What would Lincoln do?

, Republicans Against Marijuana Prohibition

In the summer of 1865 the Republican party abolished slavery in the United States, after decades of struggle. Such was the GOP’s commitment to racial equality that they did not stop there, but continued to push for reforms in the post-War South, until the Republican-led Reconstruction had provided African-Americans the right to vote and other important freedoms. The party of Lincoln has a proud heritage of fighting for liberty.

Unfortunately, the party has not always maintained that heritage as it should, and so in time the enemies of liberty began to make gains. The Ku Klux Klan rose to power; resurgent Democratic legislatures passed Jim Crow laws; and Republicans in Congress began to compromise their values. And so a party which had so recently stood for freedom began to allow freedoms to be taken away.

Now the US has the new Jim Crow. Once again, people – and disproportionately, people of color – are put in chains and treated as second-class citizens. Once again, civil liberties have been taken away. Only this time around, Republicans have been complicit with Democrats in waging a cruel and senseless drug war.

Cruel, senseless, and also very expensive. It costs the American taxpayer $70 billion per year to operate the nation’s prisons, gorged to overcrowding by draconian drug laws. And what does $70 billion buy? Only more recidivism, more injustice, and more lives ruined. And to help defray the massive cost, Republicans have been complicit in instituting civil asset forfeiture laws, which amount to a multi-billion dollar industry of legalized theft, controlled monopolistically by a greedy and well-armed government. No policy could be more opposed to freedom, yet in the years since George W. Bush became president, assets seized by these despicable laws have increased over 640%.

The Republican party has lost its way, but already there are signs that it may return to its freedom-loving roots. Representative Dana Rohrabacher, a conservative from Orange County, California, has introduced the “Respect State Marijuana Laws Act” (H.R. 1523), which would finally end the federal government’s interference with states which have implemented reforms to their marijuana laws at the demands of their voters. In fact, many Republican-written or -sponsored bills have been introduced in the Congress before, but this bill is noteworthy for the strong bipartisan support building around its passage. 15 Democrats and 5 Republicans, from California to Arkansas, have already co-sponsored the bill; and just this week, history was made when the national NAACP threw its full support behind the Republican bill’s passage.

It is wonderful that so many Democrats now support the end of the destructive war on cannabis, and every single Democratic co-sponsor of H.R. 1523 deserves praise for their courage and foresightedness. But make no mistake: cannabis reform is not, and should not be, a Democratic issue. Since the celebrated days of Lincoln, the GOP proudly led the nation on the long march toward freedom. Now, with the country ready to reevaluate decades of destructive marijuana policy, Republicans should once again be leading the way.

Ann Lee, the mother of Oaksterdam University founder Richard Lee, co-founded Republicans Against Marijuana Prohibition with her husband Bob.