Happy New Year Friend,
I hope this message finds you well and excited about all that we have accomplished together during a time of great progress for drug policy reform.
Thanks to supporters like you, we accomplished so much in 2020, including:
- Making history by getting the MORE Act passed in the U.S. House of Representatives to deschedule marijuana and begin to repair the harms of its prohibition.
- Expanding the number of states that have legalized marijuana to 15 and Washington, D.C. and increasing access to medical marijuana in some of the places hardest hit by the war on drugs.
- Working with Oregon voters and Drug Policy Action to pass Oregon Measure 110, the nation’s first all-drug decriminalization and treatment initiative.
- Advocating for COVID-19 specific drug policies to address the pandemic and the overdose crisis, by protecting public health, individual rights, and the dignity and well-being of those in our communities.
- Working with a coalition of partners to get Congress to reinstate Pell Grants for people behind bars and repeal the 1998 Aid Elimination Penalty, a federal law that made students ineligible for federal financial aid if they had been convicted of a drug crime.
DPA won’t settle for half measures. With your support, we will continue to work diligently to undo the disastrous harms of the drug war and advance policies grounded in science, compassion, health, and human rights.
The job is a big one. For too long, millions have been denied justice and the health services they need to keep themselves and their loved ones safe—the new presidential administration must take swift action to save lives.
We must stop using criminalization as our default
approach to drugs and drug use.
We must remove drugs as a cover to disregard
the dignity and sanctity of human life.
We must stop wasting $47 billion dollars
each year enforcing this futile war.
We must stop denying people access
to life saving harm reduction services.
We must end this disastrous drug war once and for all.
Friend, thank you for your generosity and passion. We really appreciate it. As we begin a new year, DPA needs to start strong. Please make a gift to DPA today.
This year, the stakes are even higher. COVID-19 has laid bare vast disparities in health and access to care. The drug war is an issue of life and death, as we witnessed this summer with the deaths of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd. And even before this pandemic, there was the epidemic of overdose deaths, a crisis that policymakers have showed almost no urgency to address.
Pledge your support to help end the war on drugs in 2021. Thank you for adding strength to this movement.
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Sincerely,
Kassandra Frederique
Executive Director
Drug Policy Alliance |
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