Drug Policy Alliance

Advancing equity and justice through marijuana regulation:the movement for marijuana legalization has grown exponentially. But this past year there were still more than 200,000 arrests, and the communities that have suffered the most under decades of prohibition are not benefiting from the legal industry at the scale needed to repair the harms. Dpa supports an approach to legalization that centers community reinvestment, racial equity, and social justice, and reduces the negative impacts of the commercial market. Recent accomplishments include:- influenced the debate on descheduling cannabis on the federal list of controlled substances and ending prohibition more broadly- defended equity and justice provisions of state marijuana legalization laws

Promoting family safety and economic security:the drug war has crept into many aspects of our lives well beyond the criminal legal system. Surveillance, nonconsensual drug testing, mandatory reporting, and zero tolerance separates families, makes people homeless, and fuels intergenerational poverty. Dpa seeks to eliminate these civil punishments that cause so much harm and have no grounding in evidence. Recent accomplishments include:- promoted reforms to the federal policy than bans people with certain drug convictions from accessing food stamps for themselves and their families- educated policymakers and the public about the need to stop non-consensual drug testing of pregnant people, new parents, and their infants, and the family separation that it causes - co-produced with human rights watch a report, "disrupt and vilify: the war on immigrants inside the u.s. War on drugs," as a counter to the misinformation about migrants and drugs

Other program services include conference:2023 international drug policy reform conference as part of our movement-build role, dpa organizes and hosts the international drug policy reform conference every other year. In 2023, we brought together more than 1,500 activists, academics, and other experts from across the united states and around the world to listen, learn, and strategize on the full range of drug policy issues.