Impact of U.S. Drug Policy on the Human Rights of Women Within the United States

Submitted to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women under the Communications Procedure by Students for Sensible Drug Policy, August 1, 2025 

Introduction

The global “War on Drugs” has served as a mechanism for systemic oppression, disproportionately harming marginalized populations while reinforcing entrenched racial, gender, and economic hierarchies. Its devastating impacts are acutely felt by women—especially women of color, mothers, and those of reproductive age—whose lives are increasingly criminalized at the intersection of drug control and reproductive regulation.

In the United States, as drug policy converges with increasingly regressive legal frameworks that seek to restrict bodily autonomy, it becomes clear that the criminalization of substance use is also a means to surveil, punish, and control women’s reproductive health and decision-making.

This brief highlights some of the human rights violations, as defined by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, faced by women in the United States as a result of both the War on Drugs and attacks on reproductive autonomy. Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP) urges the international community to recognize this dual harm and pursue policies grounded in compassion, evidence, and human rights.

The War on Drugs Is a War On Women

The War on Drugs has long been a vehicle for systemic oppression, disproportionately impacting marginalized communities and reinforcing existing power structures. Nowhere is this more evident than in its devastating effects on women, particularly women of color, mothers, and those of reproductive age. 

Rising Arrest Rates and Incarceration of Women 

_{UDHR Violations: Article 1, Article 2, Article 7, Article 9, Article 10}

The number of incarcerated women in the United States has increased by close to 600% since 1980—a surge primarily driven by drug-related charges. Most are nonviolent offenders. Notably, while there are many more men in prison than women, the rate of growth for female imprisonment has been twice as high as that of men since former President Ronald Reagan declared a War on Drugs. 

The War on Drugs has dramatically raised rates of arrest, disproportionately incarcerating women, particularly Black, Indigenous, and Latina women. These women are often charged with low-level drug offenses, facing harsh sentencing laws and limited access to diversion or treatment. Racial disparities persist throughout drug law enforcement, with women of color experiencing heightened surveillance and harsher sentencing, and despite similar rates of use across races, Black women are exponentially more likely to be arrested and incarcerated for drug-related offenses than white women. 

Exposure to Gender-Based Violence

_{UDHR Violations: Article 3, Article 5, Article 7}

Women impacted by the criminal legal system are also uniquely vulnerable to gender-based violence, including sexual assault by law enforcement officers and while incarcerated. These traumatic experiences compound existing trauma histories and exacerbate mental health challenges.

Longterm Impacts of Incarceration

_{UDHR Violations: Article 2, Article 22, Article 23, Article 25}

Once entangled in the criminal legal system, women face a cascade of barriers. A criminal record severely limits access to housing and employment—conditions essential for post-release reintegration and family preservation. Punitive welfare and housing policies deny benefits to women with drug convictions, locking women and their families into cycles of poverty and further destabilizing their lives.

Coercive Drug Court and Diversion Programs

_{UDHR Violations: Article 2, Article 3, Article 5, Article 6, Article 25}

Drug courts and diversion programs, often framed as alternatives to incarceration, frequently operate under coercive conditions. Women may be forced into treatment programs under threat of incarceration or child removal, without informed consent and without a proper assessment of their needs, particularly when they do not meet clinical criteria for substance use disorders, as is often the case with women who use cannabis either medically or as part of responsible adult use. 

Women also face inadequate access to gender-responsive treatment, including trauma-informed care, reproductive health services, and childcare necessary for treatment to occur. 

Reproductive Control and Loss of Parental Rights

_{UDHR Violations: Article 1, Article 5, Article 7, Article 12, Article 16}

The loss of parental rights is another common consequence, disproportionately affecting women of color and further fracturing families. Drug use is often used to justify removal of children from mothers, even without evidence of harm to the child, and mothers who use or are merely suspected of using drugs are more likely to have their children placed in foster care.

In some jurisdictions, women have been offered reduced sentences or child custody rights in exchange for sterilization or long-acting contraception. And, while in custody, women may face severe violations of bodily autonomy, including involuntary sterilization and denial of reproductive healthcare.

The Reproductive Justice Intersection

With the reversal of Roe v. Wade and other attacks on reproductive autonomy throughout the United States, all women of reproductive age increasingly exist in a dystopian state of “pre-pregnancy” in the eyes of the law—even if they have no current desire to bear children.

