The NRSC continues its series of Jim Martin Facts in their effort to win re-election for Saxby Chambliss in the run-off for Georgia’s Senate seat. Today, they go back twenty years to find Martin objecting to mandatory minimum sentencing for drug dealers:
This doesn’t make a terribly compelling argument, in my opinion. People can understand the necessity of protecting children from pushers in close vicinity to schools, which was featured in an earlier web ad. Forcing non-violent offenders in the drug war to serve minimum amounts of prison time may not garner the same kind of enthusiasm.
Which brings us to a greater question: does the drug war matter any more? Have people grown tired enough of it to start scaling it back, at least? We’ve sunk hundreds of billions into long sentences, oversized enforcement, and have not made much of a dent at any level of the demand for drugs in the US.
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