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Chris Wright      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?

The Minnesota Constitution says that "Government is 
instituted for the security, benefit and protection of 
the people."  However, narcotics prohibition has failed 
to protect public safety because it kills more than the 
narcotics themselves. Nationally, there are 5,200 
drug-induced deaths from all the illegal drugs 
combined. The Office of National Drug Control Policy 
says that over 20,000 of our citizens die every year 
because of illicit drugs. Even if we include the 5,200 
deaths caused by the drug's effect alone, that leaves 
three times as many people dying from prohibition than 
die from the drugs themselves.

There has never been a single documented cannabis-
induced fatality, acknowledged by the DEA's Chief 
Administrative Law Judge Francis L. Young. Yet, last 
January a prohibition related murder involving marijuana 
occurred in a Richfield, MN park and recently three 
police officers died interdicting marijuana. Prohibition 
kills more than pot!

It is the duty of government to protect public safety, yet, 
to prosecute the drug war prohibitionists, like my 
opponents for governor, Skip Humphrey and Norm 
Coleman, insist on destroying public safety.

Prohibition reduces supply and has failed to reduce 
demand. In this way prohibitionists have:
Subsidized criminals, destroyed public safety, 
endangered our children, supported a law that is 
racist, nullified the Bill of Rights, overburdened the 
courts and overcrowded the prisons. 

Prohibition is unenforceable in prison. What amount 
of tyranny would be enough to keep drugs out of 
society when they cannot be kept out of prison? 
Anyone who would support such a policy is ignorant, 
evil and un-American.

I'm fighting a marijuana case in the MN State Court 
of Appeals on the right enshrined in Article 13, 
Section 7, which states, "Any person may sell or 
peddle the products of the farm or garden occupied 
and cultivated by him without obtaining a license 
therefor."  It says in the State's Controlled Substances 
Act that you can be in legal possession and a 
manufacturer if you have license through the MN 
Board of Pharmacy. This statute is superseded by the 
Constitution and makes this law illegal. When 
adopted in 1906, marijuana was a product of the 
farm until the state passed the constitutionally illegal 
Uniform Narcotics Control Act in 1935. 

The State has the right to ban unsafe products but 
marijuana is not unsafe. Based on Judge Young's 
decision, there aren't any fatalities due to pot and 
eating ten raw potatoes is toxic, yet, one cannot eat 
enough pot to kill oneself. We don't have the right 
to sell tainted marijuana anymore than tainted beef 
but we have a right to sell marijuana. 

Ultimately, the court must decide if prohibition is 
the highest law in the land or is the Constitution. 
I'm the only candidate in this election who has 
fought for the rights of farmers but Democratic 
Farmer Labor candidate Skip Humphrey opposes 
the rights of farmers and threatens to take their 
rights away completely.

There's a Greek saying that sums it up, "When 
faced with human stupidity, even the Gods stand 
helpless."