July 27, 2011 12:21 PM

NAACP calls for end to "war on drugs"

By
Stephanie Condon
Topics
Domestic Issues
(Credit: AP / CBS)

The NAACP on Tuesday passed what it called a "historic" resolution calling for an end to the war on drugs.

The resolution comes as world leaders are taking a hard look at the 40-year "war," and also as new data shows widened racial disparities within the U.S.

"Today the NAACP has taken a major step towards equity, justice and effective law enforcement," NAACP President Benjamin Jealous said in a statement Monday. The resolution was approved by delegates at the annual NAACP convention in Los Angeles. "These flawed drug policies that have been mostly enforced in African American communities must be stopped and replaced with evidenced-based practices that address the root causes of drug use and abuse in America."

The NAACP noted that African Americans are 13 times more likely to go to jail for the same drug-related offense than their white counterparts. The resolution endorses the expansion of rehabilitation and treatment programs as an alternative to sending drug offenders to prison. It also endorses the expansion of methadone clinics and other proven treatment protocols.

Robert Rooks, director of the NAACP Criminal Justice Program, said in a statement that the war on drugs has created "a system of racial disparities that rivals Jim Crow policies of the 1960's."

Last year, noting the racial disparities in drug policy enforcement, the NAACP's California chapter backed Proposition 19, the failed ballot measure that would have legalized marijuana use in California.

Last month, the Global Commission on Drug Policy also urged governments to end the criminalization of marijuana. The 19-member commission -- which included former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, former U.S. Secretary of State George P. Schultz, and former presidents of Mexico, Brazil and Colombia -- called the global war on drugs a failure. CBS News' Sharyl Attkisson reported that the federal drug control budget has grown substantially in the past four decades to more than $15 billion a year.

Once the NAACP's board of directors ratifies the resolution in October, the organization will encourage its 1,200 chapters to organize campaigns to advocate for the end to the war on drugs.

The NAACP approved its resolution on the same day new Census data showed that the "wealth gaps" between whites, blacks and Hispanics are the widest they've been since the government started keeping track 25 years ago.


Add a Comment See all 11 Comments
by tg6502 August 7, 2011 1:06 AM EDT
This is historic. I think it is the first occasion in my lifetime in which the NAACP has proposed something that would actually advance colored people.
Reply to this comment
by legalizemj July 28, 2011 4:54 PM EDT
Alcohol was legalized in 1933 and marijuana prohibited in 1937 - this gives us decades' worth of data to determine which is the best policy to control these highly-popular recreational drugs.

Alcohol legalization has successfully kept the alcohol industry free from organized crime while marijuana prohibition has made marijuana readily available to teenagers and draws criminals into our neighborhoods trying to sell marijuana to our kids.

In addition, the federal marijuana prohibition diverts more than $10 billion a year to the Mexican drug cartels and provided them with an incentive to brutally murder more than 40,000 people in just the last five years - including law enforcement officers, lawyers, children and journalists. In hindsight, the combination of unrelenting demand and zero legal supply causes extreme harm to a great many innocent people without yielding any discernible benefit back to society.

It's time to stop the experiment and control marijuana like alcohol. We need legal adult marijuana sales in supermarkets, gas stations and pharmacies for exactly the same reason that we need legal alcohol and tobacco sales - to keep drug-dealing criminals out of our neighborhoods and away from our children. Marijuana businesses should be regulated just like any other business, and home marijuana production should be just as legal as making home brew.
Reply to this comment
by RAS08 July 28, 2011 2:03 AM EDT
Expansion of methadone clinics... Methadone is also a part of the problem if they bothered to look at it. Next they will be pushing for changes in child support laws. What stupidity!
Reply to this comment
by tsigili July 27, 2011 6:06 PM EDT
Your communities are riddled with drugs, and you want it to get worse?

How stupid is that?
Reply to this comment
by documemts July 27, 2011 6:37 PM EDT
Got some bad druggies in your neighborhood?
by malcolmkyle July 30, 2011 1:04 PM EDT
It's not even possible to keep drugs out of prisons, but prohibitionists like yourself wish to waste hundreds of billions of our money in an utterly futile attempt to keep them off our streets.

How stupid is that?

* Prohibition kills more people and ruins more lives than the prohibited drugs have ever done.

* The United States jails a larger percentage of it's own citizens than any other country in the world, including those run by the worst totalitarian regimes.

* The urge to save humanity is almost always a false-face for the urge to rule it.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956) American editor, essayist and philologist.

* In The Land Formally Known As Free, all citizens have been stripped of their 4th amendment rights and are now totally subordinate to a corporatized, despotic government with a heavily armed and corrupt, militarized police force whose often deadly intrusions into their homes and lives are condoned by an equally corrupt, spineless and reprobate judiciary.

* In a Police State, there is No Personal Privacy, Scarce Personal Freedom, Hardly Any Personal Justice and An Ever Diminishing Amount Of Personal Wealth.

* As with torture, prohibition is a grievous crime against humanity. If you support it, or even simply tolerate it by looking the other way while others commit it, you are an accessory to a very serious moral transgression against humanity.

* The United States re-legalized certain drug use in 1933. The drug was alcohol, and the 21st amendment re-legalized its production, distribution and sale. Both alcohol consumption and violent crime dropped immediately as a result, and, very soon after, the American economy climbed out of that same prohibition engendered abyss into which it had previously been pushed.

"You can always count on Americans to do the right thing, after they've tried everything else."
- Winston Churchill
by ccdsswrkr08 July 27, 2011 2:11 PM EDT
Methadone clinics are not a "proven treatment protocol". It is legal drug sale. That's it. So instead of buying their drugs off the street, people's insurance pays for them to get it once, to 3 times a day from the methadone clinic. I see the results of the clinic in our area. They've given at least 4 people the wrong dose (literally given someone else's dose), they don't test correctly to see if you've used any other substance, and pretty much as long as you keep paying, they keep giving. That's not help, that's enabeling.
Reply to this comment
by MurdochSucks July 27, 2011 5:32 PM EDT
Or is it just underfunded by political hacks who seek support by belittling others in need?
by rocketjl July 27, 2011 1:29 PM EDT
It is odd that black folks talk this way. They should push to increase the war on drugs, since it affects their people mostly. Stopping the war on drugs and giving the black man a hand to do better really does not compute. Of course, this plan fits the 'tried and true' politically correct mold, so it should work. We could end up being politically correct to allow black people to use drugs freely and send non African Americans to jail for doing the same thing. Understand now.
Reply to this comment
by Jhihmoac July 27, 2011 1:06 PM EDT
Prohibition had little or no impact, either...
Reply to this comment
by RAS08 July 28, 2011 2:07 AM EDT
Helps if you actually read the article.
See all 11 Comments
.

Follow Political Hotsheet

Scroll Left
Scroll Right More »
CBS News on Facebook
  • Building You a Better Morning

  • CBS This Morning

    "CBS This Morning," anchored by Charlie Rose, Gayle King and Erica Hill, airs weekdays from 7 to 9 a.m. ET and at the same time in other time zones.
    Learn more...