The American Medical Association House of Delegates meeting in Chicago Thursday voted 345-171 to support decriminalization of drug use and possession. Photo courtesy of AMA
The American Medical Association’s House of Delegates Thursday voted 345-171 to decriminalize drug personal use and possession.
“The war on drugs is quite reminiscent of the phrase, ‘The beatings will continue until morale improves,'” said AMA Connecticut delegate Ryan Englander. “We have tried for decades to criminalize our way out of a substance use crisis in this country, and it has not worked.” Advertisement
Englander said Portugal’s experience of decriminalization allowed the country to get people into treatment and drug use mortality dropped.
Delegates passed the drug decrimninalization proposal in the face of opposition from the AMA’s Board of Trustees. The board said “it is premature to recommend decriminalizing drug possession offenses as a public health benefit in the absence of evidence demonstrating public health benefits.”
AMA President-elect Bobby Mukkamala spoek for the board Wesnesday when he said AMA policy must reflect the evidence “and currently, the evidence does not support broad decriminalization.”
Language in the AMA’s report on drug decriminalization was revised to call for “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.” Advertisement
That call for decriminalization language revision was proposed by Stephen Taylor of the American Society of Addiction Medicine.
An AMA reference committee report said the National Center for Drug Abuse Statistics reports that 1.6 million Americans are arrested each year for drug-related offenses. A 2022 Pew report found 87% of arrests were for drug possession.
The Pew report said, “While use and dependence rates between groups vary by 1-2%, Black people are far more likely to be arrested and incarcerated. These disparities have existed for decades.”
The AMA report said decriminalization proponents cite several benefits of no longer criminalizing drug use and possession. Among them are saving money on incarceration, focusing resources on treatment and social services and reducing the stigma of drug use and having a substance abuse disorder.
The report also noted that the AMA supports “automatic expungement, sealing, and similar efforts regarding an arrest or conviction for a cannabis-related offense for use or possession that would be legal or decriminalized under subsequent state legalization or decriminalization of adult use or medicinal cannabis.”
