When Sen. Rand Paul launched his presidential campaign, he promised to be a Republican who wouldn’t just support criminal-justice reform as a policy platform (as some other presidential candidates, including New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Sen. Ted Cruz, have) but talk openly about mass incarceration and the war on drugs as racial issues. He was supposed to be running to reach out to non-traditional Republican constituencies: young voters and African Americans.
Rand Paul called out the racism of the drug war — and told Jeb Bush to check his privilege
During most of the campaign, that Paul hasn’t been much in evidence. Over the summer, when he has talked about race, he’s sounded more like a typical Republican: calling on the Black Lives Matter movement to change its name, for example. But during Wednesday’s CNN debate, the old Paul came back with a vengeance. Asked a question about whether the federal government should be cracking down on states with legalized marijuana, he brought up race as part of the answer to the question:
He also called out Jeb Bush as a hypocrite for smoking pot in his youth but opposing legalization now. And when Bush admitted that he smoked pot 40 years ago, Paul literally accused Bush of showing his privilege:
“In the current circumstances, kids who had privilege like you do don’t go to jail, but the poor kids in our inner cities go to jail. I don’t think that’s fair. And I think we need to acknowledge it.”
Paul is entirely right: black and white Americans use drugs at comparable rates, but black Americans are disproportionately punished for it.
Joe Posner/Vox
By Dara Lind and Caroline Framke
By Jonathan Allen
