New SSDP chapters starting off strong

SSDP’s new chapters are making waves as they bring drug policy reform to campuses nationwide. In three of our newest groups, activists at American University, Clearwater High School, and UCLA are breaking new ground for SSDP.

American University

American University in D.C. was home to one of SSDP’s founding chapters, but the group had been inactive for several years until this semester.  According to chapter leader Tazewell Jones, who has also served as an intern in SSDP’s D.C. office, the group is starting to make a name for itself on campus again.

“One of the best things that I’ve encountered is not only working with students to reform policies, but just getting to know people. A lot of the students that work with SSDP across the country are some of the brightest I’ve met,” said Jones.

For one of its first projects, the American University chapter brought former AU professor and Drug Policy Foundation founder Arnold S. Trebach to speak at an AU SSDP meeting. Trebach is the author of Fatal Distraction: The War on Drugs in the Age of Islamic Terror. The C-SPAN network was on campus to cover the event.The group also plans to show the film Busted: A Citizen’s Guide to Surviving Police Encounters just before spring break, promoting the event with a “don’t get bused over spring break” message.

Clearwater High

Students at Clearwater High School in Clearwater, Florida have been fighting an uphill battle to establish an SSDP chapter since last summer.

“Our principal initially told me that I couldn’t set up on campus, and had to be convinced otherwise with a ton of help from the D.C. office,” said Devon DeFazio.

Since then, he has set up an account with the school bookkeeper in order to pay a stipend for a faculty sponsor. Once the chapter is up and running, the students plan to gather drug policy reform books and materials for the school library. Because of the chapter’s struggle to be approved in a public high school, the group was discussed in SSDP’s Friend of the Court brief filed in a high profile Supreme Court case (see BH4J story).

UCLA

In stark contrast to some chapters’ struggle for faculty support, the University of California-Los Angeles chapter is fortunate enough to have the mentorship of drug policy expert and public policy professor Mark Kleiman.

With the help of students Daniel Walter, Matt Nazareth, and Eric Gorin-Regan, Kleiman recently started a drug policy news aggregator called “The Drug Update” (www.thedrugupdate.com). Ready to learn more about drug policy, these students later took Kleiman’s popular course “Drug Abuse Control Policies.”

“The three of us quickly enrolled and eagerly absorbed the curriculum of current drug policies, their many faults, and the pros and cons of possible alternatives,” said Daniel Walter. The same three students later started UCLA’s SSDP chapter.

The chapter’s goals so far include a safe drug use pamphlet to distribute to freshmen, a community outreach program with counseling and needle exchange on Los Angeles’ skid row, and a drug policy lecture series.

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