WASHINGTON — Sometime in the next few weeks, aides expect President Obama to issue orders freeing dozens of federal prisoners locked up on nonviolent drug offenses. With the stroke of his pen, he will probably commute more sentences at one time than any president has in nearly half a century.
I suppose the drug crime issue is one I have "evolved" on. I'm not saying I ever thought that people should have their lives destroyed by the criminal justice due to nonviolent drug offenses, just that I failed to comprehend the magnitude of the problem - imprisonment, not drugs - and the clearly racist application of the laws as much as I should have. Drug addiction is a public health problem. It's one thing to lock up people caught with 20 pounds of cocaine, quite another to have such low thresholds for "intent to sell" that you can classify basically every user as a dealer.
Send everybody home, change the laws, abolish the DEA, end all civil forfeiture. The end.