count participation estimates and the number of people that were on the streets. You had protests in cities large and small that swept across the country. You had this moment to sort of invoke what's become a cliche, a racial reckoning, about the sort of systemic legacy of anti-Black racism in America and its intersection with the legacy of policing.

And then, you had a backlash to that, which in many ways one could say was as equal in its force, even if it didn't mobilize in the streets in the same way, but produced what we have seen in state house after state house with prohibitions on the teaching of certain aspects of the legacies of white supremacy, and chattel slavery, and Jim Crowe, and racial segregation and systematic oppression up to this current day.

And the continuation of this pitch battle about the meaning of the American story as it pertains to race. The aspiration towards of equality with the reality of systematic inequities that persist, and persist, and persist long past the inception points that created them and long past the point that many people would like to admit that they persist.

At the center of that though was a person, a man by the name of George Floyd, with a story, with a family, with a history, with an inner life (ph), with passions, with complications, with all of the human attributes that attach to any person. And a story that put him in that place at a certain time propelled by all of the historical structural forces that produced the system of the racial caste in America.

And that, telling that story is the project of a fascinating new book, which is a biography of George Floyd. It's called, "His Name is George Floyd: One Man's Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice." It's a biography of George Floyd, but also about the structural factors of history and class in American society that shaped who he is, and what his life was and how he came to be there at that moment. And how he died at the hands of a white police officer. And what happened afterward.

It's co-authored by Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa, and it builds off a series that was done in "The Washington Post" in October 2020, called "George Floyd's America."

And two years plus after his death, I thought it would be great to sit down with Robert Samuels, a fellow Bronx native and one of those co-authors.

Robert, great to have you on the program.

Robert Samuels: Thanks for having me, Chris. I really appreciate it.

Chris Hayes: This is a really interesting project because it's at the intersection of biography and sort of history and social history. How did you conceive of it?

Robert Samuels: So much of the conversations in the country when we had first endeavored on this project were about systemic racism. And they were good conversations to have, but I thought lost in those conversations was the idea of how it actually played out in someone's life.

And so, in the summer of 2020, a group of reporters at "The Post" asked ourselves, how can we make this real? How can we show the tangible impact of what it does?

And the idea came to try and look at the life of George Floyd, a person who everyone recognized, felt the brunt of racism on May 25, 2020.

But what we wanted readers to understand, Chris, was that the structures of systemic racism were hobbling George Floyd before he ever met Derek Chauvin. And in going through the story of his life we could help the world see who we are as a larger society and what we might be able to do to start unlocking and dismantling systemic racism in America.

Chris Hayes: So, I want to start the story with the first emancipated generation in George Floyd's family history, which I think is a really fascinating story that you trace back. Tell us about many generations back where George Floyd's people came from.

Robert Samuels: So, we understood that if we really wanted the world to understand why George Floyd grew up poor, why he was born poor, you had to go back to the very beginning. Even though people don't like talking about slavery, but it turns out when we went back seven generations George Floyd's great-grandfather was a man named Hillery Thomas Stewart. He was the first person on his mother's line to be emancipated.

And he was an industrious fellow. He actually amassed 500 acres of land in eastern North Carolina, which would have made him one of the wealthiest and most industrious Black landowners of his time.

But before he was able to make one single inter-generational transfer all that property and land was stripped from him through tax fraud, unscrupulous business deals that he could not understand, being forced to sign letters that he could not understand because it was illegal for him to learn how to read.

And so, he ended up dying a popper in a country where if he was able to continue George Floyd would have been born in a different life. That money would have been passed on. It would have grown. Instead, his family was forced into the abusive and expletive nature of sharecropping, where his family worked. They continued to work for generations, hoping that one day they'll be able to rid themselves of these credit burdens that sharecropping had brought about, but they could never do it.

And one thing that I think is really important about this conversation, Chris, is when we talk about the abuses of sharecropping, like when I was growing up in the Bronx I thought this was something that happened long ago. You know, I sort of saw in black or white or sepia tones.

Chris Hayes: Yes, totally.

Robert Samuels: Yes, but the people who we spoke to about it, George Floyd's aunts and uncles, they're living today. They're of working age today. And that shows just how long that history of slavery reached, to people who are still living today.

Chris Hayes: So, the story of Hillery Thomas Stewart I found very affecting and compelling for a number of reasons. One that I think often, the story that you can read about, the expropriation of Black wealth in that period is just sheer theft and violence, right? Like literally marauded off their land.

In this case, it has the same end, but it's a much more pernicious form or perdition, basically in which he is taken advantage of, partly because he is an emancipated slave who was legally barred from being literate, right. So, he is sort of sitting duck for these people to prey upon him.

But also, the notion that in this one family's lineage is the story of tremendous progress and then regress that's the story of Black emancipation right after the Civil War and then in the seven decades after. That this man is emancipated and begins to amass land as a full citizen of the newly liberated South, and that that is just a blink of an eye before it's all taken back and his family, for seven generations, would be thrust back into the sort of neo-feudalism of sharecropping.

Robert Samuels: Right. That's right. And that's how we begin to understand how structural racism works, right. Now, when they were taking away the land from the Stewarts, that's George Floyd's maternal side, again, his mom's side, this was a slow burn. It wasn't like the Klan came in and completely robbed it.

Chris Hayes: Exactly, right.

Robert Samuels: And I think that's what people really need to understand about how racism works. It's easy to think about actors as being nefarious, swift people who will do and inflect immediate punishment on African Americans in this country.

But what our reporting showed that time and time again was it was a feeling of fear and a feeling of resentment of Black progress that seeped into to many of the policies and many of the actions by people who are in with the majority in this country.

Chris Hayes: So, this is back many generations on his mother's side. Tell the story of his parents, were sort of more immediately where they come from, the world they're coming on (ph).

Robert Samuels: Sure. So, Larcenia Stewart, that's George Floyd's mother, that's her maiden name, she meets a musician who she falls in love with. His name is George Perry Floyd, Sr. And he has big dreams. He dreams about being a musician. He plays gigs in New York, and they begin to have a family.

Larcenia, who everyone knew as Sissy, and later Miss Sissy, didn't want that kind of life. She didn't want to be around a traveling rolling stone of a musician. So, she first returns to North Carolina and still faces the burden of racism. Feeling that her family could not get ahead, she makes a move. And she moves with a man named Felonus Hogan (ph) to Houston, Texas. And she hopes that living a bigger city that's rapidly growing, that she might be able to set her family on a stronger path.

Now, again, I really want to emphasize that Miss Sissy was not someone who never believed in hard work or was never industrious. She worked as a domestic worker. She worked at a local hamburger joint, and she was known for her gregarious spirit. She'd take people in. If she saw them drunk, she'd fix them meals. She'd fix meals for the entire community. We have stories about people who had grown up with George Floyd, who lived with the Floyd family for a very long time.

So, she was a matriarch of a very full house, a very loving home. And the person who really had taken to her, who loved kissing on her cheek to the point where she'd say, this side's getting numb kiss me on the other side was George Perry Floyd, Jr., her first son.

Chris Hayes: This is another place where I just found the striking, you know, microcosm of the larger story, which is for generations in America, Black people in the rural South and in small town South and parts of the South have moved to large metropolitan areas seeking more opportunities, seeking to escape the bonds of the inheritance of the structural factors that had produced sharecropping and segregation and Jim Crowe during the Great Northern Migration that happens in the 1900s, 1920s. But even as late as Sissy, George Floyd's mom, that this is part of a much larger story, the sort of striking out from metropolitan areas searching for opportunity.

Robert Samuels: Right. There are so many times where, the Floyd family, they held on to the belief of the American promise. And that's one of the things about the American promise, right, that if you work hard and your find the opportunity something good will happen to you.

