President Obama's new White House drug policy
Dear all,
President Obama’s new WhiteHouse.gov site has several drug policy related items worth noting:
-
End Racial Profiling: President Obama and Vice President Biden will ban racial profiling by federal law enforcement agencies and provide federal incentives to state and local police departments to prohibit the practice.
-
Reduce Crime Recidivism by Providing Ex-Offender Support: President Obama and Vice President Biden will provide job training, substance abuse and mental health counseling to ex-offenders, so that they are successfully re-integrated into society. Obama and Biden will also create a prison-to-work incentive program to improve ex-offender employment and job retention rates.
-
Eliminate Sentencing Disparities: President Obama and Vice President Biden believe the disparity between sentencing crack and powder-based cocaine is wrong and should be completely eliminated.
-
Expand Use of Drug Courts: President Obama and Vice President Biden will give first-time, non-violent offenders a chance to serve their sentence, where appropriate, in the type of drug rehabilitation programs that have proven to work better than a prison term in changing bad behavior.
The President also supports lifting the federal ban on needle exchange, which could dramatically reduce rates of infection among drug users. President Obama has also been willing to confront the stigma -- too often tied to homophobia -- that continues to surround HIV/AIDS.
Seeing racial profiling, sentencing reform and needle exchange on the White House website ain’t bad at all. If these are the issues the new administration is prepared to address immediately, that’s a respectable forward step for criminal justice reform.
Many people will need to start to change their ideologies, believes, fighting, anger, interests, etc, or they will soon, increase the list of the financial crisis casualties!!!!
