Sen. Rand
Paul (R-Ky.) addresses drug policy in an
interview with CNN's Jonathan Karl:
The legalization of marijuana is another issue that Paul points
to as a way for the GOP to reach more young voters.
Paul himself does not favor legalizing marijuana, but he says
individual states—such as Washington and Colorado, which both voted
to legalize in November—should be allowed to make marijuana
legal.
"States should be allowed to make a lot of these decisions,"
Paul says. "I want things to be decided more at a local basis, with
more compassion. I think it would make us as Republicans
different."
He also says legal penalties for marijuana should be
relaxed.
"I think, for example, we should tell young people, 'I'm not in
favor of you smoking pot, but if you get caught smoking pot, I
don't want to put you in jail for 20 years,'" Paul says.
Paul's support for devolving drug policy decisions to the states
is pretty bold in the current political context. It is the policy
embodied in the
Ending
Federal Marijuana Prohibition Act of 2011, which was
co-sponsored by Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and Paul's father, Rep.
Ron Paul (R-Texas). How many of their fellow congressmen joined
them?
Eighteen, all
but one (Dana Rohrabacher of California) a Democrat.
Rand Paul, who was elected to the Senate in 2010, has been
advocating a federalist approach to drug policy for years. In
October 2009, for example, he
told reporters "most policies of crime and punishment should be
and are addressed at the state level," adding, "I would favor a
more local approach to drugs." The following month
The New
York Times reported
that "Dr. Paul believes that federal authorities should stay out
of drug enforcement." Both Trey Grayson, Paul's opponent
in the Republican primary, and Jack Conway, his Democratic opponent
in the general election, accused him of being soft on drugs.
Paul faced
similar charges after he took office, when he
blocked bills aimed at banning fake pot, pseudo-speed, and
the synthetc psychedelic 2C-E, arguing that the potential sentences
were too harsh and that "enforcement of most drug laws can and
should be local and state issues" (as his spokeswoman put it). For
a Republican with presidential aspirations (which Rand admits
having in the CNN interview), this is courageous stuff, even if
Rand's hold ultimately succeeded only in
avoiding a new 20-year mandatory minimum sentence.
Rand's opposition to long prison terms for smoking pot is not so
bold, especially since people do not serve long prison terms for
smoking pot, except in highly unusual situations. Until it was
revised by an initiative passed two weeks ago, for example,
California's "three strikes" law allowed a life term (with parole
possible after 25 years) for marijuana possession charged as a
felony following two convictions for "serious or violent" crimes.
But that is hardly a typical scenario for the hundreds of thousands
of pot smokers
arrested every year, who generally do not spend significant
time in jail (although they still suffer the humiliation,
inconvenience, expense, and long-lasting
ancillary
penalties associated with a misdemeanor drug charge).
Furthermore, most Americans (
including
Sarah Palin and Bill O'Reilly!)
oppose putting pot
smokers in jail for any length of time, and I've never heard even
the hardest of hard-line drug warriors in the U.S. advocate
anything like 20 years for simple marijuana possession.
Such a policy harks back to the marijuana penalties of half a
century ago. In 1966, for instance, Timothy Leary got a 30-year
sentence (ultimately
overturned by the Supreme Court) under the old Marihuana
Tax Act for crossing the border from Mexico into the U.S. with a
tiny amount of cannabis. Back then the states also treated
marijuana possession as a felony, meaning pot smokers could be
sentenced
to years in prison for personal-use quantities. That is no longer
the case, and reformers should not pretend it is; there is no
shortage of
draconian drug
sentences to condemn without getting into the Wayback
Machine.
Still, Rand has staked out a clear and consistent position in
favor of less federal involvement in drug law enforcement and less
severe penalties. With his father gone next year, he and
Rohrabacher may be the only Republicans in Congress who are
prepared to criticize the Obama administration for interfering with
marijuana legalization in Colorado and Washington (assuming that is
the course the Justice Department takes). Given Paul's record, I
was rather dismayed to find no criticism of the war on drugs in his
new book,
Government Bullies: How Everyday
Americans Are Being Harassed, Abused, and Imprisoned by the
Feds. Perhaps in a future edition.