"The War on Women"

With more than 2 million Americans in jail, a growing number of them women, four advocates yesterday pointed to the criminal justice system’s “prejudiced” and “insensitive” drug policy as the culprit in a panel at Stamp Student Union last night.

Since the 1990s, with the introduction of conspiracy law — which allow the government to prosecute individuals for their associations with drug offenders — the number of women in prison has skyrocketed. Women, who often are not directly involved in drug deals, are especially vulnerable to the laws, representatives from the Drug Policy Alliance, Americans for Safe Access and the Sentencing Project said.

“Women are held under the full weight of the crime, even if they haven’t seen, touched or distributed [drugs],” Drug Policy Alliance representative Jasmine Tyler said. “She answers the phone, uses the money to pay the bills, she may have went shopping.”

The panel said conspiracy laws, along with other drug policies, can result in girlfriends facing longer sentences than their drug king boyfriends, mothers losing custody of their children, low income families losing housing and welfare and a staggering amount of broken families.

“Women and youth are the new populations that are being targeted,” Tyler said. “The men are gone and the rate of women in jail is skyrocketing. This is the next population to exploit.”

While the rate of female drug use has declined since the mid-1980s, the number of women in prison for drug-related convictions has risen by 800 percent, said Nicole Porter of the Sentencing Project, a criminal justice system research and advocacy group.

“Even after they leave prison, the war on drugs continues to affect the women who were in jail,” Porter added.

Drug offenders can be banned for life from access to public assistance resources such as housing, food stamps and cash assistance depending on the state. With drug convictions slanted primarily toward low-income women and those who are single parents, denying access to these programs can make life after incarceration substantially harder for women, panel members said.

“It doesn’t even have to be your own criminal offense to get you removed from housing assistance,” Tyler said. “If your husband, son or any family member has a drug offense in their past then the whole family can be refused housing if that member is listed as living in the house.”

This has contributed to an “epidemic” of homeless men whose mothers, girlfriends and other family members want them to move in but cannot because of the possibility of being denied housing, Tyler added.

The panel also discussed how drug policies affect women’s use of medical marijuana. Many women, fearful of losing their children, may choose not to use medical marijuana even though more women than men are diagnosed with diseases — such as multiple sclerosis — that marijuana is usually prescribed for, said Caren Woodson with  Americans for Safe Access, a medical marijuana advocacy group.

“State child protective service agencies [in California] have used the fact that women use medical marijuana as a reason to take away their children,”  Woodson said.

Irina Alexander, president of the university’s Students for Sensible Drug Policy chapter, said she thought most students were unaware of the impact of drug policies on women.

“I didn’t realize how the drug war affected women,” she said. “Our society is so male-dominated that we don’t see their perspective in a lot of issues. It is really important that we humanize this issue and open people’s eyes to this problem.”

SSDP co-hosted the event with NORML, Feminism Without Borders, Terps for Choice and Community Roots.

ndesmarattes@umdbk.com