WHEREAS, during the last twenty years there has been a significant erosion of civil liberties, particularly involving the right to privacy, in the name of winning the so-called "War on Drugs;"

WHEREAS, the population of the United States constitutes about 5% of the world's population, yet its prisons now house nearly 25% of the worldwide prison population, principally due to the incarceration of drug offenders;⁽¹⁾

WHEREAS, federal, state and local anti-drug expenditures are now in excess of $50 billion per year (federal expenditures for FY 2001 are requested at $19.2 billion,⁽²⁾ and state and local expenditures in 1996 were $33 billion⁽³⁾); and since the enactment of mandatory minimum sentencing for federal drug offenders in 1986, the Federal Bureau of Prisons budget has ballooned from $220 million in 1986 to $3.19 billion in 1997 to $4.38 billion in FY 2001 (requested);⁽⁴⁾ all without significantly reducing the availability and use of drugs;

WHEREAS, a study of 37 states by the Justice Policy Institute reported that the number of Americans imprisoned for violating the drug laws increased from 38,541 in 1986 to 148,092 in 1996,⁽⁵⁾ which if evaluated to reflect population growth represents an increase from incarcerating 18 people per 100,000 in 1986 compared to 63 per 100,000 in 1996 (a 247% increase);

WHEREAS, in the year 2000 nearly 1 in 4 of the 2 million people imprisoned in the United States is imprisoned for a drug offense (458,131)⁽⁶⁾ such that there are approximately 100,000 more people imprisoned in the United States just for drug offenses than all of the prisoners in the European Union (356,626),⁽⁷⁾ even though the European Union has 100 million more citizens than the United States;⁽⁸⁾

WHEREAS, application of our nation's drug laws has been racially discriminatory, whether intentional or unintentional, in that a disproportionately high percentage of African-Americans and Latinos have been prosecuted and sentenced to prison. For example: even though Latinos make up only 11.7% of the general population according to the most recent U.S. Census Bureau statistics, 42% of all federal drug prosecutions in 1999 were against Latinos;⁽⁹⁾ 279 African-Americans per 100,000 have been sentenced to prison, compared to 20 Caucasians per 100,000 in 1996;⁽¹⁰⁾ and 62.7% of the drug offenders sentenced to state prisons were African-American although they only constitute 13% of the regular drug using population,⁽¹¹⁾ and despite the fact that, according to government estimates, approximately five times as many Caucasians use cocaine as African-Americans;⁽¹²⁾

WHEREAS, federal minimum mandatory sentencing for cocaine offenses unreasonably punishes possession and use of cocaine base far more severely than possession and use of cocaine powder resulting in longer terms of imprisonment for African-Americans than Caucasians for committing similar offenses;

WHEREAS, in California, for example, 5 African-Americans are in prison for every 1 enrolled in a state university;⁽¹³⁾

WHEREAS, states with higher rates of imprisonment for drug offenses also have had higher rates of continuing drug use, thereby demonstrating that harsh sentencing laws do not significantly deter drug use;⁽¹⁴⁾

WHEREAS, in a nation of 200 million people the number of drug users is relatively small given that reasonable estimates of the number of marijuana users is around 10.5 million while the number of cocaine and heroin users is only around 2 to 3 million people;⁽¹⁵⁾

WHEREAS, the abuse of food and legal drugs such as alcohol and tobacco represent a far more serious health problem than the use of marijuana, cocaine, or heroin in that overeating and/or smoking are significant causes of cardiovascular and pulmonary health problems while alcohol abuse is a relatively common factor in assaults and vehicle accidents, causing far more damage and injury to others than marijuana, cocaine or heroin use;

WHEREAS, addiction to any substance, whether legal or illegal, is really a health problem best treated by the medical community and others trained in the causes and treatments of addiction;

BE IT RESOLVED that the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers calls upon federal and state governments to immediately:

1. End the War on Drugs by declaring all drug use to be a health rather than a criminal problem and repeal all laws criminalizing the possession, use and delivery of controlled substances;

