Reading Mike Riggs’ recent
post about the future of marijuana reform in Congress, I was
struck by the quote from Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.), which
suggests how dramatically his drug policy views have changed in the
last few decades:

Marijuana decriminalization is an issue that will undoubtedly
become more prevalent over time. Things are very different from
when I chaired the House Select Committee on Narcotics Abuse and
Control back in the 1980s. Polls have shown that since October
2011, at least 50 percent of Americans favor legalization at the
federal level—a number that is on the rise.

The U.S. already has the highest incarceration rate in the
world. We lock up the majority of inmates for non-violent
drug-related crimes. Instead of attacking the consumers, we should
give them alternatives to poverty and street life to steer them
away from drug abuse in the first place. It simply doesn’t make
sense to waste billions of dollars putting hundreds of thousands of
Americans in prison for non-violent offenses of the law.

Back in the 1980s, by contrast, Rangel was such a hardline drug
warrior that he accused Ronald Reagan of being soft on the issue
(although, like our current drug
czar and the
senior senator from California, he had kind words for the first
lady’s “Just Say No” campaign). In
1989 Ebony profiled
Rangel as “The Front-Line General in the War on Drugs.” “We need
outrage!” he told the magazine. “I don’t know what is behind the
lackadaisical attitudes towards drugs, but I do know that the
American people have made it abundantly clear: They are outraged by
the indifference of the U.S. government to this problem.”
Ebony reported that Rangel also was”outraged that
there has even been debate on the possibility of legalizing drugs,
which, he says, would be ‘moral and political suicide.'” As
recently as 1998, Rangel was still saying
“the very idea of legalizing drugs in this country is
counterproductive,” asserting that “legalization of drugs would be
a nightmare…in minority communities.” Unlike
prohibition?

Not surprisingly, Rangel was keen on severe punishments for drug
dealers. He backed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, which
established the mandatory minimum sentences that have helped give
us “the
highest incarceration rate in the world.” In a 1991
Firing Line debate, he told
William F. Buckley, “We should not allow people to be able to
distribute this poison without the fear that maybe they might be
arrested and put in jail.” Even while arguing that “the criminal
justice system is not working,” he recommended a mandatory life
sentence for anyone who sells drugs to a minor.

I vividly remember arguing with Rangel at a drug policy seminar
in Maryland around this time. Although I certainly did not expect
him to agree with the libertarian position on drug prohibition, I
was surprised by his refusal to concede that trying to prevent
consensual transactions between adults raises Fourth Amendment
issues and by the vehemence of his opposition to
methadone-based heroin treatment, which put him to the right of
Richard
Nixon, often identified as the author of the modern-day war on
drugs.

For all I know, Rangel still has a bee in his bonnet about
methadone treatment (which I also have problems with, for somewhat
different reasons). But like other black leaders, he has had second
thoughts about mandatory minimums. In a 2007 Huffington
Post op-ed piece, he
wrote:

The sudden, frightening epidemic of a new street drug—crack
cocaine—and the drug induced death of basketball star Len Bias in
1986—impelled besieged lawmakers to enact stiff punishments for
crack cocaine offenses, including long mandatory minimum jail
sentences. Instead of reducing drug addiction and crime, those
laws—however well-intentioned, swelled prison populations, created
a sentencing divide that victimized young Black men, left a
generation of children fatherless, and drove up the costs of a
justice system focused more on harsh punishment than
rehabilitation.

Rangel was a little too quick to excuse his own complicity in
establishing the draconian sentences he now decries. Crack
“impelled” him, a “besieged” and “well-intentioned”
legislator, to support those absurdly harsh penalties? But to
his credit, Rangel has tried to rectify his error: For the
last five years or so, he has
sponsored legislation aimed at eliminating the
senseless sentencing disparity between crack cocaine and
cocaine powder, which was created by the Rangel-supported Anti-Drug
Abuse Act of 1986. So far Congress has not gone that far, although
two years ago it shrank
the gap substantially. Rangel touts his sentencing reform bill on
his website, where he says
“we should focus our law enforcement efforts away from drug addicts
and small-time dealers onto the big-time drug kingpins who supply
them.”

Those are not exactly the words of a legalizer. But last summer
Rangel co-sponsored
the Ending Federal Marijuana Prohibition Act of 2011, a bill
introduced
by Reps. Ron Paul (R-Texas) and Barney Frank (D-Mass.) that would
eliminate federal criminal penalties for production, distribution,
and possession of the drug, leaving the states free to address the
issue as they see fit. He
explained his “proud” support for the bill as part of his
effort to “seriously re-examine our draconian sentencing policies
for drug-related crimes.”

Are these shifts based on a genuine change of heart or a sense
of which direction the political winds are blowing (especially,
perhaps, in Rangel’s Harlem district, where he faces a tough

re-election battle this year)? A little of both, I
suspect. Even corrupt
old hacks have pangs of conscience from time to time. 

More on Rangel
here.