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Politics

"It's nice to see a popular Democrat take a strong stance against the drug war."

Damon Root | 5.24.2012 4:29 PM

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At Mediaite, Andrew Kirell gives a big cheer to Newark, New Jersey Mayor Cory Booker, who "took to Twitter to give a brilliant rant against the drug war and the disproportionate impact it has on blacks in America." After presenting Booker's best tweets on the subject, including the irrefutable observation that "Drug war is a failure costing billions of tax dollars annually AND destorying lives," Kirell remarks:

It's nice to see a popular Democrat take a strong stance against the drug war. But this is a rare position among mainstream politicians. I can think of only a handful of well-known politicians besides Booker who openly advocate for a rethinking of the drug war.

In a perfect world, this Twitter rant, plus the latest Rasmussen poll that 56% of Americans support marijuana legalization, would convince President Obama to "evolve" on the drug war and, at the very least, stop raiding medical marijuana dispensaries with a frequency that even Richard Nixon would have applauded.

Read the whole thing here.

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Damon Root is a senior editor at Reason and the author of A Glorious Liberty: Frederick Douglass and the Fight for an Antislavery Constitution (Potomac Books). His next book, Emancipation War: The Fall of Slavery and the Coming of the Thirteenth Amendment (Potomac Books), will be published in June 2026.

PoliticsPolicyWar on DrugsNanny StateMedical MarijuanaDrug PolicyDrugs
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