Could Gary Johnson end the drug war?

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(Credit: AP/Joe Burbank)

A viable Gary Johnson candidacy and his unorthodox view on drug laws could be a game changer

A recent survey found that Gary Johnson, the former New Mexico governor who was just nominated to be the Libertarian Party’s presidential candidate, does surprisingly well against Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and Republican candidate Donald Trump. Although his 10 percent is nothing compared to Clinton’s 38 percent and Trump’s 35 percent, it’s enough to make his candidacy relevant to our national conversation.

This is where Johnson’s bold and unorthodox view on drug policy could alter the course of American history.

Johnson is perhaps best known for his unabashed support for marijuana legalization. Back in 2000, he became the highest ranking American political official to ever call forending the prohibition against recreational cannabis use; later that same year, Hawaii Governor Benjamin J. Cayetano and Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura joined him in calling for the federal government to decriminalize pot and treat drug abuse as a public health issue rather than a crime. In the years since, Johnson has remained boldly iconoclastic on these issues, admitting to The Weekly Standard that he smoked pot from 2005 to 2008 to recover from a paragliding injury and vowing during his 2012 presidential campaign that he would pardon marijuana offenders and “defang” the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

There are good reasons for wanting to cut the DEA down to size. According todrugpolicy.org, America spends $51 billion annually (that’s billion with a ‘b’) in its so-called war on drugs, a program that exists for no other reason than to tell American citizens what they can and cannot do with their own bodies. Nearly 1.3 million people were arrested in 2014 alone merely for possessing contraband substances (83 percent of all drug arrests), more than 600,000 of whom were taken in for marijuana possession (88 percent of all marijuana-related arrests). All of this is occurring as America continues to house the world’s largest prison population, of whom adisproportionate number are African American or Latino (even though, when it comes to drug-related offenses, they are no more likely to use than whites). Not surprisingly, a 2015 Gallup Poll found that 58 percent of Americans support legalizing marijuana – the highest number in the survey’s history – with that number rising to 71 percent for 18-to-34 year olds.

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