Why NAACP Call to End War on Drugs Matters

Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts writes about NAACP President Benjamin Todd Jealous’ call to end the nation’s “war on drugs,” calling it a monumental sea change for the old-guard civil rights organization.

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See, this particular quake was not of the Earth, involved no shifting of the planetary crust. No, what shifted was a paradigm, and the implications are hopeful and profound.

On Tuesday, you see, the NAACP passed a resolution calling for an end to the War on Drugs.

Said NAACP President Benjamin Todd Jealous in a written statement, “These flawed drug policies that have been mostly enforced in African-American communities must be stopped and replaced with evidence-based practices that address the root causes of drug use and abuse in America.”

Here’s why this matters. Or, more to the point, why it matters more than if such a statement came from Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton. The NAACP is not just the nation’s oldest and largest civil rights organization. It is also its most conservative.

Read Leonard Pitts’ complete column at the Miami Herald.

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