At @OSULawDEPC for the @DrugPolicyOrg@acluohio conference From Punishment to Public Health. I am going to tweet a lot about drug policy in the next two days. I know many people want to focus right now on the critical moment the nation is going through, feel free to mute me.
First speaker, opening keynote, is @SamuelKRoberts: “the War on Drugs has been fairly effective at what it was designed to do, which is to rationalize increasing inequality in health, education, labor, and opportunity in the post-1973 American economy.”
"This [the War on Drugs] was never about the drugs." @SamuelKRoberts drives home the point that the War on Drugs was backlash to the civil rights movement, anti-War movement, and an assault on poor people and people of color.
I genuinely don’t understand what is so inspiring about this moment. “He’s not Arab, he is a decent man” is not shutting down racism — it is racism.
Many people responded to this saying that McCain spoke off the cuff to a comment that he wasn't prepared for. Did you all spend 2008 under a rock or have you just forgotten? Obama being a Muslim/Arab/not-American/terrorist was a main issue in the campaign.
Sarah Palin in rally says that Obama, "launched his political career in the living room of a domestic terrorist!"washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content…
John McCain asks crowd "who is the real Barrack Obama?" and crowd responds "terrorist." McCain smiles and ignores: huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/06/mcc…
Attorney general @JoshShapiroPA said today, "I guess while some studies show that the sites may offer some benefit to those facing addiction, I don’t think there’s clear evidence"
This argument needs to be put to rest. Evidence on safe-injection site is overwhelming. Thread.
A systematic review of 75 articles on safe-injection sites concluded that "the implementation of new safe-injection sites in places with high rates of injection drug use and associate harms appears to be supported by evidence": ac.els-cdn.com/S0376871614018…
"But these are observational studies and not randomized controlled trials"