2. Cease and desist from all action calculated to end the cultivation of marijuana, coca and opium poppy plants;

3. Establish a commission consisting of members of the addiction treatment community and the criminal justice community (police, prosecutors, defense lawyers and judges) to draw up a treatment and release plan calculated to release every individual with full restoration of their civil rights who are now imprisoned solely for conviction of a drug offense as soon as reasonably practicable, and develop a plan to eliminate the black market in drugs by taxing and regulating the sale and use of controlled substances, setting aside a portion of the revenues to establish clinics nationwide for drug education, research into the causes of addiction, and the treatment of addiction.

PASSED BY UNANIMOUS VOTE NOVEMBER 4, 2000

FINAL VERSION RELEASED NOVEMBER 13, 2000

1. J. Ziedenberg and V. Schiraldi, The Punishing Decade: Prison and Jail Estimates at the Millennium, Justice Policy Institute, Washington, D.C., revised estimates, May, 2000.

2. ONDCP, National Drug Control Strategy, FY 2001 Budget Summary, p.9

3. Barry R. McCaffrey, Director, ONDCP, Fight Drugs as You Would a Disease, Chicago Tribune, p. C18, March 31, 1996.

4. Bureau of Justice Statistics, Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics 1996, p. 20; National Drug Control Strategy 1997, Budget Summary, p. 111; National Drug Control Strategy FY 2001, Budget Summary, p. 121.

5. V. Schiraldi, B. Holman, P. Beatty, Poor Prescription: The Cost of Imprisoning Drug Offenders in the U.S., Justice Policy Institute (2000), p.3.

6. For state estimates, the 1997 Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) estimates of violent, non-violent and drug offender prison populations were converted to percentages, and applied to the 2000 prison and jail estimates released by BJS in April, 2000. The federal estimate is based on a 1998 count and percentage of federal prisoners held for drug offenses that year, and was also applied to the April 2000 estimate. The jail estimate is based on counts on the national jail population done in 1996, and published by BJS in 1998. Alan J. Beck, Prison and Jail Inmates at Midyear 1999, Washington, D.C.: Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, April, 2000; Kathleen Maguire and Ann L. Pastore, editors, Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics, 1998, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1998.

7. Based on a calculation of the 15 EU member countries incarceration data from Roy Walmsley, World Prison Population List: Research Findings No. 88, Home Office Research, Development and Statistics Directorate, London, United Kingdom.

8. V. Schiraldi, B. Holman, P. Beatty, Poor Prescription: The Cost of Imprisoning Drug Offenders in the U.S., Justice Policy Institute (2000), p.4.

9. United States Sentencing Commission, 1999 Sourcebook of Federal Sentencing Statistics, p. 69.

10. V. Schiraldi, B. Holman, P. Beatty, Poor Prescription: The Cost of Imprisoning Drug Offenders in the U.S., Justice Policy Institute (2000), p.6.

11. Human Rights Watch, Punishment and Prejudice: Racial Disparities in the War on Drugs, New York, June 2000.

12. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), Summary Findings, 1998.

13. Institute for Policy Studies, The War on Drugs: Addicted to Failure, Recommendations of the Citizens Commission on U.S. Drug Policy (May 2000).

14. V. Schiraldi, B. Holman, P. Beatty, Poor Prescription: The Cost of Imprisoning Drug Offenders in the U.S., Justice Policy Institute (2000), pp. 10-11.

15. Institute for Policy Studies, The War on Drugs: Addicted to Failure, Recommendations of the Citizens Commission on U.S. Drug Policy (May 2000).

The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers is the preeminent organization advancing the mission of the criminal defense bar to ensure justice and due process for persons accused of crime or wrongdoing. A professional bar association founded in 1958, NACDL’s 12,000-plus direct members in 28 countries – and 90 state, provincial and local affiliate organizations totaling more than 40,000 attorneys – include private criminal defense lawyers, public defenders, military defense counsel, law professors and judges committed to preserving fairness and promoting a rational and humane criminal justice system.