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Matt Sutton (202) 556-3291
Today, the Drug Policy Alliance announced the launch of a major new initiative--Uprooting the Drug War--with the release of a series of reports and interactive website that aim to expose the impact of the war on drugs beyond arrest and incarceration. The project is designed to engage activists across sectors and issues in understanding and dismantling the ways in which the war on drugs has infiltrated and shaped many other systems people encounter in their daily lives--including education, employment, housing, child welfare, immigration, and public benefits.
"Even as there is growing momentum for treating drug use as a matter of personal and public health, the systems on which we would normally rely to advance an alternative approach are infested with the same culture of punishment as the criminal legal system and have operated with relative impunity. Today, we expose those systems and their role in fueling drug war policies and logic that compound the harms suffered by people who use drugs and people who are targeted by drug war enforcement," said Kassandra Frederique, Executive Director of the Drug Policy Alliance. "Ending the drug war in all its vestiges is critical to improving the health and well-being of individuals, families, and communities. But, this is not DPA's fight alone, nor even that of the broader criminal legal reform movement--it is a collective and intersectional fight that must happen in partnership with allies both within these systems and outside of them. It will take all of us, because the drug war impacts us all. Only through creating awareness of the drug war's insidious impacts across sectors can we begin to disentangle it and the culture of criminalization it promulgates from our lives."
The goal of the new initiative--a natural extension of DPA's decriminalization advocacy work--is to collaborate with aligned movements and legislators through meetings, webinars, convenings, and organizing to explore the ways the drug war has infected the systems and institutions that are at the core of their policy advocacy and create momentum for concrete policy proposals that begin to end the drug war in all its forms.
The project, which lives at UprootingtheDrugWar.com, includes analysis of six different systems through first-hand stories, data spotlights, and reports that take a deep dive into how drug war policies have taken root and created grave harm in the fields of education, employment, housing, child welfare, immigration, and public benefits. Each report explores the history of how the drug war is waged (or enforced) in each system, as well as the underlying assumptions of drug war policies, through an examination of federal and New York state law. In addition to the reports, six 'Snapshots' provide a brief overview of how drug war punishment and logic show up in these systems at a national level and make policy recommendations that would begin to extract the drug war from these systems. Finally, the site offers six 'Advocacy Assessment Tools,' which give partners and legislators the opportunity to evaluate drug war policies and practices in their own community so they can take action to uproot the drug war locally.
Education
"Harsh disciplinary policies and increased police presence, fueled in part by the war on drugs, have led to the criminalization of youth in schools, especially youth of color. Underlying this criminalization are assumptions propagated by the drug war that students who possess drugs or commit other policy violations cannot be good students; do not deserve an education or support; and must be removed before they disrupt other students' learning." On the contrary, "emphasis on enforcement and punishment creates an adversarial relationship between students and school officials and undermines the role that schools should play for students: a safe place for learning and support. Denying education to students, primarily students of color, for drug possession and other policy violations leads to negative consequences, including increased unemployment, income inequality, costly health problems, and incarceration." - Excerpt from the Education Snapshot
Employment
"Policies stemming from the war on drugs exclude millions of people who use drugs or who have criminal convictions from employment and its associated benefits. These policies disproportionately impact people of color, who already face additional barriers to employment. The underlying assumptions of these policies are that people who use drugs cannot perform their jobs; any drug use is problematic and indicates a personality flaw; and a criminal conviction should permanently bar employment opportunities." On the contrary, "employment provides a means to support oneself and others and connections to coworkers and the community. Ensuring access to employment is a crucial way to reduce poverty. Not being employed can lead to negative health effects and is strongly associated with increased rates of substance use and substance use disorders." - Excerpt from the Employment Snapshot
Housing
"Policies that stem from the war on drugs deny housing to many based on misguided ideals of deterring people from using or being around drugs. Underlying these ideals are the assumptions that people who use drugs and their families do not deserve housing; cannot be good tenants or neighbors; and punishing them will persuade others not to use drugs. On the contrary, harsh penalties that remove and restrict people from housing contribute to the very negative outcomes the drug war supposedly seeks to prevent: harm to children, reduced education and employment, and deteriorating health (including increased drug use and overdose death)." - Excerpt from Housing Snapshot
Child Welfare
