Thousands Protest "Failed Drug War"

By April Pederson, SpeakOut.com. Posted August 1, 2000.

Tuesday, August 1 -- Today busloads of people with family members incarcerated for non-violent drug offenses arrive in Philadelphia for what is expected to be the largest-ever gathering of Americans protesting the drug war. But the crowds numbers won't even approach the nearly 500,000 non-violent drug offenders living behind bars in the United States, according to the Lindesmith Center, a number that has increased ten-fold in two decades.

As part of the "Shadow Convention," which aims to address key issues largely ignored by the major political parties during their National Conventions, the Lindesmith Center-Drug Policy Foundation, a group pushing for alternative drug policies and expanding drug treatment, is organizing Shadow proceedings on the drug war.

What they're calling the "failed drug war" is one of three topics to be addressed during the Shadow Conventions. Campaign finance reform and the growing wealth gap are also on the agenda. "Millions of Americans now have a family member behind bars for violating the drug laws," said Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Lindesmith Center-Drug Policy Foundation. "This gathering is about giving a voice to those family members and others who have been victimized by a war on drugs that is doing far more harm than good."

Non-Violent Drug Users: 25 Percent of Prisoners

As Republicans gather in the city that gave birth to the penitentiary, here is something to muse: Nearly 1 in 4 people in prison in the United States is there for a drug offense — and, according to a recent report, the number of drug offenders locked up today is roughly the same as the entire prison and jail population in 1980. Some prominent Republican officials descending upon Philadelphia this week are beginning to ask the hard questions about the drug war.

Outspoken critics like New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson, the first U.S. governor to call for marijuana legalization and other major drug policy reforms, and Representative Tom Campbell, the first major party politician to run for statewide office on a platform that includes significant drug policy reform, are both on the bill. Reverend Jesse Jackson is also scheduled to deliver an address criticizing the way current drug policies unfairly target minorities.

Most notoriously, stiffer laws instituted in the 1980s against the cheaper crack form of cocaine continue to put drug-abusing African Americans and Latinos in jail for far longer sentences than white Americans.

A report released last week, "Poor Prescription: the Costs of Imprisoning Drug Offenders in the United States," published by the Justice Policy Institute, reveals in the consequences of the bipartisan, two-decade obsession with mandatory sentences and harsh drug policies.

The nation's prison population now stands at 2 million, but according to the report, this has less to do with making streets safer than with locking up nonviolent drug users. According to the study, while the number of people in state prisons for violent crime has doubled since 1980, the number of nonviolent offenders behind bars has tripled -- and the number of people incarcerated for drug offenses has gone up more than 11-fold.

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