2020 Democrat Pete Buttigieg vowed to end incarceration for drug possession, including in cases involving potentially lethal drugs like heroin.
“Isn’t the fact that it’s illegal to have, to possess meth and heroin, doesn’t that at least in some way, the fact that it’s illegal, act as sole deterrent to trying it in the first place?” Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace asked the winner of the Iowa caucuses over the weekend.
“I think the main thing we need to focus on is where you have distribution and the kind of harm that’s done,” Buttigieg responded. “Possession should not be dealt with through incarceration.”
Along the campaign trail, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, has vowed to reform the U.S. criminal justice system, which he said unfairly punishes people who are addicted to drugs and disproportionately affects minority communities.
“At every level of the criminal justice system — from over-policing, to over-prosecution, to over-sentencing, to conditions while incarcerated, to reintegration upon release — black Americans are subject to systemic racism,” his campaign website reads. “To excise the injustices of racism from this system, we must address every stage of the criminal process, recognize the ways they interact with each other, and invest in social programs to mitigate the harmful effects.”
It continues, “We must ensure less contact with an over-reaching criminal justice system. Once people are released from incarceration, we must ensure they are free to reintegrate into society and have the support to do so.”
Buttigieg went on to say all drug possession would either be decriminalized under his administration or “it could be a misdemeanor.”
“We have learned through 40 years of the failed drug on war that criminalizing addiction doesn’t work. Not only that, the incarceration does more harm than the offense that it’s intended to deal with. This is not saying that these substances are OK, it’s saying that when somebody develops that kind of addiction, throwing them in jail or being in a situation where jail is the closest thing they’ll ever get to in-patient treatment, shows a profound failure in our country’s mental health and addiction treatment system.”
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