Today, President Obama toured a drug rehab center in Newark and at the same time promoted his release of 6,000 drug dealers from federal prisons.
http://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2015/11/02/in-newark-obama-to-call-for-breaking-cycle-of-incarceration
Amazing. It is precisely because of the drug dealers that we have drug treatment centers. Yet this president talks as if he is releasing 6,000 drug users from those federal prisons.
As retired DEA agent, I can assure you that nobody is sitting in federal prison for using drugs. There may be some who pled down to a possession charge when they were originally charged with dealing, or some may have violated parole by using drugs, but to claim that these people's only offense was using drugs is a lie. DEA does not now nor has it ever enforced simple possession laws.
Obama is releasing 6,000 drug traffickers and dealers. He is sending the wrong message to these people who work in -or are patients- in these rehab centers.
And if he thinks drug trafficking is a non-violent offense, he is smoking his socks.
According to the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, just 16% of state prisoners are doing time for drug offenses; only 3.6% of those prisoners are in for mere drug possession. While drug offenders do constitute about 50% of the Federal inmate population, only 13% of all prisoners in the U.S. are doing Federal time. Further, in 2014, less than 1% of Federal drug sentences were for mere drug possession (almost, if not in fact all, as a result of plea-bargaining as mentioned by Gary). The remaining 99%-plus involved trafficking.
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