HOME  E-DEMOCRACY 98  E-DEBATE WEB MN-FORUM

Jesse Ventura      Response 3

Question 3: Given Minnesota's climbing prison population, the public pressure to reduce taxes and an apparent stalemate in the war on drugs, how would you, as governor, balance the cost of criminal justice with the need to ensure the safety of Minnesotans?

Your question strongly suggests that ending prohibition against 
illegal drugs is an approach that should be considered.  That 
point of view is shared by many people (not most, but many).  
On the campaign trail, people often ask me if I would legalize 
drugs. My answer is no, except I would sign a bill that allows 
the medical use of marijuana, when that drug is prescribed by 
a Doctor.

Overcrowded prisons and increasing criminal justice expenses 
are partially due to the misguided way the war on drugs is 
being waged.  Harsh drug sentences have filled our prisons to 
overflowing with non-violent offenders.

Have these harsh sentences worked? No. Does the average citizen 
feel we are winning the war on drugs? No. Does it make sense to 
consider new approaches to the so-called drug problem? 
Absolutely.

Under our current laws, we can't even keep illegal drugs out of 
prison.  How can we expect to keep illegal drugs off the 
streets? It doesn't matter how many drug dealers and users we 
put in jail. As long as people use illegal drugs, and huge 
amounts of money can be made by selling them, there will always 
be more dealers to replace the ones we lock away.

To successfully address the drug problem, we need to rethink 
our approach from the bottom up. Career politicians can beat 
their chests all day long and talk about how tough they are on 
drugs. That approach is already a proven failure. While 
politicians wage their  war on drugs, the drug dealers are 
winning it.

We don't need more of the same. We need to rethink our approach 
to the drug problem from the ground up. As your Governor, I'll 
bring people together and provide the administrative resources 
to facilitate that rethinking process.

This would probably take the form of a Governor's task force or 
commission.

Included would be medical professionals, social scientists, law 
enforcement officials, civil libertarians, clergy, etc. The 
ground rules would allow every point of view regarding drugs 
and drug users to be fairly considered, not just those that are 
politically correct.

Tough talk on drugs from career politicians amounts to little 
more than background noise. It is a simple matter to continue 
to enforce the laws we have and to run the criminal justice 
system as we are currently doing.  But that approach can only 
be expected to produce more of what we already have.

I don't know that any great new drug policy revelations would 
come out of a Governor's task force like I described above, but 
I believe it's worth a try.