DPA is a leading organisation in the USA promoting new drug policies based on science, compassion, health and human rights and a just society in which the fears, prejudices and punitive prohibitions of today are no more.

La DPA es una organización estadounidense clave que promueve el establecimiento de políticas de drogas centradas en la ciencia, la compasión, la salud, los derechos humanos, y una sociedad justa en la que el miedo, los prejuicios y las prohibiciones punitivas actuales ya no existirán.

La DPA est une organisation américaine qui promeut la mise en place de politiques des drogues basées sur la science, la compassion, la santé, les droits humains, et une société juste dans laquelle la peur, les préjudices et les condamnations actuelles n’auront plus leur place.

Drug Policy Alliance (DPA)

We all care about the health and safety of our communities. Some of the top concerns we hear about include the overdose crisis, public homelessness and drug use, and perceived“nuisance” issues. It’s important that we invest in communities with the resources they need to thrive, including becoming safer and healthier.

Some policymakers, however, prioritize policing and other enforcement tactics instead of investing in communities in the ways they need. Routinelyusing police to respond to overdose, health crises, and perceived “nuisance” matters has contributed significantly to excessive police budgets. It has also led to far too many incidents involving the unnecessary use of force by police. In the pursuit of drugs, police have been given unchecked power to use aggressive tactics. In too many instances this has led to killings, particularly of Black, Latinx and Indigenous people. Communities nationwide have increasingly realized that business-as-usual policing has not stopped problematic behaviors and drugs are cheaper, more available and more potent than ever. It has caused even deeper problems, like riskier drug use patterns, a growing overdose crisis, and police violence.

Principles of non-police response to drug use concerns and emergencies

The overdose crisis has deeply impacted pregnant and postpartum people. In this Drug Researchers’ Roundtable, Drs. Silvia Martins and Emilie Bruzelius will discuss their recent study, which found that overdoses were involved in over 1 in 6 pregnancy-associated deaths in 2020. They will explain recent trends in pregnancy-associated overdose mortality, as well factors - such as the pandemic, healthcare access, and an unregulated drug supply - that may contribute to this increase in deaths. Lisa Sangoi, Co-Director and Co-Founder of Movement for Family Power, will explain the role of drug war criminalization and the family policing system in contributing to family separation and poorer drug-related outcomes.

Dr. Emilie Bruzelius is a Substance Abuse Epidemiology Training Program post-doctoral research fellow in the Department of Epidemiology at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. Her research examines relationships between substance use and social policies and health outcomes, with a focus on pregnant people and families. Her dissertation evaluated the impacts of prenatal drug use criminalization on utilization of drug treatment and pregnancy care services. Emilie received her PhD in Epidemiology and MPH in Sociomedical Sciences from MSPH at Columbia University. She also completed advanced training in data science from DSI at the Fu School of Engineering at Columbia University and a BA in Sociology from Brandeis University. Last year, she first authored a research letter published in JAMA reporting the first national scale estimates of drug overdose among pregnant women. In addition to the JAMA paper, for her work examining the impact of opioid policies on the child welfare system, she has presented findings to the Bureau of Justice Assistance, state Prescription Drug Monitoring Program Directors, and the National Data Archive on Child Abuse and Neglect.

Dr. Silvia S. Martins is the Director of the Substance Use Epidemiology Unit of the Department of Epidemiology, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and of the Policy and Health Initiatives on Opioids and other Substances interdisciplinary group (PHIOS). She is also the co-director of the NIDA T32 Substance Abuse Epidemiology Training Program in the department ). She has co-authored >290 peer-reviewed epidemiological and substance use articles. She has served as PI or MPI of multiple NIH funded grants. Some of her recent research findings have included recent trends in drug overdose mortality in pregnant women in the US, the impact of prescription drug monitoring programs on prescription opioid and heroin overdoses, machine learning techniques to understand opioid policies associated with high-opioid prescribing, and the effects of recreational cannabis laws in cannabis use in US adolescents and adults. Most recently, she received a NIDA-funded award to investigate the role of opioid policies and substance use policies that regulate substance use during pregnancy on several opioid-related outcomes in pregnant women that use opioids and their infants in which we are working with Medicaid administrative claims data. She received several awards for her research and mentoring, including the 2021 Columbia President’s Global Innovation Fund, the 2017 Columbia University MSPH Dean’s Award for Excellence in Mentoring, and the 2021 Interdisciplinary Association for Population Health Sciences Stephanie Robert Mentoring Award.

Lisa is the Co-Director and Co-Founder of Movement for Family Power. Lisa is dedicated to building the power of families and communities affected by the child welfare and foster care systems. Having been deeply influenced by the principles of movement lawyering, she is committed to using her skills and dissipating her privilege in service of growing a movement for child welfare and foster system reform and abolition.