A Changing Legal Landscape

_{UDHR Violations: Article 3, Article 12, Article 25}

In 38 states, “fetal assault” laws define an embryo or fetus as being the potential victim of a crime, and in most of those states, these laws may be applied to pregnant women with regards to their own pregnancies. In 23 states, these laws apply from the moment of fertilization—weeks before a missed period or positive pregnancy test and well before a woman has any way of knowing she is pregnant. These laws grant fetuses full legal status, allowing prosecutors to charge pregnant individuals with crimes against their unborn children—often based on substance use or merely being suspected of it.

Drug Testing in Pregnancy and Shortly After Birth

_{UDHR Violations: Article 3, Article 12, Article 25}

Since the 1980s, U.S. hospitals have been both openly and secretly drug-testing mothers, at times arresting still-bleeding women barely out of labor on trumped up charges that later prove to be the result of a false positive. Pregnant women suspected of drug use—disproportionately Black and low-income patients—are subjected to intrusive and punitive state interventions, often triggered by non-consensual neonatal testing. A positive test result can trigger child welfare investigations, family separation, forced treatment, arrest, and incarceration—even without evidence of harm to the newborn or fetus. Over 1,300 women in the U.S. were arrested between 2006 and 2020 for alleged prenatal drug use, often charged with child abuse or fetal endangerment.

The War on Cannabis: A Case Study in Reproductive Oppression

_{UDHR Violations: Article 7, Article 12, Article 25}

Cannabis criminalization has become a particularly insidious mechanism of reproductive control. In many U.S. states, women who legally use medical marijuana—sometimes with physician supervision—face arrest and loss of custody. This remains true even when cannabis use predates knowledge of pregnancy or even conception, and in states with active personhood laws, these women may be charged with child endangerment, effectively punishing them for seeking healthcare.

In a cruel legal paradox, women accused of cannabis use during pregnancy are often required to attend treatment programs to avoid incarceration or regain custody, yet are denied admission for lack of diagnostic addiction criteria. This systemic contradiction reveals the punitive, rather than therapeutic, motives of such policies.

The Controlled Substances Act as a Tool for Reproductive Control

The Controlled Substances Act (CSA), a federal drug classification statute, has been increasingly weaponized against reproductive autonomy. The CSA’s rigid scheduling system fails to account for contextual medical need, creating an environment of fear and criminalization, and women have faced charges for acessing legally prescribed medications categorized under the CSA, even when doing so under medical supervision.

The Use of State Controlled Substances Acts to Criminalize Mifepristone and Misoprostol

_{UDHR Violations: Article 7, Article 12, Article 25}

U.S. states are increasingly attempting to ban or criminalize access to mifepristone and misoprostol—which though commonly understood as abortion medications have a variety of accepted medical uses, including in the healthy delivery of full term pregnancies—by reclassifying them as controlled substances under state drug laws, despite their legal approval by the FDA.

In 2024, Louisiana classified mifepristone and misoprostol as Schedule IV controlled substances, effectively criminalizing medications essential for abortion, miscarriage management, and other reproductive healthcare, and exposing pregnant women to felony charges for possessing medications prescribed by their doctors. There are now similar efforts to criminalize use of these medications at the federal level as well. 

Conclusion

The War on Drugs and the rollback of reproductive rights are not separate battles—they are interconnected strategies of social control targeting marginalized bodies, particularly those of women. Reproductive justice demands the right to parent or not parent in safe, sustainable conditions, free from criminalization and state coercion. Drug policy reform must be part of this agenda.

Together, by centering care and human dignity, we can build systems that protect—not punish—those most vulnerable.

We must end the criminalization of pregnancy and substance use, dismantle coercive and punitive drug policies, and resist the use of drug laws to erode reproductive autonomy.

We call on Member States of the United Nations to:

• End the criminalization of pregnancy and substance use.
  
• Prohibit non-consensual neonatal drug testing and coerced treatment.
  
• Ensure access to comprehensive, gender-responsive healthcare and harm reduction services.
  
• Prevent the use of drug laws—especially the CSA—to restrict reproductive freedom.

The fight for drug policy reform is inseparable from the fight for reproductive justice. By advancing this intersectional agenda, we move closer to a world where all women are free to make decisions about their bodies and their futures without fear of state violence or control.

About Students for Sensible Drug Policy

Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP) is the largest youth-led network dedicated to ending the War on Drugs. Since 1998, SSDP has mobilized and empowered tens of thousands of young people around the world to participate in the political process and brings young people of all political and ideological orientations together to have honest conversations about drugs and drug policy. While we focus primarily on policies that directly harm students and youth, the War on Drugs has impacted all communities, and SSDP will continue the fight until everyone is treated with fairness, dignity, and compassion.

SSDP is a U.S.-based NGO which has held consultative status with the UN ECOSOC since 2011.