Students for Sensible Drug Policy
Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP) is a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit advocacy organization founded in 1998 by a small group of students at Rochester Institute of Technology and George Washington University in response to that year’s reauthorization of the Higher Education Act of 1965, which contained a provision denying student loans and grants to students with drug convictions.
Since January 2006, Kris Krane has served as SSDP’s executive director. Tom Angell is government relations director, Micah Daigle is field director, Amber Langston is outreach director, and Morgan Lesko is webmaster.
SSDP functions through chapters in U.S. and Canadian high schools and colleges promoting student and teacher activism for sensible change in attitudes towards drug use and drug abuse, and drug policies. As of November 2006, there are over 110 chapters in the United States and Canada.
Mission, Values and Structure as a Grassroots Organization
Mission Statement: Students for Sensible Drug Policy is an international grassroots network of students who are concerned about the impact drug abuse has on our communities, but who also know that the War on Drugs is failing our generation and our society. SSDP mobilizes and empowers young people to participate in the political process, pushing for sensible policies to achieve a safer and more just future, while fighting back against counterproductive Drug War policies, particularly those that directly harm students and youth.
Values Statement: Students for Sensible Drug Policy neither encourages nor condemns drug use. Rather, we seek to reduce the harms caused by drug abuse and drug policies. As young people, we strive toward a just and compassionate society where drug abuse is treated as a health issue instead of a criminal justice issue. We recognize that the very real harms of drug abuse are not adequately addressed by current policies and we advocate measures that would effectively help those who develop drug problems. Yet, we also believe that individuals must ultimately be allowed to make decisions for themselves as long as their actions do not infringe upon anyone else’s freedoms or safety.
Because the War on Drugs has historically been justified as necessary to protect youth, it is our responsibility as young people to stop this harmful war from being waged in our names any longer. As scholars, we seek solutions to society’s drug problems through focused research, honest dialogue, and informed debate, instead of unquestioned extremism, punishment, and propaganda.
Structure as a Grassroots Organization: SSDP comprises student chapters all across the country. Any student anywhere can start a chapter. While SSDP has a variety of national campaigns and actions that everyone can participate in, chapters are also encouraged to work on those issues that have the most traction in their own communities. Annually SSDPers convene for a national conference. There, students acquire essential activist knowledge and skills. Also, chapters elect students to serve on SSDP’s Board of Directors. The Board in turn selects SSDP’s executive director, who is responsible for tending to both the day-to-day operations of the organization, as well as its long-term direction. An important duty of the executive director is to hire staff. Currently, besides an executive director, SSDP has a campaigns director, a field director, a legislative director, a publications coordinator, and a webmaster. Ultimately, the SSDP staff exists to serve SSDP’s chapters and activists.
Legally, SSDP consists of two separate, distinct entities — Students for Sensible Drug Policy Foundation and Students for Sensible Drug Policy Inc. The former, as a 501(c)3 organization, engages in education and outreach. Donations to SSDP Foundation are tax-deductible. SSDP Inc, as a 501(c)4 organization, engages in advocacy, or attempts to effect change to law and policy. Accordingly, donations to SSDP Inc are not tax-deductible.
Campaigns
SSDP was founded around the issue of the drug provision in the 1998 reauthorization of the Higher Education Act of 1965 which denies federal financial aid to students with drug convictions. The HEA has been criticized for disproportionately affecting minorities and working-class students. Since then, the organization has expanded its scope to include other elements of drug policy like drug testing and student privacy rights, promoting rehabilitation over incarceration, harm reduction, opposing the ineffective anti-drug media campaign, and addressing the lack of objective drug education and scientific research. SSDP’s chapters also work on the campus level to oppose prohibitionist drug policies and replace them with sensible alternatives, as part of the Campus Change Campaign.
In addition to working on issues that primarily affect students, many of SSDP’s chapters work on local and state-level campaigns such as marijuana deprioritization, reinstating voting rights to felons, and medical marijuana. Chapters are also known to hold day-long festivals to promote their cause on campus, with varying results.
Students for Sensible Drug Policy also recently wrote an amicus curiae brief for the Supreme Court case Morse v. Frederick.
SSDP v. Rep. Mark Souder
Representative Mark Souder of Indiana is known famously among the SSDP circles as the author of the Aid Elimination Penalty in the Higher Education Act Amendments of 1998. Souder is seen as one of the foremost proposers of insensible drug policies. Souder has declined to engage in an intelligent philosophical debate with SSDP regarding the Aid Elimination Penalty, and instead relies on ad hominem attacks calling the organization “nonsensical” and “legalizers”. The “legalizers” comment came in a Dear Colleage letter written by Souder supporting the Higher Education Act Aid Elimination Penalty. SSDP has since responded with a letter signed by over fifteen other organizations who also oppose the Aid Elimination Penalty including; the United Methodist Church, the National Education Association, and the American Federation of Teachers.
