In April '93, in the United States, a group of experienced and prominent citizens met at the Hoover Institution on the Campus of Stanford University and signed a resolution asking President Clinton and the Congress to halt the war on drugs and to form a commission to recommend new approaches directed at reducing the harm the policies are causing.

Among those who attended the meeting and signed this Resolution were:

Dr. Milton Friedman, Nobel prize-winning Professor (Emeritus) of Economics at the University of Chicago and Hoover Institution Senior Research Fellow, Stanford University;

Joseph D. McNamara, former Chief of Police of San Jose, California and Hoover Institution Research Fellow, Stanford University;

James P.Gray, Judge of the Superior Court in Santa Ana, California;

Dr.Herbert Berger of Staten Island, New York, originator of the first methadone program in England;

Dr.& Mrs. S.Clarke Smith, physician and surgeon in Anaheim, California;

Dr.Frederick H.Meyers of the Department of Pharmacology, University of California, San Francisco;

Reverends Leonard B.Jackson and J.D.Moore of the first A.M.E. Church of Los Angeles;

Dr.Gary R. Davis, psychiatrist in Citrus Heights, California;

Howard Lavine of the Office of Kurt L. Schmoke, Mayor of the City of Baltimore;

Dr.Stephen A.Fisher, Psychiatrist in Berkely, California;

Dr.Benson B.Roe, Professor and Chief Emeritus in cardiothoracic surgery at the University of California, San Francisco;

Richard F. Arthur, former pricipal of Castlemont High School in Oakland, California;

Clifford A.Schaffer of Canyon Country, California;

Dr.John J. McCarty, psychiatrist in Sacramento, California;

Richard Gibb Martin of Gardena, California and

Dr.Harvey L. Rose, family practice in Carmichael, California;

R.Hon. Kurt Schmoke, Mayor of the city of Baltimore.

RESOLUTION TO STOP THE WAR ON DRUGS

WHEREAS, the overall situation regarding the use of drugs in our society and the crime and misery that accompanies it has continued to deteriorate for several decades; and

WHEREAS, our society has continued to attempt at enormous financial cost and loss of civil liberties, to resolve drug problems through the criminal justice system, with the accompanying increases of prisons and numbers of inmates; and

WHEREAS, the huge untaxed revenues generated by the illicit drug trade are undermining legitimate governments world-wide, and

WHEREAS, the present system has spawned a cycle of hostility by the incarceration of disproportionate numbers of African-Americans, Hispanics, and other minority groups; and

WHEREAS, the number of people who have contracted AIDS, hepatitis, and other diseases from contaminated hypodermic needles is epidemic under our present system; and

WHEREAS, in our society's zeal to pursue our criminal approach, legitimate medical uses for the relief of pain and suffering of patients have been suppressed.

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that our society must recognize drug use and abuse as the medical and social problems that they are and that they must be treated with medical and social solutions; and

FURTHER BE IT RESOLVED that an objective commission be immediately impowered by the President and by Congress to recommend revisions of the drug laws of the United States in order to reduce the harm our current policies are causing.