Last Updated October 14, 2004

Republican | www.GeorgeWBush.com

Campaign Contact Info:
BUSH-CHENEY '04, Inc.
P.O. BOX 10648
Arlington, VA 22210

703.647.2700 (phone)
703.647.2993 (fax)
BushCheney04@GeorgeWBush.com (email)

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The Bush Administration has pursued these policies and legislation:

• Through the PATRIOT Act, expanded the government’s powers under the guise of terrorism defense (2001). The Act makes it easier to seize the property of those accused of drug possession while making it easier for the government to spy on citizens without the checks and balances needed to prevent abuse.
• Undermined state medical marijuana laws by using the DEA to raid the homes and businesses of sick patients and their caregivers.
• Permitted his attorney general, John Ashcroft, to pressure U.S. attorneys and judges not to allow plea bargains or reduced sentences in drug cases.
• Blocked attempts to reduce the grievous disparity in sentencing between those arrested for possessing solid (or rock) cocaine, identified more with the urban poor, and powder, identified more by middle and upper class whites. Crack-cocaine is the only drug for which the first offense of simple possession can trigger a federal mandatory minimum sentence.
• Called for more research into the effects of drug use while, at the same time, actively obstructing research into medical marijuana.
• Escalated the U.S. commitment to the burgeoning civil strife in Colombia, sending military equipment, personnel and billions of dollars in interdiction aid including funding for a dangerous campaign of aerial spraying that has sickened people and killed livestock and crops.
• Led, through the Office of National Drug Control Policy, failed advertising, education, and incarceration campaigns while opposing the effective strategy of harm reduction.

More Information:

George W. Bush, the 43rd President of the United States, was born in New Haven, Connecticut and grew up in Texas. He earned a bachelor's degree from Yale University and an MBA from Harvard Business School. Bush then held jobs in the oil business, on his father’s presidential campaign, and as an owner of the Texas Rangers baseball team before spending six years as governor of Texas.

As a candidate, Bush spoke candidly and optimistically about reforming drug policies. He came out in favor of states’ rights to determine their own stance on medical marijuana, telling the Dallas Morning News that “each state can choose that decision as they so choose.”

Two days before his inauguration, Bush appeared on Larry King Live and spoke about the need for drug treatment, saying, “Addiction to alcohol or addiction to drugs is an illness. And we haven’t done a very good job, thus far, of curing people from that illness.” On the same program, Bush spoke about sentencing disparities in cocaine-possession cases, saying that they “ought to be addressed by making sure the powder-cocaine and the crack-cocaine penalties are the same. I don’t believe we ought to be discriminatory.” Bush also addressed mandatory minimum sentences, observing that “a lot of people are coming to the realization that maybe long minimum sentences for the first-time users may not be the best way to occupy jail space and/or heal people from their disease. And,” Bush said, “I’m willing to look at that.”

As president, while Bush has increased funding for drug treatment, he has continued and escalated an already aggressive federal drug policy that relies primarily on punishment as a means of deterrence. Bush has escalated the drug war primarily by linking it to his war on terror, and expanding the government’s ability to spy on its residents through the Office of Homeland Security and PATRIOT Act.

In his February 2001 speech introducing John Walters as the nation’s drug czar, Bush said, “Drug use threatens everything, everything that is best about our country. It breaks the bonds between parents and children. It turns productive citizens into addicts. It transforms schools into places of violence and chaos. It makes playgrounds into crime scenes. It supports gangs here at home. And abroad, it's so important for Americans to know that the traffic in drugs finances the work of terror, sustaining terrorists – that terrorists use drug profits to fund their cells to commit acts of murder. If you quit drugs, you join the fight against terror in America.”