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)

, which made Oregon the first state in the United States to remove criminal penalties for possession of a small amount of any drug, was and remains a historic turning point for the decriminalization movement. Sadly, the Oregon legislature has partially repealed the measure, creating new “drug enforcement misdemeanors” punishable by a term of supervised probation or up to 180 days in jail. Instead of taking steps to improve the health-based model, the legislature doubled down on criminal penalties, bowing to political pressure and an intense misinformation campaign by opponents, including the former chief of the prison system, business interests and law enforcement. Though this is undoubtedly a setback, Measure 110’s impact will reverberate for years to come.As the reform movement analyzes the 

and strategizes in other jurisdictions, some important lessons stand out:

Messaging and narrative building is a never-ending fight, even when evidence supports the policy shift

Promoting and defending a new reform policy is important well beyond the initial campaign.Whoever sets the narrative first has the upper hand, and it is important to publicize real impact and counter misinformation early on. Otherwise, any new policy can become an easy scapegoat for persistent societal problems, even with no evidence to show a causal link between them. This is precisely what happened in Oregon where M110 detractors took advantage of the valid frustrations with public suffering and blamed it on decriminalization:

The overdose crisis fueled by fentanyl has affected every area of the United States, regardless of varying drug laws, but Measure 110 has been blamed for the overdose crisis in Oregon. After 110, Oregon’s overdose death rate closely 

 the national average and remained lower than states that impose harsh criminal penalties for drug possession.Moreover, two longitudinal studies (available 

) found no association between Measure 110 and fatal overdoses.

Despite evidence that rates of homelessness were directly tied to Oregon’s 

 politicians and drug war sympathizers found 110 to be a convenient target to deflect public frustration with the increased visibility of unhoused people.

did not lead to an increase in crime rates

major crime rates in Oregon are declining

 – the new policy was blamed for the public’s anxiety about increased criminal activity.A driver of this perception was public drug use, which has risen in tandem with increased homelessness.Opponents argued that Measure 110 caused an increase in drug use, which resulted in an increase in homelessness.Though this politically toxic message was not born out by the evidence, it was a key factor in the push to reinstate criminal penalties.

Implementation of decriminalization is as important as establishing the policy

Reshaping existing systems to implement a new policy is critical to the policy’s success.In Oregon, state officials were slow to implement key components and undercut the full potential of Measure 110 in a number of ways:

The Oregon Health Authority (OHA) provided 

, which resulted in significant delays in allocating funding for needed services.We know from successful health-based models how critical it is for decriminalization measures to be implemented in parallel with expanded and fully-funded health and recovery support services. Unfortunately, the delay in Oregon impeded access to needed services.

The state did not educate the public about the drug treatment screening hotline that the measure created, and failed to provide training to law enforcement, many of whom were opposed to Measure 110.Law enforcement can sabotage the policy in both obvious and subtle ways if they are hostile to it, and it was important to educate them about the benefits of the policy and ensure they are not obstacles to successful implementation.

Implementation of Measure 110 unfortunately coincided with a number of other crises:

The COVID-19 pandemic, which had ripple effects throughout Oregon, especially for evictions, housing policies, and taxing an already overburdened health system.

The proliferation of fentanyl across the United States, starting in 2019 on the West Coast (including Oregon), led to a sharp increase in overdose rates.

National fearmongering concerning crime was exploited by longstanding opponents of drug policy reform.

Despite setbacks, M110 will have lasting impacts for the decriminalization movement

 for thousands of people by decreasing arrests and barriers to jobs and housing that result from those records.

increased access to and engagement with services

the number of people accessing the addiction services and social supports they need, including substance use disorder treatment, housing services and overdose prevention services.The services created by M110 will stay in place even after drug possession is recriminalized.

There has been a decrease in criminal penalties for drug possession even after recriminalization – cutting the potential maximum sentence in half - compared to the state of the law before Measure 110.

Criminal penalties are not the answer to problematic drug use.Decades of research and experience have made this clear. Politicians who, in an effort to find cover from public anger, turn to the criminal system for answers will quickly relearn this lesson. Though the legislation will prevent the full benefits of decriminalization from being realized, M110 remains an important step in taking drug possession out of the criminal system. The experience in Oregon also highlights the need for safer supply, drug consumption facilities, and why legal regulation based on health and human rights is essential for a true health-based approach.The legacy of Measure 110 is far from over – it will continue to grow and the lessons learned from it will strengthen the movement to reduce the role of the criminal legal system in drug policy.

Backpedalling on progress: Understanding Oregon’s U-turn on drug decriminalisation

 Thursday, 30 November 2023 / 15:00 - 16:30 (GMT - London)

This recording is available in English and 

Global Coalition to Address Synthetic Drugs Threats

 with the objective of mobilising the international community to “come together to collectively combat this shared challenge”. By October 2023, some 120 governments had signed up to be part of the Coalition.

In parallel, the USA will table a resolution at the 78th Session of the UN General Assembly that calls on UN Member States to prioritise global action to address the public health and security challenges posed by synthetic drugs.