"The war on drugs has provided a key tool to perpetuate family separation, especially against parents of color. According to drug war logic, any drug use - even suspected - is equivalent to child abuse, regardless of context and harm to the child. The underlying assumptions are that parental drug use automatically harms children; parents who use drugs cannot be good parents; the foster care system can provide better care for children; and it is better to remove children from their parents than to provide support to improve the situation." On the contrary, "Separating children from their parents often leads to the very harms from which these policies purport to protect. Removal from parental care is associated with long-term mental health problems, smoking, poverty, lower educational attainment, and use of public assistance. Placing the blame on individual parents and drugs offers an easy scapegoat that detracts from focusing on structural issues like racism, poverty, and lack of supportive services." - Excerpt from Child Welfare Snapshot
Immigration
"For over one hundred years, certain classes of immigrants have been falsely associated with drug use and activity. The underlying assumptions behind this reasoning and resulting policies are that immigrants, particularly immigrants of color, are dangerous, undesirable people who bring drugs into the country that harm U.S. citizens (read: white U.S. citizens); people who use drugs need to be removed from our communities and, when possible, country; and an immigrant cannot be a good community member if they use drugs or have a criminal record. This mentality has helped to create the world's largest immigrant exclusion, detention, and deportation apparatus." On the contrary, "law enforcement has disproportionately focused domestic enforcement of the drug war in Black, Latinx, and Indigenous communities, including immigrant communities, and international enforcement in Mexico, the Caribbean, and Latin America, which has helped solidify assumed connections between immigrants and people of color with drugs and crime. In turn, increased deportations, the militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border, and expanded enforcement of and incarceration for immigration offenses has reinforced these connections in the public's eye. A great irony is that the U.S.'s international drug policy contributes to violence and instability in Latin American countries that drives many people to immigrate to the U.S." - Excerpt from Immigration Snapshot
Public Benefits
"The war on drugs provided a rationale for states to limit access [to public benefits] in the name of deterring drug involvement. The assumptions behind this rationale are that some people deserve help while others do not (i.e., people who use drugs do not deserve basic necessities); people are just trying to game the system and squander public money (e.g., the "welfare queen" stereotype); and people who use drugs are not and cannot be responsible community members." On the contrary, "By denying benefits that can help people out of poverty, our policies may actually contribute to increased substance use disorder rates, in addition to negative health and education outcomes that contribute to generational poverty. Public benefits also help people reduce the risk of returning to jail or prison after incarceration. The war on drugs has limited access and deterred many people from accessing public benefits that could help support their families and improve health, safety, and wellbeing." - Excerpt from Public Benefits Snapshot
The full Uprooting the Drug War series of reports can be found at UprootingtheDrugWar.com.
The Drug Policy Alliance is the nation's leading organization promoting drug policies grounded in science, compassion, health and human rights.
(212) 613-8020"Trump explicitly threatened to use the state to target anyone he and MAGA scapegoat for Kirk's murder," said New Republic writer Greg Sargeant.
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller vowed Friday that he and President Donald Trump would use this week's assassination of Charlie Kirk to "dismantle" the organized left using state power.
In a rant on Fox News, Miller—the architect of Trump's mass roundups and deportations of immigrants—shouted that the best way to honor Kirk's memory was to carry out a political purge against the left, which he called a "domestic terrorism movement in this country."
Miller provided few details on what specific left-wing figures or groups he believed were stoking this violence. He claimed the left was waging "doxxing campaigns" against right-wing figures, though he cited no specific examples.
He did, however, cite many examples of harsh, but nevertheless First Amendment-protected, speech that he considered an incitement to violence, including that "the left calls people enemies of the republic, calls them fascists, says they're Nazis, says they're evil," and claimed that many people online were "celebrating" Kirk's assassination.
"The last message that Charlie Kirk gave to me before he joined his creator in heaven," Miller said, was, "that we have to dismantle and take on the radical left organizations in this country that are fomenting violence, and we are going to do that."
"Under President Trump's leadership," Miller vowed to shut down these unspecified leftist groups.
"I don't care how," he said. "It could be a RICO charge, a conspiracy charge, conspiracy against the United States, insurrection. But we are going to do what it takes to dismantle the organizations and the entities that are fomenting riots, that are doxxing, that are trying to inspire terrorism, that are committing acts of wanton violence."
RICO refers to the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, which the government has traditionally used to prosecute organized crime groups. Trump later said one of his targets for these charges may be the billionaire liberal donor George Soros, the owner of the Open Society Foundations nonprofit, whom Trump accused of funding "riots," a charge Soros denied.
Miller did not limit his call to destroying those who commit crimes. He also spoke of those "spreading this evil hate," telling them, "You will live in exile. Because the power of law enforcement under President Trump's leadership will be used to find you, will be used to take away your money, to take away your power, and if you've broken the law, to take away your freedom."
An official White House account on X reposted a clip of Miller's comments calling for the "dismantling" of left-wing organizations:
"Trump signaled he intended to use Kirk's shooting as a pretext for a broad crackdown on the left," said Jordan Weissman, a journalist at The Argument. "Here's Stephen Miller being much more explicit. He's talking about RICO and terrorism charges, echoing right-wing influencers."