I don't know how it got so encoded into everyone's DNA in the country that this is how it works. And so, yes, she follows a very familiar pattern of leaving the South to a city hoping that she'd be able to flee herself and her family from some of the structures that were oppressing her.

But when she got to Houston, right, she and her family run into different ways that the original American sin begins to pour out. She moves into an area called "The Bottoms," the Third Ward of Houston and later into a housing project called Cuney Homes.

Now, that neighborhood was a redline neighborhood. It was segregated because the federal government had chosen that it should be that way. It was by a highway which sliced through a community and separated the wealthy from the not-so-wealthy. And there was not a lot of investment in the school systems that came.

She takes her children, and they are educated in a school system, the Houston Independent School District, that was amongst the last major metropolitan cities to integrate. And when they did begin to integrate, you saw the flight, the white flight of white residents from the Houston School District. Some even tried to make their own school districts and invent their own cities.

And one of the most interesting things that happened is that as George Floyd's going to school and all of this is going on, the courts say you need to swap teachers. You cannot have a segregated educational workforce.

So what happens? Well, the best Black teachers are pulled away from the schools that George Floyd is going to, and the white schools did not respond in kind. They did not send their best teachers.

So you are left with an educational system that did not have the investment originally and it did not have the right educational experience or cultural understanding to actually relate to these children.

Chris Hayes: What year was George Floyd born?

Robert Samuels: George Floyd was born in 1973.

Chris Hayes: OK, so his childhood is in the Houston Third Ward which is a predominantly Black neighborhood, right? I mean and sort of in some ways when you say relined, I mean again the nature of the Third Ward is very recognizable as an instantiation of a form of concentrated Black poverty that is produced in city after city after city after the Great Migration and through this sort of redlining that gets produced in the post-World War II era. The Third Ward's an example of that.

Tell me about what his upbringing's like, his life world in that neighborhood is like.

Robert Samuels: So if you live in a city, you'd recognize a community like Third Ward, and particularly the Cuney Homes Housing Project because it looks so distinct from the neighborhoods that are across the interstate from it.

The people in that community called it the "The Bricks" because the homes, the project housing, they were low-slung brick homes connected to one another. But it also referred to the hard scrabble life that people led there.

And as factory jobs left the United States there was not a lot of investment in work. And so what happens is that neighborhood, the currency of the neighborhood largely becomes drugs. So George Floyd is growing up in a community that is known for dealing drugs, a lot of drug users, a lot of poverty, a lot of people who can't get jobs.

And a lot of folks who believed that to get by in life you simply need to get by. There's not a lot of ambition. George Floyd wasn't one of those people, though. From early on he started telling his sister that he didn't want to rule the world, he didn't want to change the world, but he wanted to do something to touch the world.

And one of the most interesting things that we learned about him came from his second grade teacher Ms. Sexton. And she kept this essay that he wrote in second grade.

Chris Hayes: Yes, this is incredible detail.

Robert Samuels: Yes, this is second grade so it's not a full essay, it's about a paragraph. And it comes after she teaches this segment about African American history. And George Floyd, after learning about Thurgood Marshall, says he wants to be a Supreme Court Justice because he wants to be able to adjudicate and regulate how the law is played out.

Now it's not just the dream that's interesting about this, right, it's how he writes about it. The spelling's right, the grammar is right, the punctuation's right. And George Floyd, at second grade, was reading and writing at grade level, which is incredibly hard if you grow up --

(CROSSTALK)

Chris Hayes: Yes.

Robert Samuels: -- in a community as destitute as his was. And so there was something special about George Floyd. And I think there is something that we, as readers, ask about this and what we as society should be asking about this. Which is how is it that these bright Black boys, who have these big dreams in second grade, what happens that prevents from achieving them?

Chris Hayes: Yes, I found that detail about the second grade essay just really profound and really moving, you know, partly because I do think and I appreciate about the project of this book. Even in the mourning of George Floyd, there's a kind of dehumanization because he becomes an icon rather than a person. And just that like this human detail of this bright little boy, memorable bright little boy with big dreams for the world writing about being a Supreme Court Justice just like completely got me when I came across that in the book.