Nonetheless, the question remains as to whether the Global Coalition will seek to promote innovative approaches to synthetic drugs, that are grounded in health and human rights, or whether it will be yet another vehicle to continue promoting interdiction and eradication.

This online event aims to inform and feed into this discussion, with inputs from health and human rights experts. Speakers will discuss a breadth of issues which include:

How prohibition itself has fuelled the increase in the diversity and use of synthetic substances (the so-called balloon effect) and the flaws this exposes in international drug control.

The medical significance of synthetic drugs like tramadol and ketamine in many parts of the world and how international scheduling would drastically reduce their availability.

The importance of harm reduction as the foremost pillar in the response to all drug use, including synthetic drugs, especially as it relates to preventing and responding to overdoses - as well as measures aimed at ending sanctions and reducing stigma against people who use drugs.

A discussion of the potential offered by the Global Coalition and its resolution to directly and progressively address these issues.

Keynote: Professor Adeeba Kamarulzaman, Global Commission on Drug Policy

Daan van der Gouwe, Drug Markets Researcher, Trimbos Instituut, Netherlands

Theshia Naidoo, Managing Director of U.S. Foreign Policy, Drug Policy Alliance, USA

Andrzej Celinski, Contract Manager & Executive Administrator, Canadian Association of People who Use Drugs

Lisa Sánchez, Executive Director, Mexico Unido Contra la Delincuencia

Smriti Rana, Head of Strategic Programs and Partnerships, Pallium India 

Moderated by Ann Fordham, International Drug Policy Consortium.

Synthetic realities: Global drug policies beyond the 'new threat' narrative

Mainstream conversations, advocacy, and organizing aimed at addressing the harms of both drug use and the drug war through law, policy, and service provision have largely failed to take into account or respond to the experiences of women, girls, and trans people. They have also failed to address drug war logic— which prioritizes and justifies enforcement of abstinence, drug prohibition, criminalization, and punishment to address the real and perceived health and societal harms of drug use. Despite drug policy reform efforts, drug war logic continues to permeate systems and institutions proffered as “solutions” such as treatment, healthcare, and public benefits.

Building a Black feminist approach to ending the drug war offers an opportunity for organizers and advocates to come together across movements and borders to build a shared analysis and a common agenda shaped by the experiences and visions of Black women, girls, and trans people around the world. It creates the potential for a cross-sectoral, internationalist framework for resistance that exposes and challenges the racially gendered controlling narratives and carceral logics driving drug policy, and advances liberatory approaches to individual and collective healing and self-determination.

In order to gain a greater understanding of existing Black feminist organizing against the drug war and bring Black feminist frameworks into the mainstream of drug policy work, Interrupting Criminalization, the Drug Policy Alliance, and the In Our Names Network hosted a two-day convening in June 2023, during the week Breonna Taylor should have been able to celebrate her 30th birthday. The gathering brought together dozens of Black feminist leaders and allies from drug policy reform, narco feminist, reproductive justice, and queer and trans liberation movements from 6 countries to explore the possibilities for a shared Black feminist vision and plan of action toward a world that centers bodily autonomy and self-determination in all forms.

Build and deepen relationships between movements for drug policy reform, reproductive justice, narco-feminism, and queer and trans liberation

Deepen a collective Black feminist analysis of the drug war and how to end it

Explore possibilities for articulating a collective vision for a world beyond the war on drugs—a world in which Breonna Taylor, and countless other Black women and trans and gender nonconforming people whose lives were ended or profoundly impacted by the war on drugs, could survive and thrive

This report is a summary of the impacts of the global drug war on Black women, girls, and trans and gender non-conforming people, as well as the Black feminist visions, analysis, and needs articulated during the convening

This document is intended as a contribution to these and ongoing efforts to articulate and advance a transnational Black feminist agenda to end the drug war rooted in the experiences, resistance, and dreams of Black women, girls, and trans and gender nonconforming people.

Building Black feminist visions to end the drug war

We all want and deserve healthy and safe communities.

The safest places in America have access to the things people need to thrive, such as jobs, education, housing, and health care. They do not have more police, more jails, more prisons, or harsher sentences. We need to fully fund what is proven to create safer, thriving neighborhoods.

Across America, health systems and supports have been underfunded and dismantled. Social issues have been criminalized, and people of color segregated and marginalized. As a result, health has worsened, poverty has increased, and houselessness has become more visible in many communities. These very real problems have fueled a media frenzy over so-called rising “public disorder.” Some call for more criminalization, coercive interventions, and to disappear struggling people. But these so-called solutions will only make our community challenges worse.

We know we have the power to address these challenges in productive and positive ways. We must recognize people’s humanity and undo the systemic, racist policy failures that have led us here. This Drug Policy Alliance toolkit helps advocates understand recent trends in health, houselessness, crime, and enforcement, and the responses communities need. It is a resource for moving away from harmful and wasteful criminalization, and toward health-centered approaches.

Protecting our communities - A toolkit

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

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