Tara Stacy

ITHACA -- In his most recent State of the City address, Ithaca Mayor Svante Myrick announced for the first time the existence of a committee that he had been working with for the past seven months to create a new drug policy for the city of Ithaca.

 

In his speech, the mayor said he believes that the war on drugs has been ineffective in cities throughout the country, Ithaca included. He said that drug abuse has continued to thrive, and has led to overdoses, crime, racial disparity and mass incarcerations.

 

Myrick said his goal in forming the Municipal Drug Policy Committee was to create a new drug policy for the community based on results of other drug policies across the country. The committee is organized into four pillars: prevention, treatment, harm reduction, and law enforcement.

 

Ithaca’s Police Department would fall under the law enforcement pillar of the committee, and their current approach to drugs will be reformed in the policy.

 

The mayor has also been working with the Drug Policy Alliance, a national organization that helps cities to create drug policies. On Feb. 16, under the recommendation of the DPA, the committee held a public screening, at Cinemapolis, of the movie The House I Live In, a documentary about the war on drugs. In the days following the screening, several focus groups were held to get community input on drug policy in the city.

 

Andrew Taylor, a substance use outreach specialist at Southern Tier AIDS Program and a member of the treatment pillar group, said that a lot of the feedback he was getting from users in the community was that there was a lack of services.

 

“About a year after I began speaking with the mayor’s office about lack of services, there were several high profile overdoses, where people died here in the city and the mayor had a call to action,” said Taylor.

 

Taylor said that the pillars all have a list of two or three recommendations that the committee will put together into one policy for the mayor by April. He said that his pillar’s biggest recommendation is for a crisis center and a detox center in the city.

 

“Currently, a person who is addicted to a drug that needs detox before receiving treatment will have to go to Syracuse, Elmira or Binghamton,” Taylor stated. “We feel that they should be able to get that service here in town.”

 

The Mayor’s Chief of Staff Kevin Sutherland stated that although a lot of drug policy has to be

approved at the state or federal level, the mayor has asked the committee to form an action

plan that he can institute in the city.

 

“The mayor believes that our approach to drugs right now doesn’t work,” said Sutherland. “It

is putting individuals behind bars in an unfair and unjust way.”

 

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 11.7 million people were incarcerated in 2013

nationwide, and according to the Vera Institute of Justice, 62% of those people are

unconvicted and are therefore legally presumed innocent.

 

Sutherland said that the mayor is looking at a grant opportunity from the MacArthur

Foundation called the Safety and Justice Challenge. The MacArthur Foundation is funding the

challenge to change the way the country thinks about jails and hopefully to lower the

incarceration rate in the country.

 

The Safety and Justice Challenge will give 20 jurisdictions nationwide $150,000 and provide

consultation for a six-month planning period. Ten of these jurisdictions will then be selected

for another round of funding annually to support their plans over two years.

 

Sutherland stated that the mayor’s office is looking at the grant, and feels that it could be

beneficial for the city. The mayor has stated on multiple occasions that he feels that the war

on drugs has led to unnecessary mass incarceration.