US: REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE WANTS TO END THE WAR ON DRUGS

Ron Paul at the PBS Republican Presidential debate: "I like to believe that if we have a freer society it will take care of blacks and whites and everybody equally because we’re all individuals and that, to me, that is so important. But if we have equal justice under the law I think it would be a big improvement. if we have, a probably a repeal of most of the federal laws on drugs and the unfairness of how blacks are treated with these drug laws it would be an improvement.

A system designed to protect individual liberty will have no punishment for any group and no privileges. Today I think inner city folks, minorities are punished unfairly in the war on drugs. For instance, blacks make up 14% of those who use drugs. Yet 36% of those arrested are blacks. And it ends up that 63% 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."

(Loud cheers in audience)

"We have already spent over $ 400 billion since the early seventies and its a wasted money. Prohibition didn’t work. Prohibition on drugs doesn’t work. So we need to come to our senses. And absolutely, its a disease. We don’t treat alcoholics like this. This a disease and we should orient ourselves to this. That is one way you could have equal justice under the law."

The United States Conference of Mayors agree with Rep. Paul. At their annual conference this summer, after citing a litany of social ills that they attribute to the war on drugs the mayors resolved:

"NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the United States Conference of Mayors believes the war on drugs has failed and calls for a New Bottom Line in U.S. drug policy, a public health approach that concentrates more fully on reducing the negative consequences associated with drug abuse, while ensuring that our policies do not exacerbate these problems or create new social problems of their own; establishes quantifiable, short- and long-term objectives for drug policy; saves taxpayer money; and holds state and federal agencies accountable..."