The psalmist reminds us of the sacredness of the Earth and all its inhabitants. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) confirms climate change and its devastating impacts to the earth’s human and nonhuman inhabitants. Noting that global climate change is increased by human-produced greenhouse gases, we wish to bear witness against abuse of the earth and our environment.

Global climate change is an urgent moral and spiritual issue affecting all species on our planet.  The rate and severity of climate change are the only unknowns.  With its resulting weather extremes, habitat destruction, species extinction and human dislocation, we see the havoc climate change will wreak on the health and survival of present and future generations. Competition for resources aggravates the conditions that lead to war. We recognize that military production, research and development, training exercises and wars are major contributors to global warming.  We will continue to work in practical ways to put an end to militarism and war. Our sense of urgency about global climate change is fueled by awareness that the impoverished will suffer the greatest hardships, and that the affluent are emitting the vast majority of greenhouse gases.

It is not enough for Friends to care. Our Quaker testimonies call us to become patterns and examples to our communities, illustrating by our actions our spiritual commitment to our earth and its threatened and limited resources.  We are called as Friends to make this a standing priority and corporate witness in our Meetings and communities in the coming year. We urge Friends and others to take all possible measures to slow down climate change through reduction of emissions of greenhouse gases, seeking sustainable levels of human population, and more carefully stewarding earth’s finite resources.

We ask that the newly formed Peace and Social Concerns Committee of NPYM act as resource and communication conduit for meetings and worship groups in acting on this concern, encouraging faithfulness and accountability, and reporting back to Annual Session in 2009.  Our challenge is to educate ourselves, and move beyond denial and inaction. We ask that each meeting and worship group, as well as the Yearly Meeting as a whole, commit to take specific action in the coming year. The queries from 1998 with a new emphasis on global climate change may be used to begin seasoning appropriate responses to this concern in our worship groups.

The following are suggested steps for meetings and individuals which may reduce the devastation of global climate change and move us toward more sustainable lifestyles:

• Engage in collective discernment in our Meetings to understand and adjust to climate change, allowing the Spirit to work among us.
• Reduce personal greenhouse gases in the coming year through decreased driving, flying, and home energy use, and through using efficient alternatives.
• Make conscious selections about food and water use that require fewer resources to produce, package and transport.
• Become a resource—encouraging and learning from others ways to reduce fossil-fuel consumption.
• Discern our personal responsibility for the negative effects of human over-population and over-consumption and be aware of their link to the inequitable sharing of earth’s resources with our own and other species.
• Labor with those shaping public opinion and policy to support care of the earth. From local to state, national, and international levels, advocate measures to protect earth’s resources.
• Through personal participation and public policy, work to promote environmental justice.

As an expression of our belief in nonviolence and the value of each person, Friends have throughout our history sought compassionate and effective answers to social problems.

One of the most problematic federal policies for decades has been the federal government’s failed War on Drugs campaign. Its stated purpose has been to reduce the production, sale, and use of targeted drugs, the abuse of which can be devastating to individuals, families, workplaces, and communities. Yet, criminalization has failed to reduce drug abuse, has created a major illegal drug and secondary crime network, and has filled our prisons and courtrooms with individuals charged with drug-related crimes, whose drug use would be reduced more effectively with a public health model instead of a criminalization model.

We call for the implementation of a public health model as a sustainable and humane way to achieve the goal of reducing drug abuse in the United States. Such a model could utilize a tightly regulated distribution system for listed drugs. In such a system, drugs could be made available at reasonable prices in order to eliminate or reduce property and personal crime by those paying inflated prices from unlawful dealers. Access to drugs could be conditioned on drug counseling and treatment where abuse is indicated. Failure to comply with drug regulations could result in civil proceedings, including civil contempt for willful failure to comply with appropriate orders. With a portion of the resources resulting from reduced prison construction and operation cost, a major public education campaign could be undertaken regarding drug abuse similar to the campaign against tobacco use, along with enhanced treatment and prevention programs, which are now seriously under-funded.

We also call for decriminalization of drug use and possession, though not production or sale, in order to end the injustice, the violence to property and persons, including those who are dually affected by mental illness and drug use, and the ineffective use of resources that are such a large part of our current system of drug control.

We ask Friends in NPYM to reflect on the deep social costs of the “War on Drugs” policy and to join with others, including the Pacific Northwest office of the American Friends Service Committee, in promoting just and compassionate ways for our communities, states, and nation to address the important issue of drug abuse. We also ask that this minute be sent to all Yearly Meetings in the United States, to encourage Friends throughout the country to consider and act on this issue, and that copies of the minute be sent to all of our state and federal legislators.

Background Information and Resources
(1) According to the Interfaith Drug Policy Initiative:
1.5 million people are arrested every year for drug-law violations—75% for possession, not sale or manufacture. 600,000 of these arrests are for possessing marijuana for personal use.

African-Americans comprise nearly 60% of the people in state prisons for drug felonies. Due largely to the War on Drugs, one in three Black men between the ages of 20 and 29 is in prison, on probation, or on parole—even though their drug usage rates are the same as those of other Americans. 14% of Black men have lost their right to vote due to felony convictions.

A majority of women in federal prisons are there for drug law violation; 70% are first-time offenders. Many are incarcerated on “conspiracy” charges, such as taking phone messages for a live-in boyfriend who sells drugs. More than 75% of female prisoners are mothers of small children.

Nearly 40% of the AIDS cases reported in the United States have been linked to illicit drug injection. The US Department of Health and Human Services has determined that needle-exchange programs reduce the spread of HIV without increasing drug use, yet the federal government refuses to fund these programs.

Civil liberties violations and invasion of privacy are a routine part of drug-law enforcement. These include drug dogs, urine tests, phone taps, paid confidential informants, entrapment, curbside garbage searches, military helicopters, infrared heat detectors, no-knock warrants, and stop-and-frisk searches of minorities and young people. Property forfeiture laws allow police to take property without a criminal conviction.

Mandatory minimum prison sentences have removed judicial discretion over sentencing, resulting in excessive sentences for even first-time nonviolent drug offenders.

The Drug Free Student Provision of the federal Higher Education Act, which makes students ineligible for financial aid if they have been convicted of a drug offense, effectively prevents many students from attending school and often forces those affected while in school to leave for lack of funding.

Federal categorizing of marijuana as a Schedule I substance with no known medical value has deprived many seriously-ill people of its use as an effective therapy for some medical conditions, subjecting them to arrest, fines, and imprisonment even where state law allows medical use of marijuana or when it is prescribed or recommended by their physician.

Tens of millions of Americans—including children and adolescents—still use or abuse illegal drugs. The War on Drugs has failed to accomplish its stated goal of a “drug-free America.”

(2) Under a public health model:
There could be a tightly regulated distribution system for listed drugs. In such a system, drugs could be made available at reasonable prices in order to eliminate or reduce property and personal crime by those seeking to pay inflated prices from unlawful dealers. Access to drugs could be conditioned on drug counseling and treatment where abuse is indicated. Failure to comply with drug regulations could result in civil proceedings, including civil contempt for willful failure to comply with appropriate orders. With a portion of the resources resulting from reduced prison construction and operation cost, a major public education campaign could be undertaken regarding drug abuse similar to the campaign against tobacco use, along with enhanced treatment and prevention programs, which are now seriously under-funded.

The excellent King County Bar Association Drug Policy Project Report, below, discusses the public health approach to reducing drug abuse.

(3) Resources for more information:
King County Bar Association Drug Policy Project Report (PDF)
Interfaith Drug Policy Initiative
Drug Policy Alliance
Law Enforcement Against Prohibition