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Friend,

The drug war harms everyone andour new initiative shows how stigma and biased drug war policies have contaminated critical systems, with impacts that go far beyond arrest and incarceration. 

Drug war hysteria has led to practices in thechild welfare system that are among the most egregious examples of how the drug war exacerbates harms to our families and communities. 

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LEARN MORE: [link removed]
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TAKE ACTION: Sign our petition to show your support for keeping families together and uprooting the drug war from the child welfare system [link removed]
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Under the drug war logic that has infiltrated our child welfare system, any drug use is equivalent to child abuse, regardless of context and whether or not there is actual harm to the child. Even unsubstantiated allegations of drug use can lead to draconian years-long ordeals that threaten to separate families.

This has led to disastrous policies that demonize parents — targeting primarily Black, Latinx, and Indigenous people — testing them for drugs often without consent, relentlessly investigating them, mistaking struggles due to poverty and structural barriers with mistreatment, and routinely removing their children without any reason other than supposed drug use. 

Even when a parent uses drugs, there’s no evidence connecting drug use alone to someone’s capacity to care for children. Research also shows that children have the best outcomes when they remain with their parents, yet our child welfare system chooses to punish rather than provide support.

Too many families have been torn apart because of the drug war, but we can do something about it.

Calls for reform are starting to grow. In a major step forward — and thanks to our allies like Movement for Family Power [link removed] — the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recently came out in support of ending the unjust practice of performing non-consensual drug tests on pregnant people and new parents and New York City Health + Hospitals issued revised guidance on drug testing — although more work remains to be done.

It’s time to stop taking children from their parents based on drug tests that just indicate the presence of a substance and say nothing about someone’s ability to parent. And instead of focusing on faulty testing and surveillance, we should make sure that supportive services and voluntary evidence-based family treatment programs are made available if a parent is struggling.

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TAKE ACTION: Add your name to our petition if you agree and join the fight to to extract the drug war from the child welfare system [link removed]
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To truly end the drug war, we need to uproot it from child welfare and all systems. 

You can learn more by registering to join us on April 28 for Child Welfare, the Drug War, and Family Separation [link removed], the first webinar in our Uprooting the Drug War Discussion Series [link removed]

Sincerely,

Melissa Moore
State Director, New York
Drug Policy Alliance  


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