Robert Samuels: You know Toluse and I, when we first endeavored on this project, one of my biggest worries was that we were simply going to write a Black pain essay that would just make people feel terrible and lament how hard it is to be Black in the United States, which it is.

But the more we learned about George Floyd the less nervous we got because it's true that when a person becomes a hashtag, they're flattened in a way that is unfair and some of it is that people don't want to traffic and negativity about the people who are dead. And so you hear things like, oh, this guy was a gentle giant, he wouldn't hurt a fly.

And I know that, as a person who receives that information, you sometimes say, oh, yes, sure, they're just trying to protect their life. But by all accounts, you know, through all the interviews that we did with his friends and his family, the people who loved him, the people who were on football teams with him, the people he was in rehab with.

They all told these similar stories that George Floyd was not just a generic person who should be reduced to a hashtag. He was a man of flesh and blood. But he was distinct in the way he loved people, in the ways that he hugged people. And he was incredibly distinct in his positivity and optimism that despite everything that was happening to him and had happened to him, he was going to make a difference. Up until the last days of his life, he never lost that.

Chris Hayes: We'll be right back after we take this quick break.

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Chris Hayes: Let's talk a little bit about who he was, what his personality was. Because it does come across like I totally agree with you and like one of the things, you know, you're a reporter and you learn this as a reporter, right. Like A, people are complicated, really complicated. I mean that's true of if you're asked to write a 5,000-word profile of anyone that you love, a family member, right, and you want to write an honest profile like there would be a lot of complexity there.

Also like some people are harrassable. Some people are like kind of jerks. Like and some people that terrible things happen to can be kind of ornery. Or, you know, there's all sorts of complexity. It does come across that this is a particularly like soulful and sensitive individual in terms of who he was, just his personality. That comes across in how he's described by this friends and stuff.

And tell me a little bit about like what kind of a guy he was?

Robert Samuels: Yes. So George Floyd, you know, he was 6'6" and 225 pounds, a big muscular guy. He wasn't always that way. He was pretty lanky when he was growing up. And he used to be mocked because he was so skinny until people saw what he could do with a basketball and a football.

So they told him, you know, Supreme Court that's cool. But the way that people really make it out of this neighborhood is if they're great athletes --

(CROSSTALK)

Chris Hayes: Right.

Robert Samuels: -- and so that's what George Floyd invest in. But when you talk to the people who are with him on the Jackets football team, which was one of the best teams in this state and known for their ruthless aggressive style. They'd make every game a morality play, you know, the coach would say, "This is the rich against the poor."

George Floyd was often mocked because he was not a ruthless player. He did not like to hit, he did not like to be hit. One of the most entertaining anecdotes in the book is, I'm not very good with football. But he's on the field and a person's charging at him who's bigger than he is and wider, who could really do some damage to him and they're at practice. And instead of getting tackled, George Floyd just throws him the ball. And they laugh and he laughs and that's who he was.

The other thing about George Floyd is people would say he had almost the opposite of a Napoleon complex. He was very self-conscious about his size.

Chris Hayes: Yes.

Robert Samuels: So if he was walking into a room with strangers he'd want to go and shake people's hands and to let them know he wasn't there to intimidate them, he wasn't there to scare them. And the three words that he's most associated with now in his death are, "I can't breathe". But when we talked to so many people who knew him, they talk about the last thing he would always say to them is, "I love you".

Now, the first we heard that from one of his girlfriends and then we heard it from his second girlfriend. And we thought well, you know, this guy's just good with girls. But then we learned about it with all his other friends too. That those were the last words that he had ever shared with them. He'd end most phone calls and most text messages with it, "I love you". Because he felt that as being Black and being poor and living in the conditions in which he was living, hearing those words was not something that people in his situation often heard enough.

