Who We Are and Why We Fight: „People Who Do Drugs, and People Who Don’t, Will End the War on Drugs“

Ethan Nadelmann electrified the audience with this comprehensive and provocative address at the 2011 International Drug Policy Reform Conference in November  in downtown Los Angeles. At the conference, anti-drug war activists from all over the world, and all walks of life, converged to plan and discuss the movement to end the drug war. Former police officers with Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), Students for a Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP), and representatives from the NAACP and other organizations  joined formerly incarcerated drug offenders, addicts, and individuals as prominent as the Mexican poet Javier Sicilia for three days of collaboration and education.

Let me tell you something. We are all the future of this movement. We are all the future. You know, it is the young, the old, and the in-between. The black, the white, and the in-between. The gay, the straight, and the in-between. The drug users, and the non-drug users, and the in-between.  

It really is a remarkable moment right now. Some of us have been fighting this for many years, but every one of us who’s been in this for many years knows the same thing as those of us for whom this is a new thing — which is, we have just begun to fight. We have just begun to fight. Because the fact of the matter is, what we are involved in here, inescapably, is a multi-generational struggle. This is a multi-generational struggle. There is no 18th Amendment of drug prohibition that is simply going to be repealed with a 21st. There is no Berlin Wall of drug prohibition that is going to come tumbling down like that and transform the world. We have to push, and we have to push, and we have to build, and we have to be smart. We have no alternative.   …