[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 2 (Thursday, January 4, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S39-S42]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Rescinding the Cole Memo
Mr. BOOKER. Mr. President, I rise today because earlier on this day,
the Trump administration and Attorney General Jeff Sessions rescinded
the Justice Department's policy known as the Cole memo.
The Cole memo is a policy issued under the Obama administration
instructing prosecutors to shift away
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from a focus on nonviolent marijuana crimes and toward more serious
crimes that threaten our communities. This memo was a critical step and
a move in the right direction, undoing some of the catastrophic damage
that has been caused by the failed War on Drugs. It was a step forward
for the Federal Government in mending our broken drug policies that
have so hurt our Nation in so many ways. I believe it was a step
forward that the vast majority of Americans who believe the War on
Drugs failed agree with. It was a step forward that improved Americans'
safety, saved money, and better aligned our laws with our most
fundamental values of fairness, equality, and justice. Yet, today,
Attorney General Jeff Sessions has instructed the Department of Justice
to not just double down on failed policy but to turn back the clock and
undermine the well-being of our country.
The policy change actually goes against what Jeff Sessions promised
elected officials in this body before his confirmation. We already
heard from the other Cory in the Senate--Republican Senator Cory
Gardner--that he had a commitment from the Attorney General before his
confirmation that this is not what he would do.
This is an attack on our most sacred ideals and the very purpose of
the Department of Justice, which is to protect Americans, to elevate
ideals of justice, and to do right by people. It is a failure of this
administration, which said--our President said during his campaign that
he would honor what States are doing. It is a betrayal by our Attorney
General, who gave a commitment to at least one Republican Member of
this body. But most significantly, it will hurt America. It ignores the
fact that there is a growing bipartisan consensus that the War on Drugs
has failed. It sacrifices our critical, urgently needed resources in
our communities, violating our values and destroying families, and has
failed to make us safer.
Let me walk through those four points one by one--first, this massive
waste of public resources that are urgently needed in other areas. In
the last four decades in this country, we have spent so much on these
policies at the same time that we are disinvesting from public
education, from our public colleges, disinvesting from investments and
innovation, investments in science and research. Yet we have spent
trillions of dollars on this failed War on Drugs.
We have created a nation that says we are the land of the free, but
we are the incarceration nation on the planet Earth. One out of every
four incarcerated people on this planet is imprisoned here in the
United States of America. One out of every three incarcerated women on
the planet is incarcerated right here in the United States of America.
Between the time of 1990 and 2005, we have devoted so much of our
resources to building new prisons. During that time, we were building a
new prison in the United States every 10 days to keep up with the
massive amount of people who were being driven into our prisons. One
new prison was being built every 10 days as our infrastructure and our
roads and bridges crumbled.
We have sidelined the resources of our law enforcement officials. I
know this, having been a former mayor. The precious time, resources,
and energy of our law enforcement officials have been sidelined,
redirecting them to marijuana enforcement, and for what?
At a time when we have real issues to deal with in our country, such
as a drug epidemic; at a time when people cannot afford treatment and
when there are waiting lists for treatment because we don't have the
resources to deal with this opioid epidemic, we are instead using our
resources to enforce marijuana laws.
The Centers for Disease Control, the CDC, reported last year that 91
Americans die every single day from the opioid epidemic in this
country. Meanwhile, according to FBI data from 2014, one American is
arrested every single minute for marijuana possession--one American
every minute for marijuana possession. That is about 1,700 Americans
being arrested every day for marijuana possession, using police
resources, resources to put people in jail, to hold them, to feed them,
court resources. All that can be used better and invested in our
society to deal with the ravages of the opioid epidemic. Police
resources that could be used to chase after violent offenders are
instead being used for marijuana possession. It is somehow crazy that
we think we can arrest our way out of a problem.
Doubling down on these failed efforts makes no sense. It is a massive
waste of our precious resources as a society.
No. 2, it is also perpetuating injustice in our country. We believe
that everyone in this Nation should have equal justice under the law.
Those are the words written on the Supreme Court. But we know this War
on Drugs has not been a War on Drugs, it has been a war on people--and
not all people but certain people, the most vulnerable people. It has
been a war on people, a war on mentally ill people. It has been a war
on people of color.
The unequal application of marijuana laws has created a justice
system where outcomes are often more dependent upon race and class than
dependent upon guilt or innocence. In privileged communities and places
all across this country, marijuana is being used with little fear of
consequences and openly spoken about and joked about with little
understanding of the painful fact that the War on Drugs in America has
scarcely affected their lives but the War on Drugs, because of the
unequal application of the laws, is affecting people in other
communities.
I have seen this personally. I went to Stanford and to Yale, and I
watched drug use being done openly--marijuana use. There are no FBI
investigations, no sting operations set up to go after the privileged
in this country.
There are people in this body who openly admit to using marijuana
with no consequence. But if you are poor or vulnerable in the United
States of America, they are coming after you, and there will be
consequences. I have had countless conversations with elected officials
about their own personal drug use because it is outrageous to me, this
outrageous hypocrisy that they could flaunt drug rules while poor
people and people of color suffer as a result of our marijuana laws.
