David McReynolds on Drugs

Re-examine and repeal drug laws

Repeal the Rockefeller Drug laws.

Re-examine present approaches to addictive drugs.
Cut the 3-million prison population through training and education.

Source: Campaign website, mcreynoldsforsenate.org, "15 Point Plan" Sep 29, 2004

War on drugs is a failure; decriminalize

The war on drugs has resulted in an explosion of our prison population so that we now have the greatest number of prisoners of any nation in the world - something in which none of us should take pride. We have seen the creation of virtual prison industrial complex in which the ultimate victims are those men and women jailed, their families and friends, and the society which pays vast sums on incarceration rather than treatment and rehabilitation. In the city of New York it is easier to be arrested for the sale of heroin than it is to gain admittance to the drug rehabilitation programs. The war on drugs is a costly, inhumane failure which has caused vast human suffering here, and resulted in exporting American problems to Latin America. Most drugs should either, as with marijuana, be decriminalized, or as with heroin, be available to addicts from a medical doctor. Source: Press Conference announcing candidacy Sep 7, 1999

Decriminalization instead of prisons

We have waged a war on “drugs” which has created a federal agency with a vested interest in continuing the supply of drugs - we have chosen prison rather than education or rehabilitation or simply, in the case of most drugs, decriminalization. Source: Open Letter to Friends and Comrades Aug 1, 1999

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