Interfaith Drug Policy Initiative

Supporters (as of 3/1/02):
National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
Presbyterian Church (USA)
United Church of Christ
Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations
Progressive Jewish Alliance
Rainbow/PUSH Coalition
Religious Society of Friends (Philadelphia Yearly Meeting)

For decades the United States has been fighting a losing war against drugs. While budgets have increased dramatically over the last two decades and drug-related incarcerations consistently reach new records, drug problems worsen. Adolescent drug abuse is increasing, overdose deaths are at record levels, heroin and cocaine are cheaper, more pure and more available, and health problems related to drugs, especially the spread of HIV/AIDS, are mounting, while an expensive and ineffective international counter narcotics policy entails growing human rights and environmental costs. Drug problems can be reduced at less cost if we change course and adopt strategies that work. At a time when the federal budget is limited programs need to re-evaluated and funding needs to go to programs that work. We need new ideas to save lives, we can't afford to continue to be wrong.

Below are eight steps that are effective methods of controlling drugs and reducing drug-related harms:

1. Shift Resources Into Programs That Work: US drug control strategy has been approached primarily as a law enforcement issue. Police have done their jobs with record arrests, drug seizures and record incarceration of drug offenders yet drug problems continue to worsen. Expensive eradication and interdiction campaigns abroad have brought few results and many costs. Yet, two-thirds of the federal drug control budget continues to go to interdiction and law enforcement programs while treatment, prevention, research and education divide the remaining federal drug budget. Government needs to accept that the law enforcement paradigm will never work and shift to treating drug abuse as a health problem with social and economic implications and therefore the solutions are in public health approaches that focuses on addicts and abusers not all users, social services to reduce many of the root causes of abuse and economic strategies to develop alternative markets as well as control drug markets. The federal drug budget should recognize this by shifting resources to prevention, treatment and education.

2. Make Treatment Available on Request Like Any Other Health Service: Making treatment services widely available undermines the drug market and reduces the harms from drug abuse. Treatment needs to be defined broadly to not only include abstinence-based treatment but also easier access to methadone and other alternative maintenance drugs. In addition providing mental health treatment, as well as sex abuse, spousal abuse and child abuse services to face the underlying causes of addiction. Treatment also needs to be user friendly, i.e. designed to meet the needs of special populations, especially, women, children and minorities. Finally, it needs to be focused on abusers and addicts not all drug users. The best way to accomplish this distinction is to allow people who need treatment to choose it, rather than police choosing treatment for people who happen to get caught.

3. Prevent Drug Abuse By Investing in American Youth and Providing Them with Accurate Information: The most effective way to prevent adolescent drug abuse is to invest in youth and keep them interested and involved in life. Government should increase funding for after school programs, mentor programs, skills building and job training programs and summer jobs for youth. The Higher Education Act provisions denying college aid to students convicted of drug offenses should be repealed, as barriers to education and employment are counterproductive to preventing drug abuse. Education needs to be fact-based, accurate and taught by trained educators and health professionals, not by police. Resources should be shifted from ineffective programs like the ONDCP media campaign and the DARE program to research to develop a more effective drug education approach and toward programs to keep youth active.

4. Focus Law Enforcement Resources on the Most Dangerous and Violent Criminals: Half of drug arrests in the United States are for marijuana offenses and possession cases. Low-level, non-violent drug offenders are dominating police time, wasting the time of courts and filling US prisons. The drug war fuels the record breaking over two million prisoner incarceration level in the US. Arrest and incarceration have a devastating impact on individuals and families. The focus of the federal government in drug enforcement should be large cases that cross international and state boundaries. Smaller cases that are intra state should be left to the states. Drug users and small dealers, who essentially deal to support their habit, should be given the choice of treatment instead of prison. Non-violent offenders should be the lowest law enforcement priority. Urge all prison systems in the U.S. to be less restrictive in granting parole to bona fide nonviolent drug prisoners at review time, less restrictive in granting compassionate release and less restrictive in allowing family visits. These modest changes would give prisoners a motive for good behavior to earn their way out of prison and back to their families and communities.

5. International Drug Control Efforts Should Be Demilitarized and Focus on Economic Development: Focus international drug control efforts on economic development to undermine the incentives for producing drugs, and rely on civilian institutions, not militaries, for eradication and interdiction. Get serious about development initiatives for drug-producing regions, with community-based programs, including attention to marketing so farmers have real choices. Stop all aerial fumigation programs, with their unacceptable environmental and human costs. Channel law enforcement aid where it belongs, through police and other civilian institutions, not the military. Pay attention to human rights concerns in all international drug control programs. Recognize that reducing demand at home is the most effective international strategy because as long as there is a demand, supply will develop.

