Ron Paul Quotes.com 2006 Ron Paul Chapter 11 Ron Paul Quotes.com: Illegal Drug Problem — Part 1 9 March 2006 Home Page   Contents Congressional Record (Page H835)   Cached Not linked on Ron Paul’s Congressional website.

Illegal Drug Problem — Part 1 9 March 2006 2006 Ron Paul 11:1 Mr. PAUL. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment. The Acting CHAIRMAN. The Clerk will designate the amendment. The text of the amendment is as follows: Amendment No. 12 printed in House Report 109–387 offered by Mr. PAUL: At the end of the bill, add the following new section (and conform the table of contents accordingly): SEC. 20. SUNSET. After section 716, as redesignated by section 14 of this Act, insert the following: “SEC. 717. SUNSET. “This Act shall not be in effect after September 30, 2011.”. The Acting CHAIRMAN. Pursuant to House Resolution 713, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. PAUL) and the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. SOUDER) each will control 5 minutes. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Texas. 2006 Ron Paul 11:2 Mr. PAUL. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 2 1/2 minutes. (Mr. PAUL asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.) 2006 Ron Paul 11:3 Mr. PAUL. Mr. Chairman, my amendment is very simple. I thought it would be very noncontroversial, because it merely sunsets our provision. We have just gone through a period of time of 2 years where there has been no authorizations, but we have done appropriations as necessary. 2006 Ron Paul 11:4 The amendment merely says, this act shall not be in effect after September 30, 2011. So that is 5 years, which I think is very adequate. But I would want to express my agreement with the authors of this particular bill, because we do have a very serious problem in this country with drugs. 2006 Ron Paul 11:5 I, as a physician, am very much aware of the seriousness of it. I also agree that prescription drugs are probably every bit as bad or much worse, because there is so much dependency on psychotropic drugs. 2006 Ron Paul 11:6 But, nevertheless, I come down on the side of saying no matter how good legislation like this is, it backfires; there are too many unintended consequences. In such a short period of time, all I can suggest to my colleagues is that prohibition in the ultimate sense was tried with alcohol. 2006 Ron Paul 11:7 And alcohol is still now a severe problem in this country. And we knew that Prohibition produced many more problems than the alcohol itself. I think that is true with drugs. I think we have allowed ourselves to be carried away, to a large degree, because now we have laws that lack compassion. We do know, in the medical field, that marijuana can be helpful to cancer patients and AIDS patients can be helped where our drugs are not helpful; and to me this is just sad that we override State laws that permit it. 2006 Ron Paul 11:8 The overwhelming number of people in the country now are saying that we ought to allow marijuana to be used for very sick patients. Not too long ago, just this week, I had a meeting with a student that came from a central Asian country. He was an exchange student. He says the big subject at his school was, what is the age limit when I can drink alcohol? They would ask him that and he said, there is no age limit. 2006 Ron Paul 11:9 So I asked him, I said, is there a drinking problem in your country? And he says no. He says it is uneventful. It is the excitement of something being illegal that actually makes the problem a lot worse. 2006 Ron Paul 11:10 And even in our country, we had a grand experiment from the beginning of our country up until about 35 years ago. We had very few of these laws. Yet all we can notice now is that we have spent, in today’s dollars, over $200 billion in the last 35 years, and we do not have a whole lot to show for it. 2006 Ron Paul 11:11 So I would grant you there is a serious problem. We should do whatever we can to help. I just do not think more legislation is required. 2006 Ron Paul 11:12 Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

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