Plunder, Profit, & Punishment: Drug War Profiteers | S1: Profiting from Treatment & Recovery

The war on drugs is immensely profitable - for some entities - and in order to successfully end the drug war and its associated harms we have to follow the money to see who’s benefiting from systematically punitive responses. The accounting of the drug war typically focuses on the expenditures of systems and institutions in terms of enforcing drug prohibition. In this series, we will shift from tracing institutional funding and delve into a people-centered accounting of the drug war. We will explore how private and public companies, agencies, and organizations profit from the drug war, extract money and resources from people, and plunder entire communities - often targeting those who are already navigating financial precarity. We’ll expose malfeasance across different systems - including treatment and recovery, housing, healthcare, and family policing - to ultimately develop strategies to curb the influence of drug war profiteers.
Session 1 of the series (Plunder, Profit, and Punishment: Exposing and Addressing Drug War Profiteers) explored how the treatment and recovery industries profit from the drug war and how profit motives shape services and policy. This session covered the profit centers within the drug treatment and rehab landscape and how profit-driven policies impact client care. We also examined the ways in which racial capitalism intersects with criminalization to replicate and entrench racism and white supremacy in ways that create very different treatment options and access segmented by race and class.
Speakers:
Tamara Beetham
Aaron Ferguson
Nabarun Dasgupta
Tracie Gardner
Moderator:
Jules Netherland
Recorded: May 15, 2024
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The Drug Policy Alliance is building a world without the drug war where people who use drugs are supported, not punished. We’re building a world where drug policy is grounded in evidence, health, equity, and human rights. Join us: drugpolicy.org/ .
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[@JosephWilliams-sy9uh]

Thanks everyonne

[@theBarkingshark]

We need freedom, not treatment