DALLAS DRUG POLICY CONFERENCE REFLECTS NEW FOCUS FOR MOTHERS AGAINST
TEEN VIOLENCE FOUNDER

Joy Strickland realized her vision of a new day for Mothers Against
Teen Violence when the nonprofit sponsored what its leaders said was
the first-ever Texas Conference on Drug Policy last week.

The conference at Fair Park's Hall of State drew national experts who
have studied how drugs affect the body, law enforcement officials who
have witnessed what many say is the failure of drug prohibition laws,
politicians listening to the debate about how to better fight the war
on drugs, and people who have been wounded by drug use or the
violence associated with it.

Strickland, who has spent years organizing parents as founder and
chief executive of Mothers Against Teen Violence, has shifted her
focus to organizing leaders, experts and politicians in efforts to
change national policies regulating drugs.

After hearing her and experts at the conference passionately explain
studies about the link between current drug policies and the violence
surrounding drug abuse, her decision to redirect her energy to policy
issues makes sense.

The former computer programmer and IBM marketing executive briefly
reviewed the much-told story of how her son Chris Lewis and his
friend Kendrick Lott were robbed and murdered in 1993 by two
teenagers involved with drugs and gangs. Lewis was a freshman at
Morehouse College, and Lott was scheduled to attend Morehouse that fall.

The tragedy spurred Strickland to found the nonprofit in 1994. Then
about two years ago, she heard discussions by advocates for drug
policy change and began to see how what happened to Lewis and Lott
might have been prevented if the lucrative drug-trafficking business
were eradicated.

Strickland then attended many drug policy gatherings in other states
and voraciously studied research on the issue. She found a diverse
bunch of advocates - conservatives, liberals, law enforcement
officials, physicians and agency administrators - who argue that
rethinking current policies would save taxpayers' money, improve
public health, and make society safer; partly by deflating the
profits from illegal drug sales.

She soon began efforts to facilitate the first Texas Conference on
Drug Policy, held Jan. 11-13 at Fair Park and sponsored by the
national Drug Policy Alliance and Baylor Health Care System.

Among about 25 conference national speakers and panelists, Maj. Neill
Franklin, executive director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition,
embodied advocates' passion. His voice broke as he spoke of lives
lost during the drug war, and how he has come to oppose how the war is fought.

"It's the violence that brought me to this place," Franklin said of
his transformation. "You may disagree, but you can't tell me that I
don't know what I'm talking about."