Bethany Baptist Church - Newark, NJ

We believe that all our drug policies must continually be examined for both the positive and negative impacts they have on the public's safety and health. We are guided by four principles:

The war on drugs has failed and it is time for a new approach to drug policy.
Effective drug policy balances prevention, harm reduction, treatment and public safety.
Alcohol and other drug use is fundamentally a health issue and must be addressed as such.
Drug policies must be based on science, compassion, health and human rights.

New Directions New Jersey will seek to build the mutual understanding and shared courses of action necessary to advance more effective proposals for addressing substance use and its associated harms. This conversation will be informed by speakers from across the globe and around the country.

Speakers Include:

The Rev. Dr. M. William Howard, Jr.,
Pastor, Bethany Baptist Church

Ethan Nadelmann, JD, PhD, Executive Director, Drug Policy Alliance

Carl Hart, PhD, Associate Professor of Psychology in both the Departments
of Psychiatry and Psychology at Columbia University, and Director of the Residential Studies and Methamphetamine
Research Laboratories at the New York State Psychiatric Institute

David L. Nathan, MD, Clinical Associate Professor, Robert Wood Johnson Medical School Director of Continuing Medical Education, Princeton HealthCare System

Daliah Heller, PhD, MPH, Assistant
Commissioner, Bureau of Alcohol &
Drug Use Prevention, Care & Treatment, New York City Department of Health and
Mental Hygiene
Hiawatha Collins, Leader VOCAL-NY Users Union

Todd R. Clear, Dean, School of Criminal Justice, Rutgers University

Bruce Stout, Associate Professor of Criminology, The College of New Jersey

Garry F. McCarthy, Police Director,
City of Newark

David M. Kennedy, Director, Center for Crime Prevention and Control, John Jay College of Criminal Justice

Michelle Alexander, Esq., Author, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

Donald MacPherson, former Drug Policy Coordinator for the City of Vancouver

Professor Alex Stevens, Professor of Criminal Justice; School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research;
University of Kent; Chatham, UK

Nuno Capaz, Sociologist, Instituto da Droga e da Toxicodepência, Portugal

asha dandele, Director, Advocacy Grants Program, Drug Policy Alliance

Dr. Stephanie Bush-Baskette, Esq., Author and Director of the Joseph C. Cornwall Center for Metropolitan Studies at Rutgers University

Deborah Peterson Small, Esq.,
Executive Director, Break the Chains: Communities of Color & the War on Drugs

Alice A. Huffman, California State
NAACP President

Beny J. Primm, MD, Executive Director, Addiction Research and Treatment
Corporation. Brooklyn, New York

David H. Kerr, Founder and President
of Integrity House

Robert G. Newman, MD, Director, Baron Edmond de Rothschild Chemical
Dependency Institute, Beth Israel Medical Center, NYC

Timothy Christie, PhD, Regional Director, Ethics Services, Horizon Health Network, Saint John Regional Hospital, Canada

Joyce Rivera, Founder and Executive Director of St. Ann's Corner of Harm Reduction, New York

Cornell William Brooks, Esq.,
Executive Director, New Jersey Institute for Social Justice