For more than a century, The United States of America has been engaged in an active conflict against it's own citizens: the war on drugs. Across every facet of American life, people suffering from addiction have been punished. This has most clearly manifested in the criminalization of drug use, an effort that has cost Americans over one trillion dollars. This has directly lead to the incarceration of tens of millions of Americans for drug crime, disproportionally Black people and others from marginalized identity groups. And the results? Drug activity is still pervasive across American society, millions have had their lives decimated by the criminal justice system (and the stigma that goes with it), and, most damningly, more and more dead Americans from drug overdose. In 2020, that number was 81,000. Yet this is only the explicit side of the picture.

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Implicitly, the American narrative towards drug users is one that sees them as a blight upon society, less than their fellow humans. It was thus our society has created and upheld - actively continues to uphold - one of the most dehumanizing and unjust initiatives towards our human kin for nearly half a century. Past, present, and future, Americans with addiction have had their plight subject to legal, ethical, and moral discrimination. They have been ostracized from the 'land of opportunity', unaided in their struggle and jailed and/or killed. 

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Our mission is to pull back the narrative around addiction and drug use in The United States of America to combat an uncompassionate narrative and history, one that has resulted in immeasurable pain and suffering in our nation. We hope that through our mission we can humanize addiction, and motivate Americans to help change the country by enacting humanistic and effective drug policy that ends our fight against ourselves.