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, meanwhile, pointed out the irony of the threat coming from Miller, noting that he "routinely slanders his political opponents with vile language that treats disagreement as if it’s treason."
Little is still known about what, if any, political ideology precisely motivated Kirk's alleged shooter, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, who was apprehended in Utah on Friday. Robinson was not affiliated with any political party, and the scrawlings he left behind at the scene of the crime contain a mishmash of hyper-online but only vaguely political symbols and phrases.
But even before the suspect had been identified or apprehended, efforts had begun on the right to use Kirk's murder as an excuse to crack down on their left-wing enemies. In an ominous speech Thursday night, Trump blamed the shooting on the "radical left," saying it was “directly responsible for the terrorism that we're seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now."
On Fox News Friday, Trump indicated that he was extending this dragnet to anyone who has expressed harsh words for figures on the right. The president said:
For years those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis. This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country and must stop right now. My administration will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it, as well as those who go after our judges and law enforcement officials.
(Graphic by The Economist, data from the Prosecution Project)
The portrayal of the left as a unique "national security threat" is not borne out by data. On Friday, The Economist published an analysis of data from the Prosecution Project, an open-source database that catalogues crimes that seek "a socio-political change or to communicate."
The findings reaffirm what has been found in previous studies: That "extremists on both left and right commit violence, although more incidents appear to come from right-leaning attackers."
During the same Fox interview, when a host noted the prevalence of right-wing extremism, Trump said: "I’ll tell you something that’s going to get me in trouble, but I couldn’t care less. The radicals on the right oftentimes are radical because they don’t want to see crime. They’re saying, ‘We don’t want these people coming in. We don’t want you burning our shopping centers. We don’t want you shooting our people in the middle of the street.’”
Trump concluded: “The radicals on the left are the problem.”
Meanwhile, virtually all prominent figures and groups on the left—from politicians like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), and New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani to writers for left-wing publications like Jacobin or The Nation to activist groups like Public Citizen, MoveOn, the ACLU, and Indivisible—have unequivocally condemned violence against Kirk, even while repudiating his views.
"Trump explicitly threatened to use the state to target anyone he and MAGA scapegoat for Kirk's murder," said New Republic writer Greg Sargeant. "We really could see Stephen Miller and Kash Patel use the FBI for 60s-style domestic persecution."
Citing US President Donald Trump's anti-climate executive actions, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin on Friday unveiled a proposal to end a program that requires power plants, refineries, landfills, and more to report their emissions.
While Zeldin claimed that "the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program is nothing more than bureaucratic red tape that does nothing to improve air quality," experts and climate advocates emphasized the importance of the data collection, which began in 2010.
"President Trump promised Americans would have the cleanest air on Earth, but once again, Trump's EPA is taking actions that move us further from that goal," Joseph Goffman, who led the EPA Office of Air and Radiation during the Biden administration, said in a statement from the Environmental Protection Network, a group for former agency staff.
"Cutting the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program blinds Americans to the facts about climate pollution. Without it, policymakers, businesses, and communities cannot make sound decisions about how to cut emissions and protect public health," he explained.
As The New York Times reported:
For the past 15 years, the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program has collected data from about 8,000 of the country's largest industrial facilities. That information has helped guide numerous decisions on federal policy and has been shared with the United Nations, which has required developed countries to submit tallies of their emissions.
In addition, private companies often rely on the program's data to demonstrate to investors that their efforts to cut emissions are working. And communities often use it to determine whether local facilities are releasing air pollution that threatens public health.
"By hiding this information from the public, Administrator Zeldin is denying Americans the ability to see the damaging results of his actions on climate pollution, air quality, and public health," Goffman said. "It's a further addition to the deliberate blockade against future action on climate change—and yet another example of the administration putting polluters before people's health."
Sierra Club's director of climate policy and advocacy, Patrick Drupp, stressed Friday that "EPA cannot avoid the climate crisis by simply burying its head in the sand as it baselessly cuts off its main source of greenhouse gas emissions data."
"The agency has provided no defensible reason to cancel the program; this is nothing more than EPA's latest action to deny the reality of climate change and do everything it can to put the fossil fuel industry and corporate polluters before people," he added. "The Sierra Club will oppose this proposal every step of the way.”
Margie Alt, director of the Climate Action Campaign, similarly said that "the Trump administration's latest pro-polluter move to eliminate the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program is just another brazen step in their Polluters First agenda."
Responding to the administration's claim that the proposal would save businesses up to $2.4 billion in regulatory costs, Alt said that "under the guise of saving Americans money, this is an attempt on the part of Trump, Lee Zeldin, and their polluter buddies to hide the ball and avoid responsibility for the deadly, dangerous, and expensive pollution they produce."
