Campaigns
SSDP was founded around the issue of the drug provision in the 1998 reauthorization of the Higher Education Act of 1965 which denies federal financial aid to students with marijuana or other drug convictions. The HEA has been criticized for disproportionately affecting minorities, working-class, and disabled students. Since then, the organization has expanded its scope to include other elements of drug policy like drug testing and student marijuana privacy rights, promoting rehabilitation over incarceration for charges related to marijuana and psychedelics, harm reduction, opposing the ineffective anti-drug media campaign, and addressing the lack of objective drug education and scientific research. SSDP's chapters also work on the campus level to oppose prohibitionist drug policies and replace them with sensible alternatives, as part of the Campus Change Campaign.
In addition to working on issues that primarily affect students, many of SSDP's chapters work on local and state-level campaigns such as marijuana deprioritization,, marijuana decriminalization, marijuana legalization, reinstating voting rights to felons convicted of marijuana charges,, promotion and celebration of the benefits of marijuana use, and medical marijuana. Chapters are also known to hold day-long festivals to promote their cause on campus, with excellent results.
Students for Sensible Drug Policy also wrote an amicus curiae brief for the Supreme Court case Morse v. Frederick.
Read more about this topic: Students For Sensible Drug Policy
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“That food has always been, and will continue to be, the basis for one of our greater snobbisms does not explain the fact that the attitude toward the food choice of others is becoming more and more heatedly exclusive until it may well turn into one of those forms of bigotry against which gallant little committees are constantly planning campaigns in the cause of justice and decency.”
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