Newt Gingrich (photo courtesy Gage Skidmore via wikimedia.org)

“I think the California experience is that medical marijuana becomes a joke.” “My general belief is that we ought to be much more aggressive about drug policy.” “In my mind it means having steeper economic penalties and it means having a willingness to do more drug testing.” “I think if you are, for example, the leader of a cartel, sure.” (When asked if he supports killing drug smugglers) “Places like Singapore have been the most successful at doing that. They've been very draconian. And they have communicated with great intention that they intend to stop drugs from coming into their country.” [Yahoo News]

Ever since Newt Gingrich became the latest front-runner for the republican presidential nomination, a lot of people have been reminding us how horrible he is on drug policy issues. Heck, even Next Gingrich has been reminding us how horrible Newt Gingrich is on drug policy issues:

Well yeah, by hanging people. They’ve been killing people for marijuana, which can’t even kill you by itself. And Newt Gingrich thinks that’s cool, even though he himself has smoked marijuana. It makes you wonder why Newt Gingrich doesn’t go track down the people who gave him marijuana in college…and kill them.

Seriously, this guy is such a screwball he should be hosting a show on AM radio, not polling in first place among republican presidential candidates. I mean, Singapore? Really? I’ve been following the drug war debate for a long time, and I’ve seen a lot of the worst drug warriors in the world perform live: John Walters, Bill Bennett, Nora Volkow, David Murray, Kevin Sabet, to name a few, but I’ve never heard anyone come along saying that we need to be more like Singapore.

It’s an idea so violently ignorant, so recklessly unhinged, that only a lone fool acting alone would propose it, perhaps months after the resignation of the people whose job it is to stop you from saying such things.

(This article was published by StoptheDrugWar.org's lobbying arm, the Drug Reform Coordination Network, which also shares the cost of maintaining this web site. DRCNet Foundation takes no positions on candidates for public office, in compliance with section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, and does not pay for reporting that could be interpreted or misinterpreted as doing so.)