6. Restore Justice to the US Justice System: Drug enforcement is racially unfair at every stage of the justice system. Profiling of communities and individuals by police and prosecutorial discretion consistently favors whites. Disparity between crack and powder cocaine sentencing has a racially unfair impact. False testimony by police to justify searches and convict suspects is too widespread. To restore justice acknowledge the racial unfairness, document it and make it illegal; return sentencing discretion to federal judges by repealing mandatory minimum sentencing and making the Sentencing Guidelines discretionary. End the disparity in crack and powder sentencing by reducing crack sentences to the same as cocaine powder.

7. Respect State's Rights and Allow New Approaches to Be Tried: The Federal government should work with states that have voted fourteen times for reform measures over the last three election cycles. Reforms have included treatment instead of prison, medical use of marijuana, marijuana decriminalization and stopping abuse of forfeiture laws. The federal government has opposed many of these reforms and taken steps to block them from being implemented. But, the states are laboratories for new approaches that should be tried and, if effective, duplicated in other parts of the United States.

8. Make Prevention of HIV and Other Blood Borne Diseases a Top Priority: HIV/AIDS, Hepatitis-C and other blood borne diseases are rapidly spread through the sharing of contaminated syringes. Needle exchange and syringe deregulation have been shown to be effective ways to reduce the spread of disease without increasing drug abuse. Indeed, these services often lead to reductions in drug abuse by getting hard-core users into treatment.

top

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

U.S. Faith Community Asks Presidential Candidates for a New Policy on Colombia

Courtesy of the Friends Committee on National Legislation (www.fcnl.org)

October 14, 2004

Dear President Bush/Senator Kerry:

As representatives of a broad range of U.S. churches and faith communities we are calling upon you as a presidential candidate to commit to a serious reassessment of current U.S. policy towards Colombia. We believe it is time to envision a new strategy to respond to the needs of both nations and to work for the peace and security of our respective peoples.

Colombia is one of the most dangerous places on earth to be a religious leader, a promoter of peace, or human rights defender. The danger is consistently brought to light as astonishing numbers of religious and civil society leaders are assassinated, threatened and detained. The suffering of the Colombian churches and their call to us for assistance and solidarity compel us to appeal to you to seriously consider recommendations for a new U.S. policy toward Colombia that are outlined below.

We believe it is of great importance for the United States to remain engaged with the government of Colombia and Colombian civil society organizations, but to do so in a manner that will support aspirations for a just and sustainable peace as well as effectively address our shared concerns about drug production and consumption.

In this light, we respectfully urge you to include the following recommendations in a new vision for U.S. policy towards Colombia:

I. A greater commitment to a negotiated, political path towards peace.

After forty years of an ever-escalating armed conflict that has claimed the lives of tens of thousands, Colombian Catholic and Protestant church representatives have been clear that a negotiated political process, though difficult and contentious, is essential to the resolution of the current conflict. Every effort should be made to achieve a politically negotiated peace process inclusive of civil society participation, and based upon verification of ‘truth, justice and the provision of reparations for the victims of war.’

We call upon both Presidential campaigns to make a greater commitment to support Colombian and international efforts towards a negotiated resolution of the conflict in Colombia.

II. Increased attention to social concerns as a preferred long-term strategy to sustainable peace.

The conflict in Colombia and involvement of peasant farmers in coca production is deeply rooted in social and economic exclusion of many of its citizens. Many of the areas most in conflict have little or no social infrastructure or viable economic options. Strategies that rely primarily on military aid or fumigation, and provide only limited social investment in local communities, will not create lasting change.

The United States can make a significant positive contribution to long-term peace and stability in Colombia by shifting the focus of its foreign aid towards a much greater emphasis on effective social development. There are an increasing number of initiatives throughout the country of local governments, churches, and civil society coming together to create lasting alternatives to overt violence and the inequality and poverty that have sustained it. These initiatives, and the communities they serve, could greatly benefit from development funding – with long-term benefit for thousands of people.

