Dear Friend,

Last month, more than 1,800 of us gathered at the International Drug Policy Reform Conference: families, community members, service providers, researchers, and advocates, carrying the weight of loved ones lost to overdose. Together, we envisioned a future where drug policy protects life, prioritizes health, and strengthens our communities. But that vision was shaped by a harder truth.  

In sessions and hallways, attendees returned to the same conclusion: by cutting the services that save lives at home and escalating the drug war abroad, the federal government is taking us backward.  

• Here at home, treatment and overdose prevention services are being gutted, and our communities are suffering. This includes massive cuts to Medicaid, the largest funder of addiction treatment, and hundreds of millions of cuts to the CDC and SAMHSA which have provided people nationwide with services that save lives such as naloxone, fentanyl test strips, addiction treatment, recovery supports, and so much more. And Congress could make even more cuts to these and other critical agencies soon. These are solutions that have driven recent declines in overdose deaths and cutting them will cost lives. 

• Abroad, the administration is escalating war tactics and killing people. Since September, unauthorized U.S. military strikes in the Caribbean and Pacific have continued, killing a total of at least 83 people. Officials have invoked the overdose crisis to justify these deaths, yet fentanyl is not produced in Venezuela. These illegal killings mark a dangerous expansion of the drug war, where drugs are used as a pretext for reckless violence, threatening the safety of us all.   

Our response must be clear and collective: Urge Congress to restore lifesaving health services and stop killing people. Join us, parents who lost children to overdose, anti-war and human right advocates by taking action today.

The strength of our movement has always come from connection and a desire to keep our loved ones safe and alive. We have always shown up for one another when institutions fall short. Long before naloxone was common in hospitals or schools, it was our movement placing it in the hands of people who needed it, so they didn’t die of a preventable overdose. Long before syringe service programs reduced the spread of disease, we helped people stay safe. We have always done this work with limited resources because of a shared belief that our communities are worth saving. And because we know a health-based approach to drugs, not the failed drug war, is what works. 

We must be equally clear-eyed now. Expanding the drug war through lethal force—whether at home or abroad—is not new. We need only look to the Philippines, where former President Duterte’s drug war eroded civil liberties, weakened democratic institutions, and resulted in thousands of extrajudicial killings—while doing nothing to disrupt the availability of drugs. This grim history is a warning to us. 

We cannot allow war tactics and militarism to pose as public safety while the administration dismantles the services that actually protect people. And we cannot allow Congress to look away.

As one parent whose child has struggled with addiction told us: “[President Trump] you’re out there declaring war on fentanyl, and then you’re taking away from the people you’re supposed to protect.” 

The Reform Conference affirmed what we already know: we are powerful together. We can chart a better path—one grounded in care, dignity, and public health strategies that work. A path that strengthens democratic principles and is supported by families and communities across the political spectrum. That means investing in health services here at home and working with partners around the world to adopt policies that save lives, not endanger them. 

Tell U.S. lawmakers: Put the health and wellbeing of our communities first. Fund the services that save lives—stop killing people.