Chris Hayes: So he develops this incredible frame, and he is a naturally gifted athlete and is a quite elevated level of athletic ability in high school. What happens next?

Robert Samuels: Well, his big dream is to get a football scholarship which would then take him to play pro. But when he gets to college, he realizes that he cannot meet the academic requirements to play. And it's incredibly hard for him. This is the cruel contradiction of this. You know, he was good at these sports, but he really built himself up, his size, developed his body so he could play these games.

And then at the end, he can't do it because he can't meet the academic requirements for post-secondary education. So it's one of those real cruel contradictions. So what's he left with? He's left with returning to a community during a time when the policing within his community has increased, this is the war on drugs era, this is the crime bill era in a place where the only true economics in the community are to deal drugs. And that's what George Floyd begins to do.

Now, when we talked to people about his ability to hustle, those who hustled with him say that his heart was never really in it. He wasn't particularly good at it. It was something he did because he had to do. And ultimately, he got caught.

And in a world where, in Texas at that time, there was no public defender system, there is not a lot of grace for people who looked like he did. He pleaded guilty to a number of drug-related charges both usage and possession because he thought there was no other option, which leaves him with the brand of convicted felon.

And when you get that brand in Texas, like many other states at the time, that meant it was going to be fairly impossible for you to get a job. You could not get a professional license in Texas if you were a former felon, which prohibited you from one in three jobs in Texas. You couldn't become a barber if you wanted to.

So what does that lead to, right? It leads to rolling the dice on that experience, but it also leads to a feeling of depression and escapism that no system in Texas was truly equipped to handle.

At that time, Governor George W. Bush restricted the number of safe beds, those are beds for people who have drug dependency issues and addiction issues. He restricted the number of those in prison. They did not expand Medicaid, which meant George Floyd could not get health insurance.

And so, here he was with this issue and no way to fix it.

Chris Hayes: This is by his mid-20s, right? I mean, at this point he --

Robert Samuels: Yes.

Chris Hayes: -- has developed a substance dependence, right?

Robert Samuels: Yes.

Chris Hayes: What drugs?

Robert Samuels: So, at first, we know about largely opioids.

Chris Hayes: Yes.

See the original post here:

Why Is This Happening? 'His Name is George Floyd' with Robert Samuels - MSNBC

The Early Stages of Drug Prohibition

Many currently illegal drugs, such as marijuana, opium, coca, and psychedelics have been used for thousands of years for both medical and spiritual purposes. So why are some drugs legal and other drugs illegal today? It's not based on any scientific assessment of the relative risks of these drugs but it has everything to do with who is associated with these drugs.

The first anti-opium laws in the 1870s were directed at Chinese immigrants. The first anti-cocaine laws in the early 1900s were directed at black men in the South. The first anti-marijuana laws, in the Midwest and the Southwest in the 1910s and 20s, were directed at Mexican migrants and Mexican Americans. Today, Latino and especially black communities are still subject to wildly disproportionate drug enforcement and sentencing practices.

In the 1960s, as drugs became symbols of youthful rebellion, social upheaval, and political dissent, the government halted scientific research to evaluate their medical safety and efficacy.

In June 1971, President Nixon declared a war on drugs. He dramatically increased the size and presence of federal drug control agencies, and pushed through measures such as mandatory sentencing and no-knock warrants.

A top Nixon aide, John Ehrlichman, later admitted: You want to know what this was really all about. The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what Im saying. We knew we couldnt make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.Nixon temporarily placed marijuana in Schedule One, the most restrictive category of drugs, pending review by a commission he appointed led by Republican Pennsylvania Governor Raymond Shafer.

In 1972, the commission unanimously recommended decriminalizing the possession and distribution of marijuana for personal use. Nixon ignored the report and rejected its recommendations.

Between 1973 and 1977, however, eleven states decriminalized marijuana possession. In January 1977, President Jimmy Carter was inaugurated on a campaign platform that included marijuana decriminalization. In October 1977, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to decriminalize possession of up to an ounce of marijuana for personal use.

