On Sunday, the United States Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly told NBC’s Chuck Todd that “arresting a lot of users” was not a viable strategy for winning America’s perpetual War on Drugs.
The head of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) explained during an interview on “Meet The Press” that marijuana is scarcely America’s biggest issue along the US-Mexico border. According to Kelly, it’s the hard drugs like methamphetamine, heroin, and cocaine that represent the most daunting issues.
In the interview, Todd questioned Kelly about border enforcement and whether or not legalizing marijuana in the United States would help or hurt DHS efforts to reduce the flow of illegal narcotics into the United States.
“Yeah, marijuana is not a factor in the drug war,” explained Sec. Kelly.
Unlike Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions, who seeks to revitalize the futile war on drugs by cracking down on recreational adult use, Kelly would prefer to focus DHS resources on stopping the flow and abuse of today’s biggest killers – opioids, meth, smack, and coke: “The solution is a comprehensive drug demand reduction program in the United States that involves every man and woman of goodwill. And then rehabilitation. And then law enforcement. And then getting at the poppy fields and the coca fields in the south.”
While Kelly has little authority over the general direction of America’s drug policy, there remains hope that Sessions will stop being “surprised” by the opposition to his Reefer Madness. Particularly given the strong support Americans have recently cultivated for marijuana policy reform.
As John Kelly says, “The solution is not arresting a lot of users.”
