The American Medical Association (AMA) voted to support drug decriminalization recently on June 12. During the AMA’s annual House of Delegates meeting that was held in Chicago, Illinois, said MD/PhD candidate Ryan Englander. “The war on drugs is quite reminiscent of the phrase, ‘The beatings will continue until morale improves,’” Englander said. “We have tried for decades to criminalize our way out of a substance use crisis in this country, and it has not worked … We need to move to something different and better, something that actually works.”
Previously, language from an AMA Board of Trustees report asked that the association “continue to monitor the legal and public health effects of state and federal policies to reclassify criminal offenses for drug possession for personal use.”
During the recent meeting, delegates voted 345-171 to adopt the new position on its drug policy, which updates the association’s stance. Now it seeks for the “elimination of criminal penalties for drug possession for personal use as part of a larger set of related public health and legal reforms designed to improve carefully selected outcomes.”
Englander stated that there is enough evidence of how decriminalization affects residents, citing how Oregon recriminalized hard drugs but Portugal has experienced better success. He stated that Oregon was “instructive, but so is the [experience of] Portugal, where that country decriminalized or removed penalties for personal possession of drugs for personal use, and they were actually able to get people into treatment, and mortality did drop. So there are models that we can use that can work,” Englander explained.
American Society of Addiction Medicine speaker Stephen Taylor proposed that it be sent to the reference committee, stating that “there is, in fact, evidence that decriminalization can have public health benefits if it is done correctly. We would …
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Author: Nicole Potter / High Times
