Congress must recognize the failures of the war on drugs and apologize to the individuals and communities that have been harmed in its wake, a new House resolution implores.
The measure was introduced by Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-NJ), a member of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) and co-chair of the Congressional Caucus on Black Women and Girls (CBWG), on Tuesday. It calls on the House of Representatives to acknowledge the racist underpinnings of the drug war, the excess spending on drug enforcement efforts and the need to treat drug addiction as a public health, rather than criminal justice, issue.
“The War on Drugs didn’t just fail to stem the damage of addiction, its very declaration failed to meet the values of equality and justice our nation was founded on,” Coleman said in a press release.
“Congress has rightly decided to tackle the opioid epidemic with evidence-based policies that seek to solve the issue of addiction. But for years, we criminalized addiction in ways that caused irreparable harm not just to users, but their families, neighborhoods, and communities.”
The resolution largely focuses on the racial disparities in how drug addiction has been characterized and addressed over past decades. As the drug war heated up and substances such as crack cocaine were targeted, consumers were often treated as “criminals,” whereas individuals suffering from opioid addiction are commonly described as “victims,” the text of the resolution states.
“As we offer up funding and resources to address the disease of addiction among overwhelmingly White users, we must acknowledge our failures to do the same with victims of color.”The resolution reflects a growing movement in Congress to reform federal cannabis laws, with groups like the CBC emphasizing the racially disproportionate nature of drug enforcement efforts.
For example, the CBC introduced a 1,300-page omnibus bill last month that called for the descheduling of marijuana and the establishment of a “reinvestment fund for communities negatively impacted by the War on Drugs.”
The CBC also released a position statement last week reiterating its stance that marijuana should be decriminalized and calling for “automatic expungement for those convicted of misdemeanors for marijuana-related offenses, and an easy path to expungement for those previously convicted of felonies for marijuana-related offenses.”
This isn’t the first time House members have floated the idea of issuing a formal apology for the failed drug war.
Last year, Rep. Bobby Rush (D-IL) filed a bill that would have established a commission to study the impact of mass incarceration and forced prison labor on black Americans. It also sought answers from the commission as to whether the federal government should “offer a formal apology on behalf of the people of the United States to the African-American victims of the ‘War on Drugs’ and their descendants” and whether “any form of compensation to the victims of the ‘War on Drugs’ and their descendants is warranted.”Coleman’s new resolution is supported by 27 cosponsors and a number of civil rights and drug policy organizations, including the Drug Policy Alliance, NAACP and the Sentencing Project.
See below the full text of the resolution:
RESOLUTION
To acknowledge
that the War on Drugs has been a failed policy in achieving the goal of
reducing drug use, and for the House of Representatives to apologize to
the individuals and communities that were victimized by this policy.
Whereas, until the early
1900s, most of today’s illegal substances were not regulated by the
Federal Government, and there was no “War on Drugs”;
Whereas, in the 1930s,
the first Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, Harry J.
Anslinger, who was a strong opponent to marijuana, pushed a heavy
propaganda campaign to demonize marijuana use, stating that it caused
people to be violent and criminals;
Whereas much of this
propaganda was racially charged against the Mexican-American community,
for example as Commissioner Anslinger testified to the 75th Congress in
1937 that, “I wish I could show you what a small marijuana cigarette can
do to one of our degenerate Spanish speaking residents. That’s why our
problem is so great; the greatest percentage of our population is
composed of Spanish-speaking persons, most of who are low mentally,
because of social and racial conditions”;
Whereas, in 1937, the
75th Congress passed the Marijuana Tax Act which criminalized marijuana,
and laws passed during the following years were introduced to institute
mandatory minimum sentences for those who bought, sold, and used the
drug;
Whereas over the course
of the next few decades, studies conducted by scientists did not find
any connection between the use of marijuana and violent behaviors, and
in 1973 the Shafer Commission Report on Marijuana and Drugs concluded
that, “The Commission believes that the contemporary American drug
problem has emerged in part from our institutional response to drug use.
