Organizations Advocating for Less Punitive Laws

The basic mission of Common Sense for Drug Policy is to help build a grassroots movement against the drug war. The organization assists local organizations in many ways, from supplying information and resources to providing electronic forums for discussions on strategy between drug policy reformers from across the country. The staff can find appropriate speakers for forums in almost any locale.

This is the world's largest drug policy reform organization. DPA promotes non-punitive harm reduction through various public-information campaigns. They aim to minimize the damage caused by drug abuse, as well as the harm caused or exacerbated by drug prohibition. Their website includes an extensive library of resources on drug policy and a large section on alternative drug control strategies. This website also provides activists with the ability to fax your legislators on a variety of drug policy bills by simply typing in your contact information and clicking a button.

The Media Awareness Project website, which is maintained by DrugSense, includes a searchable database of over 69,500 + stories. DrugSense is dedicated to informing the public about the negative consequences of the drug war. The staff sorts through drug-related articles and sends the text in e-mail alerts so people can write letters to the editors of the newspapers and magazines that run the stories.

One major, unique service provided by DRCNet is a free weekly bulletin letting you know the inside scoop on what's currently happening within the drug policy reform movement. Sign up today!

The Criminal Justice Policy Foundation advocates for a more just legal system, particularly but not exclusively in the realm of drug control. CPJF's main critique of the drug war is the excessively punitive approach; huge numbers of people are imprisoned for years or even decades for relatively minor nonviolent offenses. CJPF president Eric Sterling, a Quaker, serves on IDPI's Leadership Council.

MPP works to replace marijuana prohibition with reasonable, compassionate policies designed to reduce the harm associated with marijuana. With the largest membership base in the marijuana law reform movement, MPP has successfully influenced several state and federal policies and regularly appears in major news publications. Their web page contains numerous studies, reports, surveys, legislative updates, and action alerts on all facets of the marijuana issue, including medical marijuana.

The Harm Reduction Coalition focuses on reducing drug-related harm to individuals and communities by promoting alternative treatment models developed by drug users and community members themselves. As a national professional association of harm reduction service providers, HRC supports local, regional, and national harm reduction. Along with the DPA, HRC sponsors the Harm Reduction Training Institute, which offers training to health care workers, social service practitioners, corporate managers, and volunteers on how to implement harm reduction strategies.

Safety First promotes a reality-based approach to teens, drugs, and drug education.

FAMM is an active grassroots organization that organizes and lobbies around the repeal of mandatory minimum sentencing. Mandatory minimum laws force judges to impose sentences dictated by a legislature (usually at least 5 or 10 years), even if the judge believes that lower sentences would be appropriate in some cases. FAMM stresses the indiscriminate nature of mandatory sentences and highlights individuals who have been punished too severely.

A membership-based non-profit research and educational organization that helps scientists design, fund, and report on studies on the psychotherapeutic potential of psychedelic drugs and marijuana. The site contains a lot of useful information, from summaries of the history of the drugs mentioned to descriptions of contemporary research.

This organization argues that cognitive liberty, the freedom to choose one's own state of consciousness, is a fundamental right that is ignored by the whole concept of drug prohibition.

PRDI seeks to enable the democratic process to develop more effective and humane drug policies. To this end, they promote open, honest, and well-informed discussion of drug issues among "opinion-leaders"--educated leaders and professionals, especially in the media. They advocate no particular drug control policy. Rather, they insist that drug policy must be developed by rational procedures consistent with American democratic ideal.

Reconsider specializes in providing excellent drug policy reform speakers to community groups, including congregations.

The Council on Spiritual Practices is a collaboration among spiritual guides, experts in the behavioral and biomedical sciences, and scholars of religion, dedicated to making direct experience of the sacred more available to more people. There is evidence that such encounters can have profound benefits for those who experience them, for their neighbors, and for the world. This is the best on-line resource for literature on the spiritual uses of psychedelic substances.

SSDP is an association of local groups of college students using a variety of tactics to promote an end to the war on drugs. They provide guidance and resources for student organizing.

Current and former members of law enforcement have recently created a new and important drug-policy reform group called LEAP. Founded on March 16, 2002, LEAP is an organization that believes the United States' drug policies have failed and that to save lives, lower the rate of addiction, and conserve tax dollars, we must end drug prohibition.

The Coalition represents the views of the people most affected by the drug war, including the families and communities of drug offenders as well as the prisoners themselves. The heart of the organization is a vigil campaign directed at humanizing drug prisoners in the eyes of the public. The Coalition's newsletter, "The Razor Wire," is a resource for drug issues of all sorts. The website includes a link to the Jubilee Justice petition, which requests clemency for drug prisoners.

CJC is a coalition of faith leaders which helped to convince President Clinton to grant clemency to twenty-three low-level, nonviolent federal drug offenders in 2000.

The purpose for which IDPI is formed is to organize people of faith to promote drug policy reform; i.e., moving from prohibition laws toward reasonable and compassionate drug regulation, education and treatment.