You read that correctly. Two ounces of weed coming over the border is worthy of the most stringent sentence available. Death for possession of a plant. Not dealing it or smoking it. It is this sort of mind set that now gives us the dubious distinction of being the country with the most incarcerated citizens. It is this sort of mind set that has more African Americans in prison now than were enslaved in 1850.
On Saturday’s edition of “Up With Chris Hayes,” Gary Johnson brought up an old Newt Gingrich idea I hadn’t heard before: Putting individuals who brought more than two ounces of marijuana into the United States to death. That sounded extreme, even for Gingrich. So I looked it up. And sure enough, there it is: “The Drug Importer Death Penalty Act of 1996.” What makes the bill even more amazing is that Gingrich himself is a confessed pot smoker. When he was young, he said, experimenting with drugs “was a sign we were alive and in graduate school in that era.”
H.R. 4170: Drug Importer Death Penalty Act of 1996
9/25/1996--Introduced.
Drug Importer Death Penalty Act of 1996 - Amends the Controlled Substances Import and Export Act to direct the court to sentence a person convicted of bringing into the United States a proscribed quantity of a mixture or substance containing a controlled substance in an amount the Attorney General has determined is equal to 100 usual dosage amounts to life imprisonment without possibility of release (or, if the defendant has violated such provision on more than one occasion and if certain requirements under the Federal criminal code are met, to death). Makes conforming amendments to the code.
Other wonderful legislation from the Congress of this fined ethics violator? Welfare reform. Yes, this is the man that is responsible for the fact that welfare funds are denied to your family after five years. It takes eighteen years to raise a child but we already know Republicans can't do math.