… We have failed to weave policy into the fabric of social
institutions.”;
Whereas despite mounting
evidence, the Federal Government’s approach to the abuse of drugs
continued to be one of criminalizing drug abuse instead of treatment;
Whereas, on June 18,
1971, President Richard Nixon declared the War on Drugs, stating that
drug abuse is “public enemy number one”;
Whereas the Federal
Government’s attitude toward drug use as a criminal problem only
intensified with stricter drug laws, and the Government put little to no
focus on treating those impacted;
Whereas the War on Drugs
was admitted to be a move by the Nixon administration to attack his
political opponents, and in 1994, President Richard Nixon’s aide John
Ehrlichman admitted in an interview that the War on Drugs was a tool to
arrest and manipulate Blacks and liberals stating, “We knew we couldn’t
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.”;
Whereas in 1986, the
99th Congress passed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act establishing, for the first
time, mandatory minimum sentences for those convicted of having
specific amounts of cocaine;
Whereas, in 1989, drug
czar William Bennett announced a $7,900,000,000 plan to combat the drug
epidemic, but 70 percent of that amount went to hiring more law
enforcement personnel and building prisons;
Whereas that money could
have been better used to help provide treatment to the victims of those
on heroin, cocaine, and other drugs;
Whereas, in 1986, the
99th Congress increased the sentences for dealing and possessing crack
cocaine, and in a few years, enhanced law enforcement presence loomed
over and aggressively policed communities of color;
Whereas to this day,
these laws greatly target communities of color, dramatically increasing
the incarceration rate of these communities and imposing a stigma that
people of color are the main users of drugs, despite White Americans
using at a similar if not greater rate;
Whereas Professor of
Sociology at the University of California Santa Cruz, Craig Reinarman,
and Professor of Sociology at Queens College, Harry G. Levine, studied
the use of crack cocaine in the United States and later published in
their book, entitled “Crack in America”, which stated that, “In the
spring of 1986, American politicians and news media began an
extraordinary anti-drug frenzy that ran until 1992. Newspapers,
magazines and television networks regularly carried lurid stories about a
new ‘epidemic’ or ‘plague’ of drug use, especially of crack cocaine.
They said this ‘epidemic’ was spreading rapidly from cities to the
suburbs and was destroying American society. It is certainly true that
the United States has real health and social problems that result from
illegal and legal drug use. But it is certainly also true that the
period from 1986 through 1992 was characterized by anti-drug
extremism.”;
Whereas the use of
opiates such as oxycodone, hydrocodone, methadone, heroin, and fentanyl
has skyrocketed since the late 1990s and the amount of prescription
opioids legally sold nearly quadrupled from 1999 to 2010, despite no
change in the amount of pain that Americans reported;
Whereas the National
Center for Health Statistics suggested that there were more than 64,000
drug overdose deaths in 2016, and that a majority of these deaths come
from synthetic opioids like fentanyl;
Whereas these drug overdoses have become the leading cause of accidental death, surpassing car accidents;
Whereas, on March 29,
2017, President Donald Trump signed an Executive order to establish the
President’s Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid
Crisis, and in a preliminary report the Commission has recommended that
the opioid crisis, among other things, should be “declared a national
emergency under either the Public Health Service Act or the Stafford
Act”;
Whereas many scholars,
journalists, and civic leaders have addressed the strong contrast to the
urgency of helping those impacted by opioids compared to those who were
impacted by crack cocaine and other substances during the War on Drugs;
Whereas the terminology
used to describe those impacted by the opioid epidemic is “victims”, and
the terminology used to describe those impacted by the War on Drugs is
“criminals”;
Whereas if the concept
of equity was considered, meaning that individuals fairly receive what
they need in order to create a level playing field, the same funds and
support going to help those impacted by opioids will also go to help
those impacted by heroin, cocaine, and the other drugs classified in the
War on Drugs;
Whereas as stated by
Georgetown University Professor Michael Eric Dyson, “White brothers and
sisters have been medicalized in terms of their trauma and addiction.
Black and brown people have been criminalized for their trauma and
addiction.”;
Whereas, on October 26,
2017, President Donald Trump declared the opioid epidemic a public
health emergency, which allows access to the Public Health Emergency
Fund at the Department of Health and Human Services, which has only tens
of thousands of dollars; and
Whereas there has been
no formal action by the United States Government to treat the epidemic
of drug abuse and the War on Drugs as a health issue: Now, therefore, be
it
Resolved, That it is the sense of the House of Representatives that—
(1) the War on Drugs has failed to achieve its goal of reducing drug use;
(2) the War on Drugs has created conditions in the United States that has allowed the opioid epidemic to be as deadly as it is;
(3) the War
on Drugs is a racially charged policy that has led to the mass
incarceration of millions of Americans, disproportionately affecting
communities of color, stigmatized these communities as the cause of the
drug problem, and has economically, politically, and socially crippled
these communities for decades;
(4) in order to help those impacted, drug use has to be seen as a health issue and not a criminal issue;
(5) the House
of Representatives should seek to hereby reconsider all laws associated
and consistent with the War on Drugs, and prioritizes effective,
evidence-based health policy solutions for individuals and communities
suffering from addiction;
(6) the House
of Representatives should enact civil remedies and restorative justice
for any individual who has been incarcerated or otherwise punished
through the Federal criminal justice system due to laws associated and
consistent with the War on Drugs;
(7) Congress
affirms that all individuals suffering from the disease of addiction be
treated humanely, with equity and respect as all people struggling with
any other health matter; and
(8) the House
of Representatives hereby apologizes to the individuals and communities
harmed through the War on Drugs and acknowledges that actions by this
body have demonized and criminalized addiction for more than 80 years
instead of accurately treating it as a health concern.
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