A small group of mothers gathered Sunday on the steps of the Los Angeles Superior Courthouse to protest against the war on drugs.

“Mothers throughout history have come forward for the sake of their children,” Gretchen Burns Bergman, executive director of Parents for Addiction Treatment and Healing (PATH), told Reason TV. “We’re coming forth saying that the drug war has been more damaging to our families than the drugs themselves.”

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The group Moms United to End the War on Drugs believes that U.S. drug policy has been more damaging to families than the drugs themselves. Bergman’s two sons have both struggled with heroin addiction and repeated incarceration, according to a press release.

“Mothers have typically been the ones that nurture and protect their children,” Bergman added. “So mothers really need to step forward, because our families and our children are being arrested, are dying in epidemic proportions because of punitive prohibition policy.”

Watch video, courtesy of Reason TV, below: