April, 22 2022, 10:55am EDT
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People's Action Institute and Data for Progress Unveil New Poll Showing Bipartisan Support for Harm Reduction Policies
Poll Comes as White House Releases Drug Control Plan That Centers Some Harm Reduction Tools While Bloating CBP Budget for Enforcement.
WASHINGTON
People's Action Institute and Data for Progress today unveiled new research showing robust, bipartisan support for a variety of harm reduction measures like expanding use of medication-assisted treatment, increasing access to opioid overdose-reversal medication, opening overdose prevention centers, and decriminalizing possession of small amounts of drugs. The polling comes a day after the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) released a conflicting drug control plan that centers some harm reduction tactics but increases criminalization through its enforcement.
"This new polling shows that a world is possible in which every preventable overdose death is seen as a tragedy," People's Action Institute Drug Policy, Harm Reduction, and Criminal Justice Campaign Director Ellen Glover said. "That starts by listening to the overwhelming majority of people demanding evidence-based solutions, like passing the MAT Act. Saving lives is a bipartisan issue, and it's time for Congress to start acting like it."
"Across the country, in red states and blue states alike, communities and families have been devastated by the overdose crisis," Data for Progress Polling Analyst Anika Dandekar said. "It is no surprise then that we find vast majorities of voters, across all backgrounds and parties, support life-saving policy solutions that treat substance use disorder first and foremost as a public health issue."
Specifically, the new polling showed clear bipartisan support for harm reduction measures:
79% of voters support expanding use of medication-assisted treatments;
80% of voters support for increasing access to naloxone, the drug that reverses opioid overdoses;
64% support opening overdose prevention centers; and
69% of voters support decriminalizing possession of small amounts of drugs.
"The point of harm reduction is to leave no person behind. This polling is proof that voters across the political spectrum buy into that principle" VOCAL-NY Users Union Leader Asia Betancourt said. "It's time we move forward and save lives."
"I am alive today and helping my community in Ohio thanks to harm reduction tools like naloxone," River Valley Organizing Civic Engagement Organizer Thomas Powell said. "This new data shows what those of us on the ground in our communities have known all along-that we want to see our neighbors stay alive. We need harm reduction to do that."
Preventable overdose deaths are breaking records. Over 106,000 people died in the past year, up nearly 16 percent from the previous year. The polling data is encouraging for advocates and lawmakers as the Mainstreaming Addiction Treatment (MAT) Act is held up, despite having bipartisan support in the House and Senate. The MAT Act would remove redundant and outdated barriers for healthcare practitioners to prescribe life-saving medicines, like buprenorphine which is a form of medication-assisted treatment.
The new polling data may be found here.
Data for Progress is a multidisciplinary group of experts using state-of-the-art techniques in data science to support progressive activists and causes.
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US Voter Registrations Surge as Republicans Try to Limit Ballot Access
One group said it has registered over 100,000 new voters since U.S. President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 race.
Jul 26, 2024
The group behind a popular get-out-the-vote technology platform said Friday that it's registered more than 100,000 new U.S. voters since President Joe Biden withdrew from the 2024 presidential race, a surge that came amid mounting Republican efforts to make it harder to register and vote.
Vote.org said that 84% of voters registered in the new wave are under age 35. Nearly 1 in 5 new registrees is 18 years old. Andrea Hailey, the group's CEO, said that "since 2020, we have led the largest voter registration drive in U.S. history," with more than 7.8 million people registered.
After dropping out, Biden endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to face former Republican President Donald Trump and Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) in the November election. The new presumptive Democratic candidate has already earned endorsements from many Democrats in Congress and groups advocating on issues including climate, labor, and reproductive rights.
Vote.org's success comes as Republicans at the federal level are proposing and passing legislation creating obstacles to the ballot box.
Earlier this month, U.S. House Republicans passed Rep. Chip Roy's (R-Texas)
Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which would require proof of American citizenship to vote in federal elections. Republicans claim the bill is meant to fix the virtually nonexistent "problem" of noncitizen voter fraud.
However, Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.)
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Lee said the SAVE Act underscores the need to pass her recently introduced Right to Vote Act, "which would establish the first-ever affirmative federal voting rights guarantee, ensuring every citizen may exercise their fundamental right to cast a ballot."