Cannabis Buyers Club
The Cannabis Buyers Club was the first public medical marijuana dispensary. It opened in February 1994 at 194 Church Street in San Francisco, California, founded by Proposition 215 coauthors “Brownie Mary” Rathburn, Dennis Peron, Dale Gieringer, with Beth Moore, Jon Entwhistle, Jason Patrick Menard, Gerry Leatherman, Dr. Tod Mikuriya. The club, prior to being legalized under California law, was at Ford and Sanchez Street in San Francisco, 1993. Still subject to legal hassles after that date, it eventually changed its name to “Cannabis Cultivators Club” and even “Cannabis Heating Club”.
Law Enforcement Against Prohibition “LEAP”
Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), is a non-profit, international, educational organization comprised of former and current police officers, government agents and other law enforcement agents who oppose the current War on Drugs. LEAP was founded on March 16, 2002. It is modeled after Vietnam Veterans Against the War, an organization which earned its credibility by utilizing speakers who had been on the frontlines of the war they later denounced. Incorporated on March 16, 2002, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition has grown from five founding police officers to a membership of over 6,500, including 125 speakers living in thirty-eight different states in the United States and eight other countries. LEAP now has members in 65 countries.
Drug Policy Alliance
The Drug Policy Alliance (DPA) is a New York City-based non-profit organization with the principal goal of ending the American “War on Drugs“. Its goals include nationwide availability of medicinal marijuana, the creation of drug-related public health measures, ending abuses of asset forfeiture, repealing non-violent drug sentences, repealing laws that deny public benefits to people convicted of drug crimes, and the advancement of drug education programs by redirecting most government drug control resources from criminal justice and interdiction to public health and education. The Drug Policy Alliance’s executive director is Ethan Nadelmann. The Drug Policy Alliance was formed when the Drug Policy Foundation and the Lindesmith Center merged in 2000.
Decriminalization of non-medical marijuana in the United States
Decriminalization of marijuana in the United States began in the 1970s and several jurisdictions have subsequently decriminalized marijuana (also referred to as cannabis) for non-medical purposes, as views on marijuana have liberalized, peaking in 1978. The decriminalization movement supports efforts ranging from reducing penalties for marijuana-related offenses to removing all penalties related to marijuana, including sale and cultivation. Proponents of marijuana decriminalization argue that a substantial amount of law-enforcement resources would be freed, which could be used to prevent more serious crimes, and would reduce income earned by street gangs and organized crime who sell or traffic marijuana. Opponents argue decriminalization will lead to increased crime, increased marijuana usage, and subsequent abuse of other illicit drugs.
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Richard Cowan
Richard Cowan, former director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), is editor of The Marijuana News. Born June 26, 1940, he graduated from high school in Fort Worth, Texas and in 1962 earned a B.A. Economics from Yale University, where he had served as president of the Yale Young Republicans. He held various management positions in manufacturing and natural resources and wrote several articles for publications such as National Review and Atlantic Monthly.
Rob Kampia
Rob Kampia is co-founder and executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project, the largest 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization in the U.S. that is solely dedicated to ending marijuana prohibition.
Formative years
Kampia grew up in Harleysville, Pennsylvania, a small suburban town 30 miles northwest of Philadelphia. Kampia was valedictorian of his 300-person graduating class at Souderton Area High School in 1986, served three months in prison from November 1989 to February 1990 for growing his own marijuana for personal use at Penn State University, and was elected student body president two years later at that same school. Three days after graduating with honors from Penn State in 1993 with a bachelor’s degree in Engineering Science, he moved to Washington, D.C., for the purpose of ending the government’s war on marijuana users. His arrest essentially ended his plans to become an astronaut.
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National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws
The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML, pronounced “normal”) is a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit organization whose aim is to “move public opinion sufficiently to achieve the repeal of cannabis prohibition so that the responsible use of this drug by adults is no longer subject to penalty.” According to their website, NORML “supports the removal of all criminal penalties for the private possession and responsible use of marijuana by adults, including the cultivation for personal use, and the casual nonprofit transfers of small amounts,” and “supports the development of a legally controlled market for cannabis.”
NORML and the NORML Foundation support both the victims of cannabis prohibition and the stakeholders working to reform current laws.
