Students for Sensible Drug Policy is enraged and disturbed over the decision made by the grand jury in the murder of Breonna Taylor to indict just one out of three officers involved with charges that were unrelated to her death. However, we are not surprised. The system that killed Breonna Taylor refuses to hold itself accountable time and time again. Breonna Taylor’s life was taken from her by the Louisville Metro Police Department and the United States’ brutalizing War on Drugs. 

The deadly and racist War on Drugs continues to devastatingly impact communities of color across the United States and marginalized people across the world. “No-knock warrants” in the United States were increasingly utilized during the Nixon administration, along with mandatory sentencing, as a method of racial targeting. These warrants have been used to target people who use and sell drugs and criminalize communities of color, allowing law enforcement to forcibly entire homes without announcement. This is hardly the first “no-knock warrant” that has resulted in murder. In many cases of “no-knocks” or “quick-knocks”, like that of Breonna Taylor, no drugs are even found at the residence or information is completely left out of police reports.

Breonna Taylor deserved more. Black, Indigenous, and other people of color in this country and globally deserve more. SSDP commits to our mission of ending the War on Drugs and to promote policy change based on justice, liberty, compassion, and reason. Justice is long past due in a country built on stolen Indigenous land and built by the enslaved that has resulted in the injustice of locking humans away as a form of social control.  

The War on Drugs is a War on Us.

Photo by Maria Oswalt via Unsplash.