Sec. 2. Findings
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Congress finds the following: For most of the past century the United States has adopted increasingly punitive policies toward the possession, use, and distribution of drugs. Particularly in the last 50 years, the United States has built a massive regime to enforce those policies. Congress and State legislatures have adopted increasingly harsh sentencing schemes such as mandatory minimums, established far-reaching and oppressive civil sanctions and collateral consequences, approved policies weakening the Fourth Amendment for drug searches and seizures, and fostered incentives for aggressive and militarized policing in the alleged pursuit of drugs.
Every year, there are more than 1.4 million arrests in the United States for drug-related offenses. In over 85 percent of those arrests, drug possession was the most serious offense. Drug arrests disproportionately impact people of color and more commonly occur in historically overpoliced, low-income communities. A criminal record, even for an arrest that did not result in a conviction, has a profound impact on individuals, often interrupting employment, housing, family relationships, child custody, and education.
A health-based approach to drug use and overdose is more effective, humane and cost-effective than criminal punishments. Subjecting people to criminal penalties, stigma, and other lasting collateral consequences because they use drugs is expensive, ruins lives, and can make access to treatment and recovery more difficult. Despite high numbers of arrests and incarceration in the United States for drug possession, the number and rate of drug-involved overdose deaths has skyrocketed for over 20 years and continues at epidemic levels.
In 2019, 70,630 people died by drug overdose in the United States. Harm reduction services and voluntary, on-demand access to evidence-based substance use disorder treatment have proven highly effective in reducing overdose and the spread of communicable diseases like HIV and Hepatitis C, preventing drug-related injury, and improving health outcomes for people who use drugs. These services should be available on demand to anyone who requests it. Far too many people who desire treatment face challenges that prevent them from accessing the services they want, including cost barriers, lack of providers, and long wait-lists.
On-demand access to evidence-based treatment saves lives, reduces crime, and saves money. Barriers to treatment should be removed or minimized. Criminalizing drug use and possession reduces the amount of resources available for harm reduction and treatment services and deters people from accessing available services due to fear of arrest. Punitive policies have achieved no reduction in supplies or prices, but instead have created unnecessarily risky and harmful conditions for people who use drugs.
Punitive policies have led to militarized tactics that thwart the spirit of the constitution and have led to the deaths of countless Black and Brown people. Additionally, the drug war apparatus has cost the Federal Government hundreds of billions of dollars in direct enforcement and incarceration costs, and collateral impacts on the lives of those caught in its path. While drug decriminalization cannot fully repair our broken and oppressive criminal legal system or the harms of an unregulated drug market, shifting from absolute prohibition to drug decriminalization helps restore individual liberty, protect against some police abuses, better assist those in need, and save tax dollars.
This concept is neither new nor radical. Other nations, including Portugal, have successfully decriminalized personal use quantities of drugs and achieved meaningful improvements in treating problematic drug use and reducing the harms of policing drugs. In June 2021, the United States will mark the 50th anniversary of Congress’ enactment of the Controlled Substances Act ( 21 U.S.C. 801 et seq. ), which authorized and launched the harsh drug war policies sought by the Nixon Administration.
In this moment, Congress must recognize the failed experiment in prohibition and move the country in a new direction.
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