Lisa has had the honor of working on a number of campaigns to roll back laws, policies and practices that punish women and mothers, including a campaign against the high profile criminal prosecution of Purvi Patel for self inducing an abortion. She has also had the privilege of providing legal representation to women targeted by the child protection and criminal legal systems through trial and appellate advocacy. Given the intersection of the drug war and the child welfare system, Lisa spends quite a bit of time learning about drug use, pregnancy and parenting, and she regularly consults on related child welfare cases and legislation throughout the country.

Lisa values being in community with people and doing the hard work of slowly, over time, jointly building political analysis and thought. She loves to research, read, write and publish and she wants to explore how to democratize spaces like research and media that have not always been open to diverse voices.

Lisa has a law degree from NYU School of Law, a master's degree in human rights studies, and undergraduate degrees in math and philosophy. She has previously worked or interned at the NYU Law Family Defense Clinic, National Advocates for Pregnant Women, Women Prison Association Incarcerated Mothers Law Project, and Brooklyn Defender Services Family Defense Practice, among other organizations.

If Lisa could leave you with one thought to ponder over the child welfare system and foster system, it would be this: regardless of who you think is deserving of blame for what, do you sincerely think the child welfare and foster system is a place where anyone, parent, or child, can heal? Do you sincerely believe these systems have reduced harm that children and families experience?

ASL interpretation and live captioning will be provided. This panel is virtual and open to the public. This event will be recorded and registrants will receive the link after the event. If you have other access needs or questions, please contact Aliza Cohen at acohen@drugpolicy.org.

Pregnancy and overdose: The roles of harm redux, healthcare and criminalization

In this session, individuals who operate and research safe consumption discuss drug user-run sites vs. public health sites and how to centralise the experiences of people who use drugs.

In this session, activists who use drugs and harm reduction researchers present the concept of safe supply. This session will also address safe supply in relation to racial justice.

Session 3 (Successes and lessons learned in drug policy)

In this session, activists who use drugs discuss their involvement in drug policy reform and harm reduction efforts. Panelists also discuss what drug user-centric drug policy would mean and how we get there.

Session 4 (The North American drug war and journalism)

In this session, journalists and drug user activists discuss the North American drug war and journalism. Panelists cover the role journalism has played in the War on Drugs, journalistic ethics, and future directions of journalism when covering drug use.

Session 5 (Deconstructing the brain disease model of addiction)

In this session, drug policy researchers and activists who use drugs deconstruct the brain disease model of addiction utilizing a historical context and discuss the impacts this model has had on the experiences of people who use drugs.

In this session, activists who use drugs and drug policy researchers define and discuss "Narcofeminism".

Confronting the drug war: Roundtable series

This submission to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination provides comments on the first draft of General Recommendation N. 37 on racial discrimination in the enjoyment of the right to health.

It provides evidence of the role of drug laws and policies as a driver of discriminatory policing and incarceration, and how this leads to the violation of the right to be free from racial discrimination in the enjoyment of the right to health. We urge the Committee to recognise explicitly in the General Recommendation that contact with the criminal legal system is a social determinant of health, and that States have the obligation to reform criminal laws, policies, and practices with racially discriminatory outcomes - including drug-related laws, policies, and practices.

Comments to draft General Recommendation N. 37 on racial discrimination in the enjoyment of the right to health - IDPC submission to CERD

On President Joe Biden’s first day in office, he issued an executive order establishing equity as a key policy commitment of his administration. However, despite routinely characterizing marijuana reform as an opportunity to advance equity, the administration failed to include cannabis in its numerous equity efforts until October 2022. At that point, more than a year and a half into his presidency, Biden announced new steps to address what he called a “failed approach to marijuana.” He said cannabis convictions produce “needless barriers” to opportunities like employment, housing, and education, and he acknowledged that “while white and Black and brown people use marijuana at similar rates, Black and brown people have been arrested, prosecuted, and convicted at disproportionate rates.” 

In the months since, the Biden administration has regularly noted the disparate impact of marijuana criminalization on Black and Latino communities, and the president has highlighted his actions on cannabis reform as a key part of his equity efforts. However, despite Biden’s boilerplate acknowledgments of inequities associated with cannabis criminalization, marijuana reform has been omitted from his administration’s Equity Action Plans, which are foundational to the administration’s goal of advancing equity across all federal policies and programs. 

The omission represents a missed opportunity to address the disparate impact of federal marijuana laws on underserved communities — a disparity that Biden himself frequently acknowledges. It undermines the administration’s stated goal of using the power of the executive branch to comprehensively advance equity across the federal government and it stymies efforts of advocates for effective and equitable cannabis regulation at the local, state, and federal level. 

This paper briefly reviews Biden’s and Vice President Kamala Harris’s histories on marijuana reform, as well as the administration’s positions on cannabis prior to taking up the subject in late 2022. It then argues that cannabis reform ought to be included under the administration’s efforts to comprehensively pursue equitable policies at the federal level, specifically through the use of Equity Action Plans. 

