Justin's Political Corner

WASHINGTON — New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) has become the latest leader to condemn the now 40-year-old war on drugs.

“The war on drugs, while well-intentioned, has been a failure,” Christie said Monday during a speech at The Brookings Institution. “We’re warehousing addicted people everyday in state prisons in New Jersey, giving them no treatment.”

Christie stressed the merits of legislation recently passed by New Jersey state lawmakers that institutes a year of mandatory treatment for first-time, nonviolent drug offenders instead of jail time. The mandatory treatment program, slated to be put in place in at least three counties during its first year, will eventually expand statewide over the next five years.

Christie, one of the few Republican lawmakers to actively speak out against the effects of America’s drug war policies, sought to put a conservative moral spin on his position.

“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.”

Perhaps to blunt conservative criticism of the cost of such a program to the state, Christie argued in favor of the economics of drug treatment over incarceration.

“It costs us $49,000 a year to warehouse a prisoner in New Jersey state prisons last year,” Christie said. “A full year of inpatient drug treatment costs 24,000 a year.”

Christie’s strong stance on the war on drugs and drug treatment contrasts sharply with the less-defined series of positions on drug policy taken by presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney. A recent overview of Romney’s past statements on drugs, undertaken by The Atlantic, concluded that the former Massachusetts governor’s position has been difficult to pin down.

H/T: HuffPo

President Barack Obama will take steps to draw down the nation’s decades-long war on drugs if he wins a second term, Marc Ambinder reports Monday in GQ.

According to Ambinder, Obama’s “aides and associates” say that the president is looking to prioritize reform, a reflection of the president’s long-held beliefs that strict drug prohibition and enforcement policies have done greater damage to society than good.

Sources close to the White House also told The Huffington Post that the administration is looking at ways that it can reduce barriers to reentering society for those caught up in the drug war, such as a longstanding policy that denies federal financial aid to college students convicted of drug-related offenses, including possession.

The president has been repeatedly accused of going back on campaign-era promises regarding deemphasizing enforcement of federal laws against medical marijuana. While Obama said in 2008 that he wouldn’t use Justice Department resources to try to circumvent state laws on medical marijuana, Attorney General Eric Holder later announced that federal authorities would continue to prosecute individuals for marijuana possession, regardless of its legalized status in some states.

“Obama — as candidate and as president — and his drug czar have already repeatedly talked about scaling back the war on drugs. But it’s been all talk,” Tom Angell, spokesman for Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, said. “Drug Czar Kerlikowske, in his very first interview with the Wall Street Journal after taking office, declared the end of the ‘war on drugs’ terminology. He has repeatedly said that this is a health and not just a crime issue. But the problem is: the drug control budget still overwhelmingly devotes more resources to old, failed punishment strategies than effective treatment and prevention strategies. The rhetoric doesn’t match the reality.”

h/t: Nick Wing at HuffPo