Within just a few years, though, the tide had shifted. Proposals to decriminalize marijuana were abandoned as parents became increasingly concerned about high rates of teen marijuana use. Marijuana was ultimately caught up in a broader cultural backlash against the perceived permissiveness of the 1970s.

This video from hip hop legend Jay Z and acclaimed artist Molly Crabapple depicts the drug wars devastating impact on the Black community from decades of biased law enforcement.

The video traces the drug war from President Nixon to the draconian Rockefeller Drug Laws to the emerging aboveground marijuana market that is poised to make legal millions for wealthy investors doing the same thing that generations of people of color have been arrested and locked up for. After you watch the video, read on to learn more about the discriminatory history of the war on drugs.

The presidency of Ronald Reagan marked the start of a long period of skyrocketing rates of incarceration, largely thanks to his unprecedented expansion of the drug war. The number of people behind bars for nonviolent drug law offenses increased from 50,000 in 1980 to over 400,000 by 1997.

Public concern about illicit drug use built throughout the 1980s, largely due to media portrayals of people addicted to the smokeable form of cocaine dubbed crack. Soon after Ronald Reagan took office in 1981, his wife, Nancy Reagan, began a highly-publicized anti-drug campaign, coining the slogan "Just Say No."

This set the stage for the zero tolerance policies implemented in the mid-to-late 1980s. Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates, who believed that casual drug users should be taken out and shot, founded the DARE drug education program, which was quickly adopted nationwide despite the lack of evidence of its effectiveness. The increasingly harsh drug policies also blocked the expansion of syringe access programs and other harm reduction policies to reduce the rapid spread of HIV/AIDS.

In the late 1980s, a political hysteria about drugs led to the passage of draconian penalties in Congress and state legislatures that rapidly increased the prison population. In 1985, the proportion of Americans polled who saw drug abuse as the nation's "number one problem" was just 2-6 percent. The figure grew through the remainder of the 1980s until, in September 1989, it reached a remarkable 64 percent one of the most intense fixations by the American public on any issue in polling history. Within less than a year, however, the figure plummeted to less than 10 percent, as the media lost interest. The draconian policies enacted during the hysteria remained, however, and continued to result in escalating levels of arrests and incarceration.

Although Bill Clinton advocated for treatment instead of incarceration during his 1992 presidential campaign, after his first few months in the White House he reverted to the drug war strategies of his Republican predecessors by continuing to escalate the drug war. Notoriously, Clinton rejected a U.S. Sentencing Commission recommendation to eliminate the disparity between crack and powder cocaine sentences.

He also rejected, with the encouragement of drug czar General Barry McCaffrey, Health Secretary Donna Shalalas advice to end the federal ban on funding for syringe access programs. Yet, a month before leaving office, Clinton asserted in a Rolling Stone interview that "we really need a re-examination of our entire policy on imprisonment" of people who use drugs, and said that marijuana use "should be decriminalized."

At the height of the drug war hysteria in the late 1980s and early 1990s, a movement emerged seeking a new approach to drug policy. In 1987, Arnold Trebach and Kevin Zeese founded the Drug Policy Foundation describing it as the loyal opposition to the war on drugs. Prominent conservatives such as William Buckley and Milton Friedman had long advocated for ending drug prohibition, as had civil libertarians such as longtime ACLU Executive Director Ira Glasser. In the late 1980s they were joined by Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke, Federal Judge Robert Sweet, Princeton professor Ethan Nadelmann, and other activists, scholars and policymakers.

In 1994, Nadelmann founded The Lindesmith Center as the first U.S. project of George Soros Open Society Institute. In 2000, the growing Center merged with the Drug Policy Foundation to create the Drug Policy Alliance.

George W. Bush arrived in the White House as the drug war was running out of steam yet he allocated more money than ever to it. His drug czar, John Walters, zealously focused on marijuana and launched a major campaign to promote student drug testing. While rates of illicit drug use remained constant, overdose fatalities rose rapidly.

