A presidential candidate saying such things?
Note, the transcript of this interview is pretty rough, but the meaning is clear. Timothy Gatto had an interview with Mike Gravel and this is one part:
Gatto: I have seen what Cocaine, Heroin and Meth do to good people. What would you do to stop the abuse of these drugs if they are legalized?
Senator Gravel: First of all, I do have a program to legalize the regulation of hard drugs. I think we ought to stop the prohibition of Marijuana and let marijuana be sold in liquor stores. You get a much bigger high off of drinking a fifth of scotch, than you would off a couple of packs of marijuana. That‰s why it should be legalized. Now the regulation, the legalization of hard drugs is a whole other matter. What we have to do is stop criminalizing this whole drug problem, the addiction problem. This is a public health problem. It‰s not a criminal problem. What we need to do is to one; to identify these drug users so that they can get their drugs by prescription from a doctor, they are thereby registered to a registry, so that we can begin to monitor these people and try to proselytize them, and help them to get off of drugs. That‰s not what happens today, what happens todayá you‰re criminalized, you‰re thrown in jail, half the people in jail have a drug problem, and we don‰t address that at all. It‰s a health issue and we don‰t look at it for what it is, it‰s a health issue, ,so my hope would be, this whole war on drugs is a hoax we spend 50 to 70 billion dollars a year on it, and it‰s no more effective than prohibition was against alcohol back in the 20‰s. All it does is criminalizing a major segment of our population and cause another major segment to break the law, lose respect for the law, because it is just bad law, and so I would really push on both sides of that and keep in mind, those that try to tell the American people that they have nothing to fear but fear itself. That‰s what I would try to do under this present situation is that you don‰t need all this fear of the terrorists, of people of color, gays this is overblown, totally overblown, in addition to fighting this problem of fear with the American public through leadership, I would call on the courage in us, not the fear in us to address our collective problems. Then, at the same time like Roosevelt, I would do away with the prohibition that we have in respect to marijuana, and bring the legalization of hard drugs, legalization of the regulation of hard drugs.
Gatto: I wrote an article on the war on drugs it‰s the same as the war on terror, it‰s a never-ending thing, it‰s a self-perpetuating thing. When are the American People going to realize that? Maybe when you‰re the president?
Gravel: Yes we engage these issues. You don‰t hear the front tier candidates talking about this on the drug war. You don‰t hear them talking about the military industrial complex. With their interviews, its politics as usual, they say a lot, but don‰t say anything.
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