Article originally published in the Noted section of the Nation Magazine, December 5th, 2011 issue.

END THE GLOBAL WAR ON DRUGS: As crackdowns on medical marijuana providers continue in the US and Drug War deaths rise in Mexico, drug policy reformers gathered in Los Angeles in early November for the largest ever International Drug Policy Reform Conference. Attendees included Javier Sicilia, the Mexican poet whose son was murdered by the Gulf Cartel this year. Honoring the more than 50,000 people who have been killed or disappeared in Mexico over the past five years, he called on Americans to help end the Drug War. “Drug prohibition and the arms industry, which illegally sends weapons to my country, are killing and destroying us and we have to stop it together,” he said. 

In tandem with the conference, the Formerly Incarcerated and Convicted People’s Movement kicked off a national campaign to register one million formerly incarcerated Americans to vote in 2012 and expand its “Ban the Box” campaign to reduce discrimination against job seekers with records.

A recent Gallup poll found that for the first time, more Americans support

legalizing marijuana than making it a crime. This year alone the NAACP, the US Conference of Mayors, and the Global Commission on Drug Policy have all come out against the drug war. Although there are differing ideas among reformers about how best to address the challenges presented by drug use, Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, which organized the conference, said he looks “forward to the day when the fights that are the most consequential for drug policy in America are the ones that happen among ourselves.”