The era of George W. Bush also witnessed the rapid escalation of the militarization of domestic drug law enforcement. By the end of Bush's term, there were about 40,000 paramilitary-style SWAT raids on Americans every year mostly for nonviolent drug law offenses, often misdemeanors. While federal reform mostly stalled under Bush, state-level reforms finally began to slow the growth of the drug war.

Politicians now routinely admit to having used marijuana, and even cocaine, when they were younger. When Michael Bloomberg was questioned during his 2001 mayoral campaign about whether he had ever used marijuana, he said, "You bet I did and I enjoyed it." Barack Obama also candidly discussed his prior cocaine and marijuana use: "When I was a kid, I inhaled frequently that was the point."

Public opinion has shifted dramatically in favor of sensible reforms that expand health-based approaches while reducing the role of criminalization in drug policy.

Marijuana reform has gained unprecedented momentum throughout the Americas. Alaska, California, Colorado, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, Oregon, Vermont, Washington, and theDistrict of Columbia have legalized marijuana for adults. In December 2013, Uruguay became the first country in the world to legally regulate marijuana. Canada legalized marijuana for adults in 2018.

In response to a worsening overdose epidemic, dozens of U.S. states passed laws to increase access to the overdose antidote, naloxone, as well as 911 Good Samaritan laws to encourage people to seek medical help in the event of an overdose.

Yet the assault on American citizens and others continues, with 700,000 people still arrested for marijuana offenses each year and almost 500,000 people still behind bars for nothing more than a drug law violation.

President Obama, despite supporting several successful policy changes such as reducing the crack/powder sentencing disparity, ending the ban on federal funding for syringe access programs, and ending federal interference with state medical marijuana laws did not shift the majority of drug policy funding to a health-based approach.

The Trump administration threatened to take us backward toward a 1980s-style drug war. President Trump started building a wall to keep drugs out of the country, and called for harsher sentences for drug law violations and the death penalty for people who sell drugs. He also resurrected disproven just say no messaging aimed at youth.

2020 brought the additional challenge of the COVID-19 pandemic a public health crisis that exposed the systemic issues within our society and revealed just how deeply the drug war permeates these systems. People who interact with these systems are unable to take the most basic of steps to prevent the spread of COVID-19 including those in jail or prison, the homeless, people with substance use disorder, those who rely on access to medication-assisted treatment or medical marijuana, and immigrants. During this crisis, it is harder for them to engage in social distancing, and to access necessary medication assisted treatment such as methadone or buprenorphine, or medical marijuana as well as other health and harm reduction resources.

Despite these obstacles, we at the Drug Policy Alliance pushed forward with monumental drug policy reforms in the 2020 elections.In a historic, paradigm-shifting win and arguably the biggest blow to the war on drugs to date,Oregon voters passed Measure 110, the nations first all-drug decriminalization measure.This confirms a substantial shift in public support in favor of treating drug use with health services rather than with criminalization.

Marijuana reform also won big.Voters in Arizona, New Jersey, Montana, and South Dakota passed measures to legalize marijuana for adult use. It was also a historic year for medical marijuana, with victories in Mississippi and South Dakota.

All across the country, in liberal states and conservative ones, people made their voices heard. And they said loud and clear that it is time to end the drug war.

Now Joe Biden is President of the United States and with every new administration brings new opportunities.

Biden has stated that it was a mistake to support legislation that ramped up the drug war and increased incarceration, including the '94 crime bill, when he was in the U.S. Senate. He now says we need a compassionate approach to problematic drug use.

At the Drug Policy Alliance, we agree. And were ready to make change. We look forward to working together on a humane approach to drugs that reduces the role of criminalization and increases access to health based treatment and harm reduction services for people who need them.

We look forward to a future where drug policies are shaped by science and compassion rather than political hysteria.

Learn about DPA's victories in marijuana reform, criminal justice reform, and harm reduction.

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A History of the Drug War | Drug Policy Alliance