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For Immediate Release
April, 21 2022, 01:59pm EDT
Contact:
Matt Sutton, 212-613-8026, msutton@drugpolicy.org
Drug Policy Alliance Statement on the Release of Biden-Harris Administration's 2022 National Drug Control Strategy
First Time Ever Strategy Has Supported Access and Funding for Harm Reduction Services and Reducing Barriers for Life-Saving Medications
WASHINGTON
In response to the Biden-Harris Administration today releasing the 2022 National Drug Control Strategy to Congress, which--for the first time in history--included support for access and funding of harm reduction services and reducing barriers for life-saving medications, Grant Smith, Deputy Director of the Office of National Affairs at the Drug Policy Alliance, released the following statement:
"We applaud the Biden-Harris Administration for taking the historic step - to support access and funding for harm reduction services and reduce barriers to life-saving medications. Despite over one million lives lost to drug overdose over the last 20-plus years, this is the first time an administration has included harm reduction in the National Drug Control Strategy.
"The Administration should continue to focus on its promise of equity by decreasing racial disparities in drug policy and the overdose crisis. From 2020 until now, Black people have experienced a 48.8% increase in overdose mortality, Hispanic or Latino people experienced a 40.1% increase, and American Indians and Alaska Natives experienced the highest increase in overdose mortality of all ethnic groups. This cannot continue. Criminalization approaches only saddle mostly Black, Hispanic and Indigenous people with criminal legal records and often incarceration, which increases their risk for infectious diseases, overdose and death.
"Prioritizing federal spending on public health rather than enforcement and interdiction is the best path forward. With over 105,000 of our friends, family and neighbors' lives being lost to drug overdose during the past year-and that number continuing to increase-and the overdose crisis now costing the U.S. economy over $1 trillion annually, we must embrace the evidence-based public health approaches we know work and save lives. But it must be done outside of the harmful apparatus of the drug war to be effective and provide the kind of racial equity this administration has long promised."
The Drug Policy Alliance is the nation's leading organization promoting drug policies grounded in science, compassion, health and human rights.
(212) 613-8020LATEST NEWS
Economists, Advocates Call On G20 Ministers to 'Make History' and Tax Superrich
"There are 16 people in the world who—if 99% of their wealth vanished overnight—would still be billionaires," said one campaigner. "We must tax the rich."
Nov 12, 2024
Ahead of the G20 Leader's Summit, scheduled to take place over two days next week in Rio de Janeiro, international economists on Tuesday were calling on economic ministers to take an historic step toward reducing global inequality by approving a tax on extreme wealth.
"Tax the rich" has been a rallying cry among economic justice advocates for years, but with the richest 1% of people now owning more wealth than the bottom 95%, some of the world's top economists and finance ministers in recent months have joined the call for a fair taxation system that demands the wealthiest households pay their fair share.
Jenny Ricks, general secretary of the Fight Equality Alliance (FIA), pointed out that taxing the richest people in the world would barely dent their fortunes—but for millions of people across the Global South, it could mean the difference between whether healthcare and public services are provided to them or not.
"There are 16 people in the world who—if 99% of their wealth vanished overnight—would still be billionaires," said Ricks. "We must tax the rich, end austerity, and cancel debt to ensure healthcare, education, and other essential public services for billions in the Global South. A growing movement of millions across the world is tired of the G20 upholding a broken system. A first step forward would be supporting an ambitious global deal to tax the superrich."
The five richest men in the world have doubled their wealth since 2020, while 60% of people have become poorer. The richest 1.5% of people in the world now control nearly half the world's wealth.
FIA warned that with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump scheduled to take office in January, global finance ministers must take action to rein in the "era of the billionaire" before leaders like Trump lavish their billionaire donors with more tax breaks, decimating public services.
"Countries are on track to lose $4.8 trillion in tax to tax havens over the next 10 years," said Nathalie Beghin, co-director of the Instituto de Estudos Socioeconômicos in Brazil. "Such unchecked tax evasion perpetuates inequality and undermines the foundation of sustainable economic development. At this historic moment, G20 leaders must demand the changes needed to transform an outdated, unfair system that's no longer fit for purpose—if it ever was."
Beghin, an economist, called on G20 leaders to support the United Nations Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation (UNFCITC), which would "tackle illicit financial flows, rediscuss inefficient tax expenditures, [and] tax transnationals and high net worth individuals."
"If Brazil could tax its superrich, as a consequence of a global commitment, the country could stop austerity measures and implement social, environmental and adaptation policies to fight hunger, poverty, and climate change," said Beghin. "Making big companies and very wealthy individuals pay their fair share is also fundamental to tackle inequality."
At a meeting in Rio de Janeiro in July, global finance ministers agreed on the need to develop a global tax system in which the richest people in the world pay a higher tax rate—despite the protests of the United States delegation.
Zinnia Quirós Chacón, a campaigner with Oxfam International, called the upcoming G20 meeting "a once-in-a-lifetime chance to make history."
"For the first time ever, world leaders are close to agreeing on a global plan to tax the superrich," she said.
Oxfam and other groups participating in the Say It With Me Now campaign—an initiative aimed at showing the widespread support for a global wealth tax—posted a video on social media showing supporters around the world asking the G20 ministers to take decisive action.
"Tax the superrich and make the world a better place for everyone," said the supporters in the video. "They won't even notice anyway."
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Newly Unearthed Docs Show Big Oil Knew of Climate Dangers as Early as 1950s
"Big Oil has been running public affairs campaigns to downplay the dangers of its products just as long as Big Tobacco," said one expert.
