Republicans on drugs

Surprising anti-drug-war sentiments coming out of the Republican Forum:

*Williams*: . . .You realize about 50 percent of young Black and Latino people dropping out of high school, 35 percent poverty rate, nearly 60 percent of America's prison population Black and brown.

The one area of these problems touching on federal government policy has to do with criminal justice. Today, in Jena, Louisiana, it was announced that one of the Jena 6, originally convicted as an adult, will be tried now as a juvenile.

Name one reform, Senator, that you would endorse to assure young Black and Latino people in America that they will have equal justice in America's courts.

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*Mike Huckabee:* Well, first of all, we really don't have so much a crime problem in this country. We have a drug and alcohol problem. Eighty percent of the people who are in our prisons and jails are there for a drug or alcohol crime. They either were high or drunk when they committed the crime, or they committed the crime to get high or drunk.

And what has made a huge mistake is that we've incarcerated so many of the people who really need drug rehab more than they need long-term incarceration.

In our state, we established over 20 drug courts, that gave people an alternative course, rather than just putting them in prison, giving them the opportunity to get what they really needed, which is off the addiction.

We've got to quit locking up all the people that we're mad at and lock up the people that we're really afraid of, the people who are sexual predators and violent offenders.

But the nonsense of three strikes and you're out has created a system that is overrun with people, and the cost is choking us.

I would go for more drug courts and for a lot less incarceration of drug-addicted people.

*Tavis:* Thank you, Governor. Congressman Paul?

*Ron Paul:* A system designed to protect individual liberty will have no punishments for any group and no privileges. Today, I think inner-city folks and minorities are punished unfairly in the war on drugs.

For instance, Blacks make up 14 percent of those who use drugs, yet 36 percent of those arrested are Blacks and it ends up that 63 percent of those who finally end up in prison are Blacks. This has to change.

We don't have to have more courts and more prisons. We need to repeal the whole war on drugs. It isn't working.

We have already spent over $400 billion since the early 1970s, and it is wasted money. Prohibition didn't work. Prohibition on drugs doesn't work. So we need to come to our senses.

And, absolutely, it's a disease. We don't treat alcoholics like this. This is a disease, and we should orient ourselves to this. That is one way you could have equal justice under the law.