EDITORIAL: Gov. Christie at odds with himself on drug war
In a recent interview with Yahoo News, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie — also a presidential candidate — said he wants the justice system to "stop treating the victims of addiction as enemies in a war." He said that the war on drugs has been a failure, and that far too many nonviolent offenders are incarcerated. And we totally agree. The trouble is, Gov. Christie's logic ends there.
Gov. Christie calls for treatment and not incarceration for nonviolent, addicted offenders, but also says that marijuana (which he calls a "gateway drug") and other drugs should remain illegal, and that if elected president, he would not allow states to decriminalize pot. While Sen. Marco Rubio agrees with Gov. Christie, many of the governor's GOP rivals, including Sens. Rand Paul and Ted Cruz, support letting states set their own polices. And although President Barack Obama has backed off states, such as Colorado, that have legalized marijuana, Gov. Christie says he would do the opposite unless Congress legalized marijuana for all 50 states.
"Over the course of time, we've made the decision to make marijuana illegal at the federal level," Gov. Christie said. "Congress has to make a decision, you know, is it illegal or isn't it. If it is illegal as it is today, then we shouldn’t have other states running around and allowing them to permit recreational use of marijuana."
While Gov. Christie welcomes those in favor of legalization to "make their arguments and see if they can get it to carry the day," he also points out that "at this point, they haven't, especially in the Congress, and it's not something I would favor."
With all due respect, we have to wonder what the governor is smoking. For him to say that the war on drugs is a failure and that we have too many people in prison, yet also say that he wouldn’t decriminalize drugs, is astounding.
This editorial page has long supported the decriminalizing, regulating and taxing the sale of currently illegal drugs. (We support the legalization of recreational marijuana, for example.) This position is taken not only because of the supreme costs related to policing, prosecuting and incarcerating drug offenders — not to mention the tragic (and preventable) cost in human lives — but also due to inescapable fact that no amount of government pressure has ever reduced demand for illegal drugs in the United States. In fact, it has done the exact opposite.
The United States is an enormously profitable marketplace for violent Mexican and Central American drug lords, who are expanding into the ransom and extortion trades. Legalizing drugs won't send Americans running to dispensaries to get stoned. It will simply bring the commerce out of the black market, subject it to taxation, and put drug dealers who answer to violent syndicates out of business.
No form of immigration reform and no amount of border security is ever going to fix this problem. We must end the war on drugs.
