Since 2003, DPAN has worked with our local state partners to develop coordinated, effective drug policy reform campaigns in Alabama. We made considerable progress last year on medical marijuana, reforming the state’s harsh drug sentencing and parole statutes, and supporting the restoration of voting rights for people with felony convictions for low-level drug offenses.

In 2009, collaborating with our Alabama state partners, The Ordinary People’s Society (TOPS) and Alabamians for Compassionate Care (ACC), we will continue efforts to establish effective drug policies in the state.

2009 Legislative Agenda

The Alabama New Bottom Line Campaign

As the national partner in the Alabama New Bottom Line Campaign, DPAN is working with our allies at (TOPS) to build a grassroots reform movement and win substantive reforms.

Sentencing Reform – Fixing a Broken System

This year, DPAN seeks to pass legislation that would enact reforms to the state’s probation and parole practices, specifically preventing the re-incarceration of people in the state’s overcrowded prison system for simple technical violations. Currently in Alabama, thousands of people are locked up for years on nonviolent drug offenses, and then must serve parole periods that are often 10 - 15 years long. During that period, if a person violates his or her parole with a technical violation – which is not the commission of a new crime – they end up back in overcrowded prisons. DPAN and TOPS seek to fix this broken system.

Voter Restoration – Protecting and Restoring the Right to Vote

Over 250,000 Alabamians have been stripped of their voting rights due to a felony conviction. Yet, because of a quirk in the state’s constitution, currently those persons who are convicted of simple drug possession offenses never lose their right to vote—even while incarcerated. Nevertheless, many are denied their voting rights outright or are told, incorrectly, that they do not have the right to vote.

The Ordinary People’s Society estimates that over 50,000 people convicted of non-moral turpitude felonies in Alabama have been wrongly denied their right to vote, or believe they do not have that right due to a conviction. Up to an additional 10,000 more people currently incarcerated in Alabama state prisons may also be eligible to vote.

DPAN and TOPS are working to compel Alabama’s State Legislature secure voting rights for people in Alabama, and highlight that people convicted of low-level possession offenses shouldn’t be sent to prison in the first place.

For stories about the historic voting rights tour undertaken by TOPS and DPA, please click here, here and here.  

Compassionate Care and Medical Marijuana

DPA and Alabamians for Compassionate Care (ACC) are supporting the Michael Phillips Compassionate Care Act, legislation that would allow access to doctor-recommended medical marijuana for seriously ill patients in Alabama.  Each year, thousands of Alabamians are diagnosed with cancer, HIV/AIDS, multiple sclerosis and other life threatening and debilitating illnesses. For some of these patients, currently available medications are not effective in reducing terrible symptoms such as nausea, wasting, muscle spasms, and pain. Medical marijuana can ease suffering and improve the quality of life for thousands of Alabamians.
To get involved, please contact project director gabriel sayegh.

gabriel sayegh
Director, State Organizing and Policy Project
Drug Policy Alliance Network
(212) 613-8048
gsayegh@drugpolicy.org

Evan Goldstein
Policy Associate, Organizing and Policy Project
(212) 613-8038
egoldstein@drugpolicy.org