As lead co-sponsor of the Marihuana Regulation and Taxation Act (MRTA), which just celebrated its five year anniversary, Majority Leader Peoples-Stokes championed groundbreaking marijuana legalization that prioritized community repair and reinvestment.
Rescheduling marijuana to Schedule III would boost corporate profits and could expand some research, but would maintain criminalization, harmful enforcement, and barriers to health and safety.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported a 27% decrease in overdose deaths in 2024. This is a hopeful sign, but the House of Representatives just moved forward with deep cuts to Medicaid—the largest payer of substance use disorder treatment in the country.
On May 8th 2025, more than 700 families with loved ones lost to overdose released an open letter to President Trump and Congress urging them to embrace lifesaving health responses to the overdose crisis and reject punitive policies.
This bill permanently classifies all fentanyl-related substances (FRS) as Schedule I without testing for medical benefits, blocking research that could lead to new overdose treatments. It also entrenches and expands mandatory minimums, imposing harsh penalties that do not consider individual circumstances, while diverting resources from health solutions for fentanyl to criminalization.
Leading advocacy organizations detail the Hochul administration mismanagement and present roadmap for fixing cannabis law implementation.
The U.S. House of Representatives passed the Halt Fentanyl Act. This counterproductive bill would permanently schedule all fentanyl-related substances as Schedule I, blocking potential health research and creating new mandatory minimum sentences for fentanyl-related substances.
Today, President Biden demonstrated to Americans that justice delayed doesn’t have to mean injustice forever. These 2,500 individuals faced years, in many cases decades, of imprisonment because of the deeply flawed, racist, and draconian drug laws that politicians continue to perpetuate to this day.
After many years, overdose deaths are finally going down because of public health solutions. Dr. Sheila Vakharia, DPA’s deputy director of Research and Academic Engagement, has been researching recent drops in overdose deaths. We sat down with her to learn more, including what we and our elected leaders can do to save lives.
President Biden’s historic actions today acknowledge what Americans have long known: that our country’s practice of doling out lengthy prison sentences to people for drug offenses has put lives at risk, broken families apart, and wasted billions of dollars.
