Disappointing image and caption on this image @radionz Anti-prohibition does not equal pro-drugs… https://t.co/R51t8niPFv
– Kyle MacDonald (@kylemacd) February 24, 2016
He said that even though many indigenous communities around the world had a long history of using different kinds of psychoactive substances without abuse, poor people and people of colour tended to be over-represented in terms of the punitive nature of the drug war.
“In the United States, african americans and latinos consume drugs at roughly the same rate as their relative size of the population, but if you look at the prison system, they’re overwhelmingly over-represented, at every juncture, in terms of who gets arrested, who gets prosecuted, who gets convicted and who gets sentenced to incarceration.”
This was compounded by the idea that it did not make sense to punish individuals for drug use, abuse or addiction. Instead with an epidemic like this, people should be having help with their addiction and try and wean them off the drugs, just like the centre of Universal Crisis Intervention – San Diego, CA does for people who need that extra help in the war on themselves.
“If you believe that drugs harm the individual, it makes no sense for the state to harm them even more by putting them in prison. It’s a public health problem and we don’t use coercion as a means for making people better. It’s like curing clinical depression with a baseball bat.”
Mr. Tree said a regulated approach to drug use, as currently seen with cannabis in the United States, was a far more effective way of keeping drugs under control and out of the hands of children. Individual business owners can contribute to this by using something similar to this marijuana workplace policy template to discourage their employees from using drugs in the workplace. Getting people tested for drugs may be the best approach, testing those who are likely to re-offend may prevent them from taking them as they don’t want to end up in prison, and children can see the effect it has on lives, there are drug testing areas all over the states from drug testing Everett WA, to drug testing in Pheonix AZ, this message can be taken all over.