Drug Reform Pioneer Arnold Trebach Dies, Dems Reject Marijuana Legalization in Party Platform, More… (7/28/20)

A new poll suggests the New Jersey marijuana legalization initiative is headed for victory in November, drug reform pioneer Arnold Trebach had died, and more.

Marijuana Policy

Democratic Party Delegates Reject Marijuana Legalization Amendment to 2020 Party Platform. The Democratic National Committee platform committee on Monday rejected an amendment calling for marijuana legalization. The vote was 106-50. Instead the committee chose to stick with marijuana law reform language adopted in a draft platform last week. That language calls for decriminalizing marijuana possession, expungement of prior convictions, federal rescheduling through executive action, legalizing medical cannabis and allowing states to set their own laws.

New Jersey Poll Has Strong Support for Marijuana Legalization. A new poll conducted by DKC Analytics found 68% support for marijuana legalization via the ballot box in November. That's up from the 61% support the notion had in a Monmouth University poll in April. The ballot question will ask voters in November if they think the state should legalize marijuana and apply the state sales tax to purchases.

Drug Policy

Drug Policy Reform Giant Arnold Trebach Dead at 92. The American drug reform movement has lost one of its pioneers. Arnold Trebach, who died last week at the age of 92, founded the Drug Policy Foundation in 1986, deep in the middle of Ronald Reagan's war on drugs. That foundation has since morphed into the Drug Policy Alliance, the most powerful drug reform organization in the country. As a professor at American University, Trebach took what was then a lonely and courageous stance against drug prohibition and the excesses of drug war and helped launch it toward the mainstream. His 1987 book, The Great Drug War, was a forthright broadside against prohibitionist orthodoxy that laid out the adverse consequences of trying to control the way people chose to alter their consciousness, from mass incarceration to widespread drug testing and humiliating border searches to coercive "drug treatment" centers and beyond. Although he didn't outright call for an end to drug prohibition until the second edition of his book in 2005, his pioneering work laid the intellectual groundwork of the anti-prohibitionist movements that have made such progress in this century. Arnold Trebach was not only a giant of drug reform; he was a friend to us at StoptheDrugWar.org. He will be missed.