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Gov. Chris Christie giving a speech at the the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. on Monday.
Chris Christie has become the latest politician to rewrite the war on drugs. During a speech on Monday, the New Jersey Governor spoke out against the government's policies cracking down on illegal drug usage.
"The war on drugs, while well-intentioned, has been a failure," Christie told a crowd at The Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. "We're warehousing addicted people every day in state prisons in New Jersey, giving them no treatment."
This isn't a typical talking point from a typical Republican leader. The governor did, however, put a conservative spin on the issue. "If you're pro-life, as I am, you can't be pro-life just in the womb," he said. "Every life is precious and every one of God's creatures can be redeemed, but they won't if we ignore them."
Christie supports mandatory treatment programs for first-time, nonviolent drug offenders and also argued in favor of rehab over jail-time as a cost-saving mechanism.
His stance seems to differ from Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney. At a campaign stop in 2011, Romney pressed the need "to not only continue our war on drugs from a police standpoint but also to market again to our young people about the perils of drugs."
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Republican Party is a true Big Tent Party! What NJ wants to do with its laws is up to the legislature. But Drug Court sentences to rehabilitation programs are only successful with the ultimate enforcement of incarceration for those who cheat at their rehab efforts.
Wow something that I agree with Chris Christie on is something I'd never thought I'd type. The war on drugs has been a failure. In part to the way the government has fought this war and also in part to what has been labeled as a "drug" that is to be fought over. I truly feel like marijuana isn't a drug. It is a plant that comes from the ground and provides medicinal uses. As far as other drugs like meth, cocaine & other street drugs that are out there these are the "drugs" that are illegal and should be.
In regards to how to fight this war is for other people to say that are more experienced on this issue than I am. But I would like to point out that Keith's point is well taken. There should be a more improved way to monitor these people as to not loose them to our prisons. How to accomplish that is another story. Because there are lots of people making lots of money out of incarceration. And as we all know there are more prisions being built versus rehab centers.
Tina: cocaine and opium were once easily available and considered to be medicinal drugs, and also come from plants that grow from the ground. Cocaine was once an active ingredient in Coca-Cola and availale as a stimulant known as "snuff" or "pinch", and opium was the drug of choice to prescribe for "nerves", or "hysteria", mostly in the weaker sex, of course. When the deleterious affect of use and abuse of these drugs became evident, as well as the users tendency to become addicted, they were more widely controlled by the govermnet and the medical estalishment.
The case for marijuana is not made. The chemical intoxicant of marijuana is THC, and that chemical has been shown by brain scans and brain grafts to cause permanent change to the neuro synapses that transmit information in human brains. Marijuana also has more tars than does tobacco (also a a drug Z(nicotene) that is abused and addictive), and lung cancers in high use smokers of marijuana are prevalent as medical research has shown. Marijuana is also known as an intoxicant that can lead to accidents, whether it is driving a vehicle or operating any other piece of machinery from a locatotive to a can opener! So it is not a harmless drug at all, and if ever contemplated to be legalized would need to be under rigorous controls...more rigorous than tobacco, of course.
pot = stress relief, tobacco = stress increase
I guess that's Pot and stress reduction is why you are here posting instead of working for a living, Stoner?
Awwwe you are correct everyone who posts a lot is a stoner, cya on the next post.
Git in my belly.
Casino owner must back that position also. To me that is only reason Christie said anything. It would be funny to watch NJ legalize it and have the Fed hit them with a raid and watch the right scream at the top of their lungs how NJ should be able to do this, and quietly say CA should not be able to.
Find out why more and more cops, judges, and prosecutors who have fought on the front lines of the "war on drugs" are standing up and saying we need to legalize and regulate marijuana and other drugs to help solve our economic, crime, and public health problems:
Yeah...sure. Another stoner heard from!
Ubetcha them cops and judges be quite the stoner crowd
Ha! Christie is at the forefront of the new business plan to run the (for-profit) rehab centers that the new gov-health plan will pay for! It's always about the money with Republicans.
Almost got me w/ Chris Christie civilized and segment from the Brookings Institute appearance. He made sense w/ his statement of the "Failure on the War on Drugs", addicts should be treated not incarcerated.
Then I remembered the scathing & embarrassing NYT expose on his deep rooted affiliation w/ the failed & deadly NJ halfway houses. A last week's pithy statement to a reporter and bullying of a passerby at the Jersey shore. Spin-spin to preserve that rising political star...almost, he should have waited longer until the public forgot, but I guess he would have done some other embarrassing stuff.
The "Last Word" almost got me...almost lol.
Don't be so quick to rejoice. The declarations of the War on Drugs is dead are as good as the king is dead, long live the King. When CHristie is ready to keep swat teams with no-knock warrants out of users' homes and take other real steps to reduce police presence in the War on US Citizens, then we can take his declaration seriously. In a similar manner Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske declared shortly after his appointment that he didn't like the EXPRESSION "War on Drugs" and then proceeded to pursue drug prohibition as fiercely as an other drug czar.
Treatment instead of incarceration? One: It's for first-timers only, and relapse is more common than staying straight after one round of treatment.
Then Hey! Drug use is an illness, right, say the "good" politicians. There's no other illness where the governnment can force you to be treated. And if you suffer no ill effects from your drug use ,how do honestly get treated? You have to be dishonestly treated for using the wrong drugs, the way Chinese people used to (still have to?) go through "re-education" when they have the wrong ideas. Distribute alcoholic beverages and get your name on a stadium. Distribute something else, and your treatment is at the barrel of a gun.
Even MSNBC won't nail the real corruption and sinistry of drug prohibition. It's not that the War on Drugs is a failure. It's a malicious corrupt idea from the get-go...monitoring what people possess and put into their own bodies. for more information, try www.drcnet.org, www.drugfacts.org, and www.drugpolicy.org.
also read The New Jim Crow, by Michelle Alexander.
And reply to Keith Longley: Marijuana doesn't kill anybody directly by its use. Thousands of legal substances can't make that claim. Why does marijuana have a special status in effect to prove that it is safe, whatever THAT means? Keith says "the case for marijuana is not made." neither is the case made comletely for peaches, and neither is it demanded.
You want to prohibit it, YOU prove that it is a danger that warrants all of the harm done by government to the people who use it, and all of the expense to taxpayers of exerting that harm.