NAACP Officially Opposes War on Drugs

Jim Finnel

Fallen Cannabis Warrior & Ex News Moderator
On Tuesday, during their 102nd Annual Convention, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People passed a resolution calling for an end to the War on Drugs.

According to the Daily Caller, the resolution was titled “A Call to End the War on Drugs, Allocate Funding to Investigate Substance Abuse Treatment, Education, and Opportunities in Communities of Color for A Better Tomorrow.” It highlighted the fact that blacks are 13 times more likely to be in jail for drug-related crimes than whites in the country’s $40 billion per year “War.”

“We know that the war on drugs has been a complete failure because in the forty years that we’ve been waging this war, drug use and abuse has not gone down,” Robert Rooks, director of the NAACP Criminal Justice Program, said, according to DC. “The only thing we’ve accomplished is becoming the world’s largest incarcerator, sending people with mental health and addiction issues to prison, and creating a system of racial disparities that rivals Jim Crow policies of the 1960s.”

Back in April, Philadelphia NAACP President Jerry Mondesire told PW, “We believe the War on Drugs has been a horrible failure. Locking people up for small amounts of marijuana and other recreational drugs may not be the best way to handle it. Putting people in prison for long periods of time is not a sensible way to run our society.”

Mondesire then said the War on Drugs being a civil rights issue would be discussed at the July convention. He said national President Benjamin Jealous considers it just that and “I tend to agree with what his thought process is.”

Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams has set up a diversionary court for marijuana abusers, which, when first announced, was thought by many advocates and those in the media to be a form of marijuana decriminalization. The DA’s office has denied this.

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