What is Sensible Drug Policy?

From SSDPedia

As students, particularly as members of the DARE Generation, we have been used as the scapegoats for justifying the Drug War. We reject these dangerous policies, which are a failure in their stated purpose of protecting our country’s youth. Not only do we work to tear down those Drug War policies that most severely impact students and young people, but we also realize the need to articulate our values for constructing new policy. Our principles for sensible drug policy are based on sound science and compassion, and are designed to promote an open, honest, and rational discussion about how to address our country's drug problems. Tragically, this approach is counter to the current Drug War regime.

Our policy reform efforts are primarily aimed at encouraging the federal and state governments to revise failed laws and regulations exacerbating the harmful effects of the Drug War. We also apply our vision of sensible drug policy to laws and regulations at the campus and local levels.

[edit] Sensible drug policy must...

• Have as primary goals the promotion of health and safety and the reduction of the harms associated with the use, abuse, and trade of drugs.
• Provide accurate, nonjudgmental, science-based information about drugs and the risks associated with drug use, especially to young people.
• Emphasize the value of education by prioritizing its budgetary status over that of prison spending.
• Eliminate the discrepancy between how alcohol and other drugs are handled on college campuses and encourage schools to deal with student substance issues non-punitively.
• Utilize parents and health professionals, instead of law enforcement officials, to educate students about drugs and to address drug-related problems in school.
• Emphasize non-coerced treatment and prevention of drug abuse over criminal penalties for nonviolent drug law offenders.
• Acknowledge the complexity of drugs in our society by distinguishing drug use from drug abuse.
• Allow doctors to prescribe, and patients to take, the substances that they feel are the most effective in treating medical conditions.
• Permit the Food and Drug Administration and other qualified entities to study the effects of currently illicit drugs in the same process that other chemicals and medications are studied.
• Protect the rights of individuals and groups to speak, assemble, petition, and pay for advertisements to criticize government drug policies.
• Protect the constitutional presumption of innocence by constraining the ability of law enforcement to seize the property of those accused of drug-related crimes.

[edit] Sensible drug policy must not...

• Incarcerate persons for behavior that does not endanger the lives, safety, or rights of others.
• Bar persons convicted of drug offenses from receiving public benefits such as housing, welfare, food stamps, and educational aid; and it must not prevent citizens from exercising the constitutional right to vote.
• Target or disproportionately impact particular racial, ethnic, cultural, or age groups for the enforcement of drug laws.
• Subject defendants to one-size-fits-all mandatory minimum sentences that undermine judicial discretion by disallowing judges from taking into account the details of individual circumstances.
• Allow for de facto “drug exception” interpretations of the Constitution used to set aside or diminish protections against unreasonable searches, seizures, coerced drug tests, or other invasions of personal privacy.
• Counter or interfere with the educational mission of schools by imposing disproportionate “zero tolerance” punishments on students in violation of school drug policies, encouraging police raids of schools especially with little or no evidence of drug activity, or by disqualifying students from school activities on the basis of failure or refusal of drug testing.
• Hold third parties criminally liable for others’ drug law violations.
• Use taxpayer dollars to propagate false or misleading information about drugs and drug use, especially when such campaigns are intended to stifle efforts to reform drug policy.
• Contribute U.S. resources to Drug War-related military action overseas.
• Rely on policies that negatively impact the environment, such as the use of dangerous chemicals for supply-side eradication or the prohibition on industrial hemp cultivation.