Mr. SMITH of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I
yield 2 minutes to my friend and colleague
from Texas (Mr. PAUL).
(Mr. PAUL asked and was given permission
to revise and extend his remarks.)
2010 Ron Paul 48:2
Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this
legislation. Itís called the Fair Sentencing
Act. Iíd like to rename it,
though. Iíd like to call it the Slightly
Fairer Resentencing Act, because it
really makes an attempt to correct a
very, very serious problem in equal justice
in our systems, and that effort I
think we should all applaud. I would
have much preferred H.R. 3245. I was an
original cosponsor of that along with
Congressman SCOTT, but I think this is
a typical example of trying to fix a
problem that we invite upon ourselves.
2010 Ron Paul 48:3
In economics, I adhere to the position
that once you want to do some
good in the economy, with all the best
motivations, we do things and we create
new problems and we have to go
back. If you get two new problems for
every intervention, then youíre constantly
writing laws.
2010 Ron Paul 48:4
Well, in social policy, I believe the
same thing. It was trying to improve
social policy with crack cocaine. There
was no evidence on this. It was designed
to help people, especially the
minorities that were using crack cocaine,
and they thought this was terrible,
and it turned out that its law
backfired. It actually hurt minorities,
didnít help them. Here we are trying to
correct this disparity, and it just, to
me, confirms the fact that government
management, whether it is the economy
or social policy, doesnít make a
whole lot of sense.
2010 Ron Paul 48:5
When this country decided it was
very dangerous to drink alcohol and we
had to stop it, back in those days, in
the teens of the last century, they decided
in order for the government to do
this they had to amend the Constitution.
Can you imagine anybody being
concerned today by what we do here
and say we have to amend the Constitution?
Oh, no. We amended the Constitution.
It was a bomb. It made alcohol
much more dangerous. All the drug
dealers sold the alcohol, and the alcohol
was more concentrated and less
pure. People died. People woke up and
they repealed it.
2010 Ron Paul 48:6
This is whatís going to have to happen
someday. We need to repeal the
war on drugs.
