During a town hall on the Fox News Channel on Tuesday, U.S. Senate candidate Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH) responded to questions on his previous statement in favor of releasing all nonviolent criminals by stating that “the focus is marijuana crimes, in my mind,” and “what I’m talking about here is marijuana crimes.”
Co-host Martha MacCallum asked, [relevant exchange begins around 2:15] “You also said that you thought that nonviolent criminals should be released from prison. And a lot of people fall into that nonviolent category, including drug traffickers, including drug possession, including people who distribute child pornography, so all those people should be let out?”
Ryan responded, “Well, what I’m talking about here is marijuana crimes. I think we need to legalize marijuana. I think –.”
MacCallum then cut in to say, “Well, you said all nonviolent criminals out for sure.”
Ryan responded, “I think the focus is marijuana crimes, in my mind, right? We spend — this may be the stupidest expenditure of federal money and public taxpayer money in the history of our country. You get caught with marijuana, then you end up in prison, and that is insane for us. We should take — we should tax the marijuana and we should put it into addiction treatment. We should use it to keep fentanyl and these hardcore drugs out of our country, out of our society. We should invest into shop class. We should invest into early childhood education. There are so many better ways to spend this money than locking somebody up for marijuana crimes, and especially when white and black people use marijuana equally, black people are six times more likely to go to prison. That’s an unfair system. I’m sorry, it just doesn’t make any sense to me.”
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