The facts are clear. The disproportionate enforcement of marijuana
laws has helped to create a system of massive injustice in our country,
and it is obvious. There is no difference in America between Blacks and
Whites using marijuana, no difference between Blacks and Whites selling
marijuana. Blacks are 3.7 times more likely to be arrested for
marijuana possession than a White person is. This is a targeting of
certain communities, a targeting of low-income people who are having
their lives devastated by this unequal application of the law. Jeff
Sessions' announcement today will make the problem worse.
People don't understand what it means to have a felony conviction for
marijuana possession. Most people have no understanding that this is a
lifetime sentence in America. It not only affects the individual's
ability to get a job, you can't get a Pell grant if you have a felony
conviction for marijuana usage, which many people in this body have
done. You can't get a business license with a felony conviction for
marijuana. You can't get food stamps. You can't get public housing.
It devastates individuals economically, but it devastates their
families as well. It destroys the lives of children when suddenly the
earner in their family, who is guilty of no more a serious crime than
some of my colleagues--suddenly they have to pick up the pieces after
one of their parents is sent away to prison. Missing 1 or 2 days of
work often means losing your job, not being able to make your car
payment or rental payment. We know that for children, where their
father is in prison, they are more than five times more likely than
their peers to be expelled or suspended from school.
This marijuana enforcement is devastating families--the fundamental
building blocks of communities--and it is devastating communities.
These laws weaken our overall economic health. One study found that if
it weren't for the mass incarceration explosion as a result of the War
on Drugs, the poverty rate in this country would be 20 percent lower.
We have a self-inflicted wound by wasting the resources--police
resources and financial resources--of this country, and we have another
self-inflicted wound by destroying families and communities
economically.
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It also has hurt our safety as a country. There are communities all
across this Nation that worry about the safety of their children, the
safety of their families, and the safety of their neighborhoods. By
taking these critical resources away from law enforcement, this is a
sacrifice of our efforts to make communities safe and strong.
In 2016, more Americans were arrested for marijuana possession than
for all violent crimes combined. How many unsolved murders are there?
How many unsolved assaults? How much violence and crime should our
police be investigating as opposed to dealing with marijuana
prohibition? We have fewer police resources, fewer officers. We have
occupied our prisons with more marijuana arrests than for rape, murder,
aggravated assault, or even the unsolved robberies alone in our country
because we are spending our precious police resources on marijuana
prohibition. Our history shows this is true.
Historians now attest to the complete and utter failure of another
prohibition in this country, which is the prohibition of alcohol. It
arguably made people less safe. It led to more drinking and was a blow
to our economy and the ability of our officers to do their job. It was
even a blow to officers' safety and security.
If we are serious about making our communities safer or stronger,
families more secure, we should be focusing on how to undo the
catastrophic damage of marijuana prohibition, not double down on it.
I say all of this as someone who ran a police department in Newark.
It was under my authority as mayor. My officers would talk about the
churn of people they arrested again and again on nonviolent charges--
which, by the way, many of our law enforcement officers may have
engaged in and people in positions of authority, like Senators and
Presidents, have done themselves, deepening the distrust between
officers and the community.
I saw firsthand how the disproportionate enforcement of our drug laws
made communities of mine overcriminalized and underprotected--
overcriminalizing possession of marijuana and underprotecting them on
serious crimes.
This is an issue which I know too personally. I have seen this from
walking privileged and elite communities like universities or here in
Washington, and I know it because I may be the only Senator who, when I
go home, I go home to an inner-city community. I go home to a community
where my census track is about $14,000 per household. I love my
neighborhood. I love my community. I love my neighbors, but it is
outrageous to me that communities like mine and all over this country
have seen the vicious impact of the War on Drugs, while other
communities--elite communities--can brag and joke about their marijuana
usage.
I am proud that I spent most of my adult life working with the people
of Newark, NJ--a city that is rich with culture, that is rich with art,
that is rich with civic engagement--but I know, from Camden to
Paterson, to Passaic, to Newark, there are communities like mine that,
every single day, are getting the devastating blow of this
prohibition--this war on marijuana.
I see the anguish people feel about the unjustness and the unfairness
of it all and having lives upended for getting caught with small
amounts of marijuana. I have seen countless people who couldn't find a
job or a decent place to live to support their families.
I will never forget, as a city councilman in Newark, waiting in line
at the DMV. A guy came over and told me the story that he was issued a
uniform. He finally had a job that had a pension. He could support his
family and move out of a bad neighborhood into a better one. He was so
excited. They ran his record, and 18 years earlier he had a nonviolent,
marijuana-related charge, and they took it all away from him. Think
about that comparison to the highest office in the land, where
marijuana users have occupied with no consequence--the hypocrisy of it
all.
These aren't just a few people. These are hundreds of thousands of
Americans who are bearing the brunt of nonviolent charges for
marijuana. They have had their lives destroyed. They have that lifetime
sentence of, time and time again, having to check a box about a
marijuana arrest, having their uniforms taken away, opportunities
closed.