The paper also identifies tangible steps the Biden administration could take to develop an Equity Action Plan for marijuana reform, including the collection and reporting of data, consultation with underserved communities, and assessment of harms associated with cannabis criminalization. It concludes by considering additional actions necessary for the Biden administration to fulfill its promises on marijuana reform. These measures would help ensure that, when federal agencies are next required to submit

An equity action plan for marijuana: The Biden administration’s opportunity to advance equity through cannabis reform

End The Drug War. Build a New World. #Reform2023

The International Drug Policy Reform Conference is back. Join us October 18-21, 2023, in Phoenix, Arizona. Save the date!

The Reform Conference is the world’s premier gathering of drug policy reformers to learn about drug policy and to strategize about ending the drug war and to mobilize reform to begin building a new world where health, equity, and human rights are front and center, not punishment.

Attendees will spend three days building community with people committed to finding alternatives to the war on drugs while participating in sessions given by leading experts from around the world. More than 1,200 attendees representing over 50 countries joined us in St. Louis, MO in 2019. We are excited to bring the conference to Phoenix, Arizona in 2023!

Since the last Reform Conference in 2019, the Drug Policy Alliance has released our 

. We are excited to share our vision and to strategize and mobilize reform with you in 2023!

Join us to strategize, build community, and organize around:

Decriminalizing Drugs and Building Health-Based Alternatives

Ensuring Our Systems Help, Not Hurt by Uprooting the Drug War from Our Daily Lives

Reinvesting Resources into Communities and Divesting from Punitive Police Responses

Rethinking and Reducing Punishment of People in the Drug Trade

Legalizing and Regulating Drugs the Right Way

International Drug Policy Reform Conference 2023

From K2 and bath salts to crack pipes to rainbow fentanyl, drug policy reformers are continually combating drug panics. While the particular subject of drug scares change, key features remain the same from panic to panic: exaggerated fears about a new substance or drug use modality, disregard for research, and association of the subject with a particular (often marginalised) group. Dr. Craig Reinarman will explain how, historically, drug panics have been deployed to both individualise structural problems and increase stigma towards and criminalisation of people who use drugs. Tana Geneva will discuss the media’s role in amplifying drug scares and the media’s potential to correct misinformation. We will also discuss the role of drug researchers in responding to drug panics.

D﻿r. Craig Reinarman is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Sociology and Legal Studies at the University of California Santa Cruz. He is the co-author of 

Crack in America: Demon Drugs and Social Justice

Tana Ganeva is a reporter covering criminal justice, drug policy, immigration, and politics. She's written for the Washington Post, RollingStone.com, Glamour, Gothamist, Vice, the Appeal, Teen Vogue, and the Stanford Social Innovation Review.

The role of researchers and media in responding to drug panics

In Spring 2022, Drug Policy Alliance, Urban Survivors Union, and the Network of Drug Researchers with Lived Experience co-hosted a four-part virtual series “Beyond participatory based research: Innovations in community driven drug policy research.” The sessions were designed to encourage drug researchers to think critically about their relationships with people who use drugs and people impacted by the drug war. They were intended to provide drug researchers with tools to conduct community driven research (CDR) and authentically co-lead research with impacted people through every phase of the research process. CDR not only makes research better by strengthening research questions, methods, analyses, and dissemination; it can also serve as an organizing tool, helping to galvanize people to change policies and practices.

CDR’s success necessitates creating a space where people do not feel bound to the traditional binary of the “researcher” and “researched” (

). The following recommendations aim to support you in creating an environment where all people are empowered; feel belonging in the research process; and can explore and own their positionalities, identities, and lived experiences:

Recommendations for community driven drug policy research 

The war on drugs is a U.S.-made human rights disaster that has deliberately targeted Black communities and other communities of color and ethnic minorities around the world. To this day, the drug war is a tool of authoritarianism and social control, discharged through targeted policing and mass incarceration. As the creator and main funder of the war on drugs, the United States has a responsibility to promote reparations for harmed communities, both at home and across the globe.

In the United States, the legalization of cannabis and other positive drug policy reforms has been accompanied by a substantial push for reparations for the Black and Indigenous communities most negatively affected by the drug war. In the U.S. and other countries with emerging cannabis markets, however, activists are fighting white-led and often foreign corporations to prevent revenue being diverted away from reparations into corporate coffers.

In recognition of June 26—the Support Don’t Punish Global Day of Action—panelists from the U.S., Brazil, and the Philippines discuss the consequences of drug policy enforcement, work to dismantle the drug war within their own communities, and how reparations are critical to creating a more just post-prohibitionist future.

Speakers: Queen Adesuyi, Cathy Alvarez, Andrea Ritchie, Nathália Oliveira.

Drug Policy Alliance (DPA)

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