Earlier this year, U.S. Senate Democrats also reintroduced the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, legislation its sponsors say will "update and restore critical safeguards of the original Voting Rights Act."
Meanwhile, Republican-controlled state legislatures and red-state governors are enacting laws imposing tough restrictions on voter registration, with violations punishable by stiff fines that critics say are meant to dissuade people from registration drives and similar efforts.
Again under the guise of preventing fraud, Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis last year signed legislation limiting voter registration drives, with fines of up to $250,000 for violators.
"These draconian laws and rules are like taking a sledgehammer to hit a flea," Cecile Scoon, an attorney and president of the Florida chapter of the League of Women Voters,
toldThe New York Times in an article published Friday.
Three years after Kansas passed a law making "false representation" of an election official a crime, campaigners say it's become extremely difficult to sign up new voters.
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In Louisiana, Republican state lawmakers quietly passed legislation making it easier for election officials to toss out absentee ballots with missing details, limiting how people can mail in other voters' ballots, and restricting the ability to assist people with disabilities with their ballots.
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In Nebraska, Republican Secretary of State Bob Evnen last week
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"We refuse to accept thousands of Nebraskans having their voting rights stripped away," ACLU of Nebraska legal and policy fellow Jane Seu said in a statement. "We are confident in the constitutionality of these laws, and we are exploring every option to ensure that Nebraskans who have done their time can vote."
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Climate and environmental defenders on this week implored U.S. senators to block a permitting reform bill introduced this week by Sens. Joe Manchin and John Barrasso that one campaigner linked to Project 2025, a conservative coalition's agenda for a far-right overhaul of the federal government.
Common Dreamsreported Monday that Manchin (I-W.Va.) and Barrasso (R-Wyo.)—respectively the chair and ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee—introduced the Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024.
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"This dangerous bill doesn't deserve a floor vote."
These are nearly identical policies to what's proposed in Project 2025's Mandate for Leadership. The plan, which was spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation, calls for "unleashing all of America's energy resources," including by ending federal restrictions on fossil fuel drilling on public lands; limiting investments in renewable energy; and rolling back environmental permitting restrictions for new oil, gas, and coal projects, including power plants.
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Hartl added that "to preserve a livable planet," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) "must squash this legislation now."
Manchin—who has said this will be his last term in office—has been a steadfast supporter of the fossil fuel industry, partly because his family owns a coal company. The senator says his permitting reform bill "will advance American energy once again to bring down prices, create domestic jobs, and allow us to continue in our role as a global energy leader."
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NRDC managing director of government affairs Alexandra Adams said Wednesday that "this bill is a giveaway for the oil and gas industry that will ramp up drilling and environmental destruction at a time when we need to be putting a hard stop to fossil fuels."
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Sudan's military is blocking United Nations aid trucks from entering at a key border crossing, causing severe disruptions in aid in a country that experts fear may be on the brink of one of the worst famines the world has seen in decades, The New York Timesreported Friday.
The border city of Adré in eastern Chad is the main international crossing into the Darfur region of Sudan, but the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), the state's official military, which is engaged in a civil war with a paramilitary group called the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), has refused to issue permits for U.N. trucks to enter there, as it's an RSF-controlled area.
U.S. and international officials have issued increasingly alarmed calls for steady aid access to help feed the millions of severely malnourished people in Darfur and other areas of Sudan.
Last week, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the United States ambassador to the U.N., said that the SAF's obstruction of the border was "completely unacceptable."
Both warring parties in Sudan continue to perpetrate brazen atrocities, including starvation of civilians as a method of warfare. This piece focuses on the SAF's ongoing obstruction of essential aid. The situation is catastrophic. The policy is criminal. https://t.co/FKhqQh3EI9.
— Tom Dannenbaum (@tomdannenbaum) July 26, 2024
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Another mother, Dahabaya Ibet, said that her 20-month-old boy had to bear witness to his grandfather being shot and killed in front of his eyes when the family home in Darfur was attacked by gunmen late last year.
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In addition to those that have made it out of the country, there are 11 million people internally displaced within Sudan, most of whom have become displaced since the civil war began in April 2023.
An unnamed senior American official told the Times that the looming famine in Sudan could be as bad as the 2011 famine in Somalia or even the great Ethiopian famine of the 1980s.
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