The situation of internal displacement in Colombia is a crisis of staggering proportions – and one of the most serious in the world. Almost three million people have been displaced from their homes since 1985. Churches locally and internationally are responding to the great needs of Colombia’s internally displaced, a group that most aptly represents the human face of suffering in the country. We are grateful for the attention provided to refugees and internally displaced persons through U.S. aid, and see this as a positive contribution of U.S. policy toward Colombia. Yet much more remains to be done.

We call for a greater proportion of the U.S. aid to Colombia to be dedicated to investment in sustainable development, humanitarian aid and the defense of human rights.

III. Humane drug policies that meet the needs of those most directly impacted.

We share a deep concern about the consumption and production of illicit drugs. Billions of dollars have been spent on fumigation and interdiction yet, drug consumption continues unabated in our communities, drug offenses have exploded the prison populations, and treatment programs go under funded. This approach is not working.

The churches and faith communities in the U.S. and Colombia are painfully aware of the devastation of drugs in the lives of individuals, families and our communities. We see the end results every day and minister to affected families. It is precisely because we are so well versed in the human costs of the drug crisis that we are well placed to call for effective drug policies that will have lasting impact in all of our communities.

As the Office of National Drug Control Policy’s January 2004 Pulse Check Study of drug abuse in 25 U.S. cities states: powder and crack cocaine remains readily available and there are no clear positive trends on price and purity. As church organizations, we do not claim expertise on the best demand reduction strategies, but we urge you to shift the focus of current drug policy.

We call for increased drug treatment programs and realistic, pragmatic prevention strategies as a much more sustainable and humane way to achieve the goal of reducing drug abuse in the United States.

Thank you for your attention to the great courage and great needs of our Colombian brothers and sisters. We hope to work with you as we seek durable solutions for all affected communities.

Signed,

National Heads of Communion and Faith-Based Organizations

Rev. John L. McCullough
Executive Director and CEO
Church World Service

Rev. Dr. Robert Edgar
General Secretary
National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA

Rev. Ronald D. Witherup, S.S.
President
Conference of Major Superiors of Men

Kathryn Wolford
President
Lutheran World Relief

Bruce Wilkinson
Senior Vice President
International Programs Group
World Vision

Rev. John Thomas
General Minister and President
United Church of Christ

The Reverend Mark S. Hanson
Presiding Bishop
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America

James Winkler
General Secretary
General Board of Church and Society of The United Methodist Church

The Most Rev. Frank T. Griswold
Presiding Bishop and Primate
The Episcopal Church, USA

Rev. Dr. Clifton Kirkpatrick
Stated Clerk
Presbyterian Church (USA)

Rosanne Rustemeyer, SSND
Executive Director
U.S. Catholic Mission Association

Ken Hackett
President
Catholic Relief Services

Rev. Kenneth Gavin, S.J.
National Director
Jesuit Refugee Service/USA

Gail E. Mengel
National Board Minister
Church Women United

Carolyn Krebs, OP
President
Dominican Leadership
Dominican Sisters (Elkins Park, PA)

Marie Dennis
Director
Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns

Joe Volk
Executive Secretary
Friends Committee on National Legislation

Jim Wallis
Editor
Sojourners Magazine

Arlene DiMarco
Vice President
National Council of Catholic Women (Harrisburg, PA)

Maureen Fenlon, OP
National Coordinator
NETWORK, A National Catholic Social Justice Lobby

Rev. Ron Stief
Minister and Team Leader
Washington Office, United Church of Christ Justice and Witness Ministries

J. Daryl Byler
Director
Mennonite Central Committee, Washington Office.

Bishop Thomas J. Gumbleton
Auxiliary Bishop,
Archdiocese of Detroit (Detroit, MI)

Rev. Elenora Giddings Ivory
Director, Washington Office
Presbyterian Church, (USA)

US Jesuit Conference
Roman Catholic
Washington, DC

Richard Parkins
Director
Episcopal Migration Ministries

Executive Council
Sisters of St. Francis

Brian Terrell
Executive Director
Catholic Peace Ministry (Des Moines, IA)

Krisanne Vaillencourt
Executive Director
Witness for Peace

Patricia Clark
Executive Director
Fellowship of Reconciliation USA

Jim Atwood
Presbyterian Peace Fellowship

Sister Mary M McGlone
Executive Director,
FUVIRESE USA
Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet (Denver, CO)

Dr. Monika K. Hellwig
President
Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities

Phil Reed, M.Afr.
Coordinator, Justice and Peace Office
North American Province
Society of Missionaries of Africa

top