Nov 12, 2024
Documents uncovered from several academic and news archives shed light on what one climate disinformation expert on Tuesday called "one of the earliest and most brazen efforts by the oil industry to prop up" a front group with the aim of denying climate science and delaying action that would cut into the industry's profits by protecting the planet from steadily increasing fossil fuel emissions.
The Climate Investigations Center found a warning that came in 1954 from the head of the Air Pollution Foundation, a group funded by the Western Oil and Gas Association. According to DeSmog, which reported on the findings, the lobbying group, now known as the Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA), poured $1.3 million into the APF in the 1950s—the equivalent of $14 million in today's dollars.
APF was set up with the public-facing intent of confronting the worsening smog crisis in Los Angeles, where the number of cars had doubled between 1940-50 and the area was rapidly industrializing.
But with funding coming from Western Oil and Gas Association members including Shell and companies that were later bought by ExxonMobil, Chervon, and other oil giants, the foundation was meant to be "protective" of the industry, as meeting minutes from 1955 showed.
At the time of APF's founding, researchers had begun warning that air pollution was caused by vehicles and refineries, and officials in Los Angeles had begun proposing new ordinances to cut down on smog.
To counter this, the foundation asked the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) to submit a proposal determining the main source of air pollution. Caltech geochemistry professor Samuel Epstein submitted a proposal in November 1954, warning that the Earth's climate could be affected by burning fossil fuels.
The "concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere" was a matter "of well recognized importance to our civilization," wrote Epstein.
After the report was submitted, APF president Lauren Hitchcock, a chemical engineer who had been recruited to lead the group, began investigating oil and gas refineries and publicly demanding pollution controls across California—actions that didn't please the industry giants who were backing APF.
As DeSmog reported, leaders of the Western Oil and Gas Association "summoned Hitchcock to the California Club where they reprimanded him, spelling out in no uncertain terms exactly what they expected in return for their hefty financial contributions."
According to the report:
Over lunch, WSPA's oilmen criticized Hitchcock for supporting pollution controls across California, for drawing "attention" to refinery pollution, and for conducting "too broad a program" of research. Instead, they told him they had formed the Air Pollution Foundation to be "protective," that Hitchcock should serve as "the research director for the oil industry" and the foundation should publish "findings which would be accepted as unbiased" where the oil industry's findings were not seen as trustworthy. This frank exchange, reported in detail by Hitchcock in a never-before-seen memo, unmasks the strategic motivations behind Big Oil's sponsorship of air pollution research.
Hitchcock resigned from APF in 1956, after many of the group's research projects were scaled back and the organization took the official stance in reports that carbon dioxide emissions were "innocuous."
"This is where Big Oil's climate disinformation began," said Aimee Dewing, a communications strategist focusing on environmental justice.
APF and the intervention from its funders "helped lay the strategic and organizational groundwork for Big Oil's decades of climate denial and delay," Geoffrey Supran, a climate disinformation expert at the University of Miami, toldThe Guardian.
"The fossil fuel industry is often seen as having followed in the footsteps of the tobacco industry's playbook for denying science and blocking regulation," added Supran. "But these documents suggest that Big Oil has been running public affairs campaigns to downplay the dangers of its products just as long as Big Tobacco, starting with air pollution in the early-to-mid-1950s."
DeSmog's report comes nearly two years after Shell and ExxonMobil were revealed to have known about the impact of fossil fuels on the climate earlier than previously reported.
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'Strong Message to Christian Nationalists': Judge Blocks Louisiana Ten Commandments Law
"Public schools are not Sunday schools," said one advocate, "and today's decision ensures that our clients' classrooms will remain spaces where all students, regardless of their faith, feel welcomed."
Nov 12, 2024
A federal judge on Tuesday blocked a Louisiana law requiring every public school classroom in the state to display, in large font, a Protestant version of the Ten Commandments—a mandate that the new ruling characterizes as plainly unconstitutional.
The decision by U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana Judge John deGravelles, an appointee of former Democratic President Barack Obama, prohibits Louisiana's Republican-dominated government from enforcing the Ten Commandments requirement, which was set to take effect on January 1, 2025.
The judge wrote that the law—which President-elect Donald Trump endorsed earlier this year shortly before Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry signed it—is "unconstitutional on its face and in all applications."
The injunction against H.B. 71 came in response to a lawsuit brought in June by a coalition of Louisiana parents who argued the mandate "substantially interferes with and burdens the right of parents to direct their children's religious education and upbringing."
Louisiana Attorney General Elizabeth Murrill, a Republican, pledged to "immediately appeal" the decision.
Heather Weaver, senior staff attorney for the ACLU's Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief, said in a statement Tuesday that "this ruling should serve as a reality check for Louisiana lawmakers who want to use public schools to convert children to their preferred brand of Christianity."
"Public schools are not Sunday schools, and today's decision ensures that our clients' classrooms will remain spaces where all students, regardless of their faith, feel welcomed," Weaver added.
Rev. Darcy Roake, a plaintiff in the case, called H.B. 71 "a direct infringement of our religious-freedom rights, and we're pleased and relieved that the court ruled in our favor."
"As an interfaith family," Roake added, "we expect our children to receive their secular education in public school and their religious education at home and within our faith communities, not from government officials."
H.B. 71 is the first state law to require public schools to display a government-approved version of the Ten Commandments since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a similar Kentucky mandate in 1980, calling it a violation of the First Amendment's establishment clause.
Rachel Laser, president and CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said Tuesday that "this ruling will ensure that Louisiana families—not politicians or public school officials—get to decide if, when, and how their children engage with religion."
"It should send a strong message to Christian nationalists across the country that they cannot impose their beliefs on our nation's public school children," said Laser. "Not on our watch."
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