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Dear Friend,
America doesn’t need a president who maintains or perpetuates a dysfunctional status quo. We need an era of fundamental course correction and a president who will guide us through it . Where are we good and can get even better? Where have we gone wrong? And where can we improve?
One place where we need to be brutally honest with ourselves is in relation to the War on Drugs. It was actually ill conceived from the start; in 1971, President Richard Nixon declared drug abuse to be “public enemy No. 1” at a time when he knew it was anything but. In fact, he was calling for a war against a problem which at that time did not exist. The War on Drugs has been a tragic failure that has destroyed more lives than it set out to save.
In Manchester, New Hampshire, where the opioid drug overdose crisis is among the worst in the nation, I thought I was taking a political risk last week in simply telling it as I see it. When asked about the opioid crisis, I responded that I think it’s time we have a very serious conversation about decriminalization, if not legalization of drugs. I was actually surprised when so many people in the room applauded.
On issue after issue, the consensus of the American people is more level headed than the consensus in Washington D.C.
The War on Drugs has completely failed to alleviate the problem it set out to solve. A record 109,680 people in the US died from drugs in 2022 the latest federal data shows, and the War on Drugs does more to harm than help our capacity to deal with the crisis. States and the federal government continue to spend tens of billions of dollars a year imprisoning drug offenders, but caging people is not the answer to the problem. Over half of our incarcerated population are in prison because of drug related charges, and spending billions a year to house them does little more than fuel the prison-industrial complex. Our approach is not defeating the drug cartels in Latin America, which in turn feeds the horrifying violence that fuels our crisis at our Southern Border.
We need the War on Drugs to end. Drugs should be decriminalized, if not legalized, and addiction should be treated as a public health issue, not a criminal one.
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Given that since its inception the United States has spent over a trillion dollars on the War on Drugs — continuing to spend over $100B a year — a project that has clearly not succeeded in stemming the tide of drug use in the United States. Decriminalization has worked wonders in Portugal, although it’s clear that treatment services must be included in any plan to solve the problem. What we spend now on the War on Drugs, however, is far, far more than what it will take to provide free harm reduction and adequate treatment services to those who need it.
The argument for full legalization deserves careful consideration, as well, as it would create regulations that solve the issue of drugs being laced with even more dangerous substances. In a legal market, people would know what they are buying, thus disempowering the drug cartels and beginning a new era of repair in America.
Drug addiction is a symptom of a wider malaise in our society, and punishing people for it is simply treating a symptom but not its cause. As president, I want to help create a society in which the rampant despair that is killing so many people simply does not exist. When the average citizen has a right to housing, education, healthcare (including mental healthcare and addiction treatment), a job, and all other necessities, then far less people will turn to drugs. That is why my Economic Bill of Rights [[link removed]] is such an important pillar of our new beginning.
As president, I will take marijuana off schedule one from my first week in office. I will immediately move to release all federal offenders imprisoned on marijuana-related charges, as well as expunge their records . And that will be just the beginning; it will be one of the signature accomplishments of my administration that during my presidency, the War on Drugs will come to an end.
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