The root problem that caused a police officer to shoot and kill Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., sparking protests by members of the community, was an overzealous war on drugs, Sen. Rand Paul said in an interview Sunday.
Paul, a Kentucky Republican, traveled to Ferguson last month to meet with black leaders, and said he sensed an “undercurrent of unease.
“This isn’t just Ferguson,” Paul said in an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “The war on drugs has had a disproportionate impact on African-Americans and Hispanics. White kids are using drugs also, but they’re not going to jail. Black kids are populating our jails, it’s destroying families, and they sense it, and that’s why there’s this unease between police and the African-American community.”
Much of the policy discussion in the aftermath of Ferguson has focused not on the war on drugs, but the militarization of police forces and police brutality.
Paul, a likely contender for the presidency in 2016, said he has “tried not to weigh in on the specifics of the case.
“I want to be able to fix the overall unease in our country,” Paul said. “I don’t have a specific answer where I can make everything right in Ferguson.”
