Posted on 01/19/2020 3:44:01 PM PST by conservative98
Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) is calling for the U.S. to legalize currently illicit drugs.
“If we take that step to legalize and regulate, then we're no longer treating people who are struggling with substance addiction and abuse as criminals and instead getting them the help that they need,” the 2020 presidential candidate said at a campaign stop in Merrimack, New Hampshire on Friday.
She was responding to a voter who asked whether her plan to end the war on drugs centered on more harm reduction and treatment or if it involved moving to “legalize and regulate narcotics so that you're no longer seeing tainted drugs on the street...and involvement in the black market.”
The congresswoman replied that her answer was “all of the above.”
“The costs and the consequence to this failed war on drugs is so vast and far reaching, socially and fiscally, that if we take these necessary steps, we'll be able to solve a lot of other problems that we're dealing with in this country,” she said.
Gabbard, who has sponsored several marijuana legalization bills during her time in Congress, had previously said in an interview last year that she supported “decriminalizing an individual’s choice to use whatever substances that are there while still criminalizing those who are traffickers and dealers of these drugs.”
Gabbard’s latest comments, which were first noted and recorded by journalist Michael Tracey, go beyond that by indicating she backs a legally regulated method of producing and distributing drugs.
The stance also puts her a step further than former South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg, a rival Democratic presidential candidate, who has endorsed simply decriminalizing possession of all drugs.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
If that includes prescription drugs the costs would come down. We trip to Taiwan on occasion and 99% of scrip drugs can be bought anywhere. Not narcotics though.
What a stupid answer. You can treat the junkie as a victim while drugs are illegal.
Our conservative Shariff does just that. They want to help the user and work with them to help them get clean, as long as they help build the case against the dealers.
Those they go after with a vengeance. It seems to be bearing some fruit. Overdose deaths were down 30% last year.
Legalizing them will only increase deaths and abuse.
False. "the nature of the crisis has morphed from a prescription problem into a heroin crisis and now a full-blown fentanyl epidemic." - https://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3790138/posts
Murder has an unwilling victim - drugs are self-administered.
I wonder if Tucker will have her on his program to talk about this!
Says who?
She is a pandering fidiot. She says sh*t without any care of the actual consequences.
Um, no. If you need to be drugged to get through your day, you are pathetic. We don’t need your impaired judgment on the roads, in the office, or in the voting booth. Tulsi wants to eliminate the stigma. No, darlin’. There SHOULD be a stigma. It’s not normal to let the populace turn themselves into a bunch of tractable zombies. But that is precisely what the dummocraps would LIKE.
Entrepreneur Andrew Yang, another contender, supports decriminalizing opioids and funding safe consumption sites for illegal drugs. He also wants to make psychedelic mushrooms “more freely available.”
How does legalization spare people addiction?
She’s just a CIA mouthpiece.
Free at last!
A San Franshitco in every county of every state.
NO question about that!
I've been there. The place is spotless. Their street food has to be one of the BEST around. No one gets sick...otherwise they would be out of business in a New York minute.
Is she getting ready for a libertarian spoiler move?
Kasich/Gabbard?
Many people don’t realize how poisonous her positions are.
Mommy coconut is a 4/10 at best without her stupid views.
Marijuana criminalization has failed to keep that drug away from young people; they have been reporting since well before any state had legalized that they could get marijuana almost as easily as cigarettes or beer, although the latter two are much more widespread among adults. The available evidence indicates that the best way of keeping a drug away from young people is to legalize it for adults - which gives its sellers an economic incentive to confine their sales to adults, namely the risk of losing their legal adult market.
or for those who tend toward various mental illnesses
So we should ban for ALL adults whatever is bad for those susceptible to mental illness? Including alcohol?
“Many people don’t realize how poisonous her positions are.”
Tucker Carlson seems to have a crush on her. Sometimes I wonder about that boy.
Drug dealers should be publicly executed.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.