I have seen how these laws make us less safe. When are we going to
get back to this understanding that we--all of us as Americans--put our
hand on our heart and we make a pledge; we swear an oath that we will
be a nation of liberty and justice, not for the privileged, not for the
elite, but we will be a nation of liberty and justice for all.
Countless people have talked about equal justice under the law. They
have talked about these ideals and principles from this floor. They
talked about it in the suffrage movement. They talked about it in the
civil rights movement. It goes all the way back to slavery. Frederick
Douglass, on the 24th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation,
made a statement that was as true then as it is now. He said:
Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where
ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel
that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob
and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be
safe.
Well, this is the War on Drugs. This is the marijuana prohibition. It
has been a systematic oppression of poor people in our country. It has
destroyed and devastated individuals, families, communities, and
cities. It has bled our national treasure. It has filled our jails to
the point where we had to build more and more of them. It has taken
away resources from investing in drug treatment or education, which we
know not only drives down drug use but empowers people economically.
This is the War on Drugs. This is the war on marijuana. Attorney
General Sessions' policy rescission today will only make these problems
worse, at a time that the majority of the American public agrees with
me--agrees that this prohibition must end. The majority of the American
people understand that this policy makes our communities less safe,
wastes taxpayers' money, makes it more difficult for police officers to
do their jobs, and ultimately hurts the struggling folks at the bottom
of the economic ladder most. It disproportionately affects Black and
Brown Americans. They are the ones who are bearing the brunt of our
failure to get rid of this prohibition.
Let's be clear about what this setback is. The American people know
the War on Drugs has failed. They want change. Republicans and
Democrats and Independents in States all across our country are making
change at their legislature, at the ballot box--voting in a repeal of
these awful, unfair, wasteful policies all across this country. In red
States and blue States, Americans are marching, are standing up, and
are fighting to change these laws.
We know States that have legalized marijuana have seen a massive
increase in revenue and decreased rates of serious crime. Crime is
going down in those communities. They have been able to put more
resources to use to address urgent public needs like education and
infrastructure.
In Colorado, arrest rates have decreased and State revenue has
increased. Washington State has seen a 10-percent decrease in violent
crime over the 3-year period following legalization.
It is time for Congress to step up to the plate. It is time for us to
once again live up to our oath. It is time for us once again to fight
to make our country a place of liberty and justice for all.
I know right now Attorney General Jeff Sessions and President Trump
are standing squarely on the wrong side of history. I know what our
ancestors have taught us about the arc of the moral universe bending
toward justice. I know this is not a matter of if but a matter of when
we will have sane marijuana policies in this country and end the
prohibition that is destroying neighborhoods. I know these things.
How long will people suffer? How long will we waste resources? How
long will we make ourselves less safe? How long? This fight is more
than about a substance--a plant. It is more. It is about the soul of
our Nation. It is about our ideals. It is about justice. It is about
justice for veterans who rely on medical marijuana to treat their PTSD.
They fought for us, they stood for us, and now, according to Jeff
Sessions, with the use of medical marijuana to deal with their PTSD,
they are criminals.
That is not the America I believe in. It is about justice for the man
who has
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a criminal record for doing something that three out of four Presidents
have done--who now can't get a job, can't get a business license, and
can't move his family to a better home.
This is not justice. This is not the America I know we are. This is
about the mother I stood next to with her child who had Dravet
syndrome--who fell into seizure after seizure multiple times a day--who
was a marijuana refugee, leaving a State that didn't end prohibition to
go to a State that had medical marijuana laws. According to Jeff
Sessions, she is a criminal.
This is not our America. This is not the land of truth and justice to
treat a parent like that--like a criminal. This is about families and
communities that too long have been fractured by the inaction of this
body to address the overcriminalization of our country. This is about
the very values people fight for and stand for. This is about who we
will be. We cannot fall into this Nation where the privileged and the
elite have certain laws and the poor and the struggling have others.
What Jeff Sessions did today is unconscionable, unacceptable, and I
will fight against it because when I go home, I see the communities in
struggle. I can't turn my head and not understand that there are
millions of Americans who are hurting from this decades-long War on
Drugs.
This is a self-inflicted wound that goes deep to the bone of our
country. It undermines our health and well-being, and too many suffer
because of it. We have to fight. I feel this sense of hopefulness
because around this country, Democrats and Republicans on the State
level are making changes. They are marching forward. They are undoing
past wrongs. I feel a sense of hope and promise, and even though today
we were delivered a painful blow by our Federal Government to cast a
shadow against every American citizen who is using medical marijuana--
every American citizen who is doing things Senators have done--I still
know that truth will go marching on. I still know we are a nation of
justice. I know we are better than this, and I know what our future
holds.
I ask my colleagues to reject this action by the Attorney General, to
speak out against this devastating reality. There are Senators here who
represent States where the people have spoken. It is now time we speak
for the people. It is now time we speak for our country's ideals. It is
now time we don't just speak the words of our pledge but we make this
country, in truth, a nation of liberty and justice for all.
Thank you.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.