This Tuesday, March 5th Governor Murphy will give his Fiscal Year 2020 Budget Address before both houses of the New Jersey State Legislature. Governor Murphy will most assuredly speak about the escalating overdose crisis in his budget address.
It is past time that advocates confront our leaders when they speak about how the drug war is killing our families and our communities yet continue to ignore proven reform solutions which have greatly reduced overdoses.
There is no need for another 3,118 people to die of preventable overdoses in New Jersey, not when jurisdictions like Portugal have led the way and shown us that overdose can be nearly eliminated.
Almost twenty years ago, Portugal decriminalized all drugs in the midst of their own heroin epidemic and opted to promote harm reduction. Now they have less drug use, less drug-related HIV and in 2016 they only had 27 fatal overdoses. This is despite the fact that Portugal has nearly one million more people than New Jersey. Compare that with New Jersey which continually suffers escalating overdoses in the thousands under its criminalization model.
Join us at the New Jersey State House located at 125 W State St, Trenton, NJ 08608 outside of the General Assembly Chambers at 12:30 p.m. We will bring the message to our leaders that we cannot afford to fund the drug war and ignore the positive results of drug decriminalization and harm reduction any longer.
RSVP to: Info@HelpNotHandcuffs.org |