Resolution Adopted
by the CCAR
Drug Trade
and Drug Legislation
Adopted by the
104th Annual Convention of
the Central Conference of American
Rabbis
Montreal, Quebec, June 1993
WHEREAS, the overall situation regarding the use of drugs in
our society and the crime
and
misery that accompanies it has continued to deteriorate for several
decades,
and
WHEREAS, our society has continued to attempt, at
enormous financial cost, to resolve
drug abuse problems through the criminal justice system, with
the accompanying increases
of
prisons and numbers of inmates, and
WHEREAS, the huge untaxed revenues generated by the illicit
drug trade are undermining
legitimate governments world-wide, and
WHEREAS, the present system has spawned a cycle of
hostility by the incarceration
of
disproportionate numbers of African-Americans, Hispanics, and other
minority groups,
and
WHEREAS, the number of people who have
contracted AIDS, hepatitis, and other diseases
from contaminated hypodermic needles is epidemic
under our present system, and
WHEREAS, in our society’s zeal to pursue our criminal
approach, legitimate medical
uses
for the relief of pain and suffering of patients have been
suppressed.
THEREFORE BE IT
RESOLVED, that our society must recognize drug use and abuse as the
medical and social problems that
they are and that they must be treated with medical
and social solutions, and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that an objective commission
be immediately empowered by Congress
to recommend revision of the drug laws of the United States in
order to reduce the
harm our
current policies are causing.