Northampton Friends Meeting

The commitment of the Society of Friends (Quakers) to nonviolence motivates us to speak out against our nation's failed drug policy. There is a dangerous "war" raging within our communities similar to the war which ensued during the prohibition of alcohol. We agree with the New York County Lawyer's Association Drug Policy Task Force report which found that the emphasis on prohibition, arrest, prosecution and incarceration of users and distributors "may be counterproductive and even harmful to the society whose public safety it seeks to protect." Our Nation's drug policy has been both costly and ineffective, has overburdened the justice system, and has brought violence to both drug users and society in general. We are called by the Spirit to witness God's love for our neighbors by asking all people to develop more just and humane ways of addressing the problems of drug addiction.

Northampton Friends Meeting, after prayerful consideration, favors strategies to counter drug abuse that:

• a. regard addiction as a medical and spiritual problem, and stop treating addicts as criminals;
  
  
• b. vastly increase treatment and prevention programs;
  
  
• c. repeal mandatory minimum drug sentences which impact disproportionately on the poor, on women, on children, and on members of racial minority groups, and often serve only to crowd our prisons with people whose primary needs are for medical, social and spiritual healing which can not be met in prison;
  
  
• d. increase educational and economic opportunities in our poverty stricken communities to provide meaningful options to potential drug users and dealers;
  
  
• e. recognize, encourage, and permit the medicinal use of certain currently illegal drugs (such as marijuana) to treat medical problems like glaucoma, AIDS, and cancer;
  
  
• f. reduce the profitability of illicit drugs by decriminalizing marijuana, and seriously explore the possibility of making other "hard" drugs (such as heroin and cocaine) regulated and taxed under legal control.