Christina Dent, founder of End it for Good, a non-profit dedicated to ending the "War on Drugs", spoke to the Rotary Club of North Jackson at the Club’s March 26, 2019, meeting. Ms. Dent is the daughter-in-law of Club member Tommy Dent and the wife of former Club member Thomas Dent who spoke to the Club earlier in March about Child Protective Services. She is also the mother of three children and is a self-professed Conservative Christian. She graduated from Belhaven University with a degree in Bible Studies.
The essence of her talk is that the “War on Drugs” being conducted by our country is a dismal failure like its predecessor action the passage of the Prohibition of Alcohol. She said that she came to this conclusion only after extensively studying the results of the "War on Drugs." She began that study as a strong proponent of the "War on Drugs", but her position was changed as a result of those studies.
Both prohibitions have only succeeded in lowering the quality of the products they have made illegal and made both consumers and vendors of the products criminals. She cited the experience of Portugal which eliminated the criminalization of drug use. The result was a significant reduction in deaths due to drug use and in the use of the drugs and in drug-related crimes. Both injection drug use and addiction decreased significantly. In addition, the decriminalization of drugs in Portugal resulted in 6 drug overdose deaths per million people compared to 185 drug overdose deaths per million in the US.
Additionally, Portugal has been able to reduce its enforcement effort to the point that 90% of the cost is now focused on treatment and prevention compared with the US where 90% of the cost is in enforcement and 10% is for treatment and prevention.
Ms. Dent presented a Vicious Circle that exists in the US now where drug use leads to incarceration, disconnection from family and society, and ultimately to lifelong employment difficulty and a traumatic life. She cited the figures that Mississippi now has 3807 nonviolent offenders imprisoned at an annual cost of $68 million annually. Her bottom line was that if she wanted to design a system to keep addiction going on a massive scale, she would design the present War on Drugs.
We thank Ms. Dent for her presentation and for her work on behalf of Mississippi. She is shown in the following photo with her father-in-law Club member Tommy Dent and Club President Anna Powers (right).
