A Vital Step Towards the South Achieving the Same Justice and Freedom Granted to the Rest of the Country
New York, NY/Dothan, AL – In response to the Alabama Legislature passing medical marijuana, the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA) and The Ordinary People’s Society (T.O.P.S.) released the following statements:
Kassandra Frederique, Executive Director of the Drug Policy Alliance:
“Alabama passing medical marijuana is a huge step forward for the South, which maintains some of the most racially-disparate enforcement and harshest penalties on the books. This is an especially welcome development as Alabama’s next-door neighbor, Mississippi, just last week devastatingly saw its Supreme Court overturn the medical marijuana initiative that was widely-passed by voters in November 2020. While we have had considerable success reforming marijuana and other drug policy laws in other parts of the country, we cannot forget those in the South that are still held hostage by these regressive laws and the pretext they provide to justify the over-surveillance, harassment, assault, and criminalization of poor communities and of Black, Latinx and Indigenous communities. This is a vital step toward the South achieving the same justice and freedom granted to the rest of this country.”
Pastor Kenneth Sharpton Glasgow, President and Founder of The Ordinary People’s Society (Dotham, AL), who have organized rallies, panel discussions and community meetings; and with a focus on compassion, health, and healing justice, have appealed to the faith community through a collaborative of 25 faith leaders:
“I am very, very glad that medical marijuana passed in Alabama. We have worked on this for the past 15 years, and I’m grateful that the legislature has finally seen the need to join the rest of the country in allowing people the right to natural medicine. This also stops a lot of young Black men from being targeted and given extreme sentences in the state of Alabama, even life sentences for marijuana, when many different states in the rest of the country have made it legal or have decriminalized it.”
