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Ajamu Baraka on Drugs
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Replace drug prohibition with harm reduction
- End the failed war on drugs. Replace drug prohibition with harm reduction. Legalize marijuana/hemp. Treat substance abuse as a health problem, not a criminal offense.
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Release nonviolent drug offenders from prison, removing such offenses from their records, and provide them with both pre- and post-release support.
Source: Stein-Baraka platform on 2016 presidential campaign website
, Aug 8, 2016
War on drugs a guise to militarize police against minorities
In the US, reactions to economic and social contradictions have resulted in an expansion of the State's repressive apparatus. Under the guise of the 'war on drugs' and then national security, local police forces have been militarized and unleashed on
African-American, Latino, Arab and, even still today, indigenous people. Over two million black and brown bodies are commodified as generators of profits and a source of jobs in a system of barbaric gulags where 25,000 of those prisoners are held in
solitary confinement for 23 hours a day.There are connections between the US state-sanctioned violence in the forms of targeted imprisonment, military occupations of black and brown communities and imperialist wars fought primarily against non-white
people of the global South. We [need a] movement that can withstand the attempts to divide us internally, and that we can keep the focus where it needs to be--on transforming ourselves and the world.
Source: Pambazuka News OpEd by 2016 vice-presidential hopeful
, Apr 19, 2012
Page last updated: Aug 22, 2016