While the expansion of treatment, and related social services is undeniably a good thing, drug decriminalization is ultimately about getting people out of the criminal justice system and ensuring that they are not sucked into it in the first place.
It’s time to end the war on drug users — repeal the heavy penalties for possession; pardon the millions of nonviolent offenders; replace mass incarceration with mandatory drug treatment; restore voting rights to convicts and ex-convicts.
While the Philippines and Palestine might not be obviously linked in popular imaginary, there is a complicated web of relations — threaded through militarism, settler colonialism, empire and racial capitalism — that binds these entities together.
...this is not simply the story of one “rogue cop.” It is a window into the anti-Black violence perpetrated routinely by police in this country, as part of a brutal and racist system.
We can choose to confront the historical roots and systemic racism of the drug war and mass incarceration and to see the alignment between people who want to end both.
“This is most definitely a global issue…We must not allow the call for human rights to be hijacked. Accountability must be part of the justice and democratic system.”
Sharp reductions in spending on police, prisons, and the Pentagon could free up hundreds of billions of dollars for programs that might begin to fill the gap in spending on public investments in communities of color and elsewhere.
The United States backs anti-narcotics operations as Colombia’s military faces a storm of criticism.
Andrea Circle Bear, 30, had been sentenced to 26 months in federal prison on a drug charge.
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