Don’t let Biden pick a prohibitionist drug czar

President Biden will soon announce his nominee for the next Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) or ‘drug czar’.

Former Congressman Patrick Kennedy is campaigning for the role and his history of harmful and outdated prohibitionist views make him a disastrous potential choice for the position. From opposing ending marijuana prohibition to supporting forced abstinence and treatment through incarceration and drug courts, Kennedy’s views are concerning.

But we’ve been working to ensure Biden instead picks someone that centers a health-based approach to drugs. Tell President Biden that the next drug czar must support reform, not repeat the drug war mistakes of the past.

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Dear President Biden,

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I strongly urge you to appoint a nominee for ONDCP Director that has a public health background and centers a health-based approach to drugs rather than continuing the failed and punitive drug war tactics of the last fifty years. Your administration recently announced that the ONDCP agenda would be more focused on public health and curbing the overdose crisis and your pick for drug czar must also reflect those priorities.

Americans are increasingly favoring marijuana legalization and more equitable, just, and public health-centered approaches to drug use instead of punishment. In the selection process for drug czar, we cannot allow ourselves to fall victim to the false narrative that the criminal legal system still has a role to play in public health matters. That means you should think twice about potential nominees’—such as former Rep. Patrick Kennedy’s—support for involving the criminal justice system in substance use issues with things like drug courts and coerced treatment. While these approaches may sound more compassionate and health-centered on the surface, in reality, they expand the reach of the criminal legal system, rob people of their rights, reinforce stigma, and continue to burden people with criminal records that limit their access to employment, housing, education, federal nutritional assistance, and can even cost them their children or immigration status.

Science, health, and compassion must be central to the next drug czar’s decision-making on how to best treat people who are struggling with drug use. Since Nixon declared a ‘war on drugs’ fifty years ago, the federal government has embraced abstinence-only approaches that neglect the evidence showing that harm reduction and medication-assisted treatment have a vital role to play in reducing overdose deaths and helping people stop using drugs when they are ready. This means eliminating arbitrary barriers to buprenorphine and methadone access that are considered the gold standard for treating people with opioid use disorder, ending the Trump administration's counterproductive witch-hunt against overdose prevention centers, expanding access to syringe services programs, and scaling up harm reduction-based drug education programs.

We must ensure that not only is our strategy aligned to support these efforts, but that there is also adequate funding available to provide these resources to the people who need them. And in order to do that, we need a budget that prioritizes harm reduction, treatment and recovery services, and de-prioritizes enforcement and supply-side strategies that have merely perpetuated mass criminalization and enshrined a failed drug war.

The Biden administration should listen to the will of the people and make a choice for drug czar that will take us further down the path towards positive change and focus on health, not repeat the failed drug war mistakes of the past. Thank you.

Sincerely,

[First Name] [Last Name]
[Your Address]

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