"If they succeed, the nation's biggest polluters will spew climate-wrecking pollution without accountability," she warned. "The idea that tracking pollution does 'nothing to improve air quality' is absurd," she added. "If you don't measure it, you can't manage it. Hiding information and allowing fossil fuel companies to avoid accountability are the true goals of this rule."
The Trump admin is now proposing to kill the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program, which since 2010 has required 8,000+ coal plants, refineries, and factories to report their climate pollution.Without it, polluters get a free pass.No reporting = no accountability.
— Climate Action Now (@climateactapp.bsky.social) September 12, 2025 at 7:04 PM
BlueGreen Alliance executive director Jason Walsh declared that "the Trump administration continues to prove it does not care about the American people and their basic right to breathe clean air. This flies in the face of the EPA's core mission—to protect the environment and public health."
"The proposal is wildly unpopular with even industry groups speaking against it because they know the value of having this emissions data available," he noted. "Everybody in this country deserves to know the air quality in their community and how their lives can be affected when they live near high-emitting facilities."
“Knowledge is power and—in this case—health," he concluded. "The administration shouldn't be keeping people in the dark about the air they and their neighbors are breathing."
This proposal from Zeldin came a day after the EPA moved to reverse rules protecting people from unsafe levels of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), often called "forever chemicals," in US drinking water, provoking similar criticism. Earthjustice attorney Katherine O'Brien said that his PFAS decision "prioritizes chemical industry profits and utility companies' bottom line over the health of children and families across the country."
"Looking forward to the contortions of people whose paychecks are dependent on denying that any of this is the case," said one observer.
Belying persistent efforts by Israel and its defenders to deny the staggering number of Palestinians killed during the 23-month Gaza genocide, the general who led the Israel Defense Forces during most of the war acknowledged this week that around 220,000 Palestinians have been killed or wounded.
Former Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi—who stepped down in March after leading the IDF since January 2023—told residents of Ein Habor in southern Israel earlier this week that "over 10%" of Gaza's population of approximately 2.2 million "were killed or injured" since October 2023.
"This is not a gentle war, we took the gloves off from the first minute" Halevi said, adding that "not once" has any legal authority "limited" his wartime conduct.
Following the October 7 attack, the IDF dramatically loosened its rules of engagement, effectively allowing an unlimited number of civilians to be killed when targeting a single Hamas member, no matter how low-ranking.
The IDF’s use of massive ordnance, including US-supplied 1,000- and 2,000-pound “bunker buster” bombs capable of leveling entire city blocks, and utilization of artificial intelligence to select targets has resulted in staggering numbers of civilian deaths, including numerous instances of dozens or more people being massacred in single strikes.
Halevi insisted that "we are doing everything in accordance with international law."
The International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague disagrees, having issued warrants for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes including forced starvation and murder. Israel's conduct in the war is also the subject of an International Court of Justice (ICJ) genocide case filed by South Africa and supported by around two dozen nations.
Halevi's admission tracks with official Gaza Health Ministry figures showing at least 228,815 people killed or wounded by Israeli forces in Gaza. GHM also says that around 9,000 people are missing and presumed dead and buried beneath rubble. Experts—including the authors of multiple peer-reviewed studies in the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet—assert that the actual death toll in Gaza is much higher than reported.
The remarks by Halevi come less than a month after a joint investigation by Israeli journalist and filmmaker Yuval Abraham of +972 Magazine and Local Call and Guardian senior international affairs correspondent Emma Graham-Harrison revealed that, as of May, 5 in 6 Palestinians—or 83%—killed by the IDF through the first 19 months of the war were civilians. The report, which drew from classified IDF intelligence data, blew the lid off of Israeli government claims of a historically low civilian-to-combatant kill ratio.
Responding to Halevi's admission, Drop Site News national security and foreign affairs reporter Murtaza Hussain said on social media that he is "looking forward to the contortions of people whose paychecks are dependent on denying that any of this is the case."
Israeli officials and media, along with their supportive US counterparts during both the Biden and Trump administrations, have generally cast doubt or outright denied GHM figures—which have been found to be reliable by the IDF, US officials, and researchers—by linking them to Hamas. This comes in addition to widespread Israeli and US denials of Israel's forced famine and starvation deaths and IDF war crimes in Gaza.
However, there have been rare instances of frankness, including when Barbara Leaf, a senior State Department official during the Biden administration, said that Gaza casualties could be "even higher than are being cited." Biden-era State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller also admitted that the Gaza death toll "could very well be more" than GHM reported, even as he lied to the public about who was thwarting ceasefire efforts.