Christina Dent is a mother of three and the founder and president of End It for Good, a conservative non-profit that invites people to consider alternatives to our criminal justice approach to drugs and drug use. These alternatives range from ending criminal penalties for drug possession to legal regulation of substances, all with a Kingdom-focused goal of less societal harm.
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Key Questions for Christina Dent
-How did becoming a foster parent change your view on the War on Drugs?
-You contend that the vast majority of harm that comes from drugs is from criminalizing drugs, not the drugs themselves. Why do you believe that?
-What do you say to the idea that as soon as you decriminalize drugs, you are condoning their use?
-What is the responsibility of church leaders in the efforts to help the U.S.’s drug problem?
Key Quotes from Christina Dent
“My story is not a radically changed lifestyle. It’s really a radically changed mind.”
“I thought a mom who used drugs when she was pregnant must not love her child…[but] I just saw this mother who loved her son just as much as I loved my three sons, this fierce love, this desperate desire to do the right thing, to be there for him, to be a good mom, even though she was struggling with this addiction.”
“The United States has by far the highest incarceration rate in the world.”
“Even if I think drugs aren’t good and even if I think drug use isn’t good, is outlawing, criminalizing the right thing to do? Is the criminal justice system the right tool to be using for this issue?”
“How we handle drugs is about how we handle people.”
“I started to see this pattern in the kinds of harm that I was coming across and learning about….One kind of harm from drugs comes from the harm that substances can do themselves by putting them in our bodies. The other kind of harm comes from what happens when you criminalize a substance.”
“We are not fighting crime by prohibiting drugs. We’re actually funding it.”
