-
Call your senators today and encourage them to vote
against John Ashcroft for attorney general. You can also email and
fax your senators by visiting www.StopJohnAshcroft.org.
Here's a summary of his stand on the War on Drugs courtesy of DRCNet.:
In response to charges that the powder/crack cocaine sentencing disparity
is racially discriminatory, Sen. Ashcroft rejected legislation recommended
by the US Sentencing Commission and sponsored by African American legislators
that would have reduced crack cocaine sentences to the level of powder
cocaine sentences. Instead, Sen. Ashcroft supported a
bill to raise the powder cocaine sentences -- despite
a consensus among criminal justice experts that the disparities are driven
by enforcement policy and prosecutorial bias in conjunction with the laws,
and that powder cocaine enforcement is also carried out in a racially discriminatory
way.
Sen. Ashcroft objected vociferously to spending money
on drug treatment rather than drug interdiction, claiming that treatment
"enables" drug users and that enforcement is a more effective use of funds.
But after decades characterized by intensive interdiction efforts during
which time the availability of drugs has increased and the price plummeted,
and despite study after study showing that treatment is dramatically more
effective than enforcement, to claim that interdiction is more effective
than treatment demonstrates an astonishing inability or unwillingness to
evaluate drug policy in an objective manner. Indeed, there isn't
clear evidence that drug interdiction is more effective than doing nothing;
to claim interdiction is more effective than treatment is simply off the
reality meter.