No More Drug Wars! End the Harm & Heal the Community
Drug Policy Alliance an organization working toward ending the continued harms being inflicted on communities of color and class, published a series of reports in early 2021 looking at how the racist so called war on drugs has infiltrated daily life beyond policing.
The War on Drugs Meets Public Benefits
“In conjunction with the war on drugs-fueled increases in arrests and incarcerations for drug law violations and ideology of castigating people involved in drug-related activity, lawmakers across the country sought ways to restrict access to public benefits programs. The war on drugs helped to provide a colorblind, moral justification for welfare reform. This was accomplished in part by combining the false, yet established media-fed narrative of the “welfare queen” with the false, new media-fed narrative of “crack babies” during the 1980s. These racially-coded terms were used to scapegoat poor Black and Latinx people, especially women, in order to stoke fear and loathing in the rest of the population. The twin anti-drug and anti-public benefits crusades of that period were an all-out attack on poor women of color that created an environment in which Congress could, during a period of extreme criminalization and punishment, enact laws to disqualify entire swaths of the population from needed public benefits, often for life”
The War on Drugs Meets Immigration
“U.S. drug prohibition and exclusionary immigration policies share a long and ignominious history grounded in racially-based criminalization. The nation’s first restrictive immigration laws, the Page Act of 1875 and Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, drew heavily on negative public attitudes towards Chinese immigrants, including association with opium, to justify banning their entry into the country. In 1875, the same year as the Page Act, the city of San Francisco passed the country’s first drug criminalization law, an ordinance prohibiting opium dens, based on the false rationale that Chinese people were corrupting white people with opium. Marijuana and alcohol prohibition also have their roots in racist anti-Black and anti-immigrant fervor with the frequent blaming of drug trafficking on racialized outsiders and dangerous others, including Mexicans and communists, and associating marijuana with violent crime by Mexicans and Black people despite the lack of evidence to support such claims”
The War on Drugs Meets Housing
“Instead of offering people a home, the war on drugs has promoted kicking people to the curb, depriving them of the housing stability; increasing the likelihood of family disunification; exacerbating health problems, like overdose; and contributing to this country’s homelessness crisis. As a society, we should implement policies to provide safe, stable housing to everyone in need. The drug war’s infiltration of housing policy has prevented this, causing great harm to individuals, families, and communities. We must uproot the drug war from our housing systems and provide the support individuals and families need to live safe, healthy lives”
The War on Drugs Meets Employment
“The workplace has been and continues to be a primary front in the war on drugs. Federal policy has guaranteed this through intentional efforts to ensure public and private employers adopt drug war tactics. Drug testing and criminal background restrictions implemented as part of the effort to create drug-free workplaces have disqualified otherwise qualified people from gainful employment, and people with substance use disorders have been left out of federal disability protections…Study after study has demonstrated that gainful employment is key to the successful reentry of people coming out of carceral settings and to the successful recovery of people with substance use disorders. But the policies and practices generated by the war on drugs have created insurmountable barriers leading to economic and employment instability, the cycling in and out of prison and jail, and increased problematic drug use and overdose. Through pervasive drug testing, denials of employment based on criminal records, and refusal to extend disability protections to people with substance use disorders, the war on drugs has ensured that entire communities of otherwise employable people are not able to get jobs or advance in their careers”
The War on Drugs Meets Education
“The war on drugs has led to extremely punitive school policies intended to remove students and exclude them from future educational opportunities. While there has been some recent progress to chip away at these policies, hundreds of thousands of people have been excluded because of them. Federal policies have led schools across the nation to target students and create hostile learning environments…. Denying education to students, primarily students of color, for drug possession and other policy violations leads to negative consequences, including increased unemployment, income inequality, costly health problems, and incarceration… Our schools should focus on providing safe, supportive environments built on mutual trust between students and educators. The war on drugs has prevented this by instilling punitive policies based on surveillance and misinformation. We must uproot the drug war from our education systems and allow people to attain support and the highest level of educational achievement”
The War on Drugs Meets Child Welfare
“The drug war has provided the means and base assumptions to justify removing children from their families. Placing the blame on individual parents and drug use offers an easy scapegoat that detracts from focusing on structural issues like racism, poverty, and lack of supportive services. Child welfare policies enacted under the drug war have wreaked serious harm among primarily low-income families, especially families of color. They have contributed to the United States’ alarming distinction as home to the most legally parentless children through termination of parental rights. Separating children from their parents often leads to the very harms from which these policies purport to protect”
We stand with those harmed by the racist ‘War on Drugs’. As citizens and business owners in Colorado, a state that has seen huge financial gain by legalization, we confirm our responsibility and desire to contribute to the healing process and to work towards change.
100% of profit from the ‘Justice Pin’ is invested in the important work being done to end the war on drugs.
