SF Mayor Gavin Newsom: “End this war on drugs.”

Thanks to TalkLeft, I see from this news report that San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom yesterday came out swinging with potent advocacy against the “war on drugs.”  Among other strong statements, Newsom said “shame on my party, the democratic party, because they don’t have the courage” to do anything about harms from the drug war.   Here’s a bit more:

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom proclaimed the nation’s war on drugs a total failure and insisted the crime rate would go down if the government spent money on treatment as opposed to jailing people with drug problems.

“If you want to get serious, if you want to reduce crime by 70% in this country overnight, end this war on drugs,” he told reporters at City Hall on Thursday. “You want to get serious, seriously serious about crime and violence end this war on drugs.”  The mayor maintained local jails are overcrowded with people incarcerated for drug offenses, taking up room that could be used to hold more violent criminal offenders.  He said violent criminals with lengthy felony records are being turned loose, too often.

Seems like more proof to me that we are getting ever closer to a tipping point on tough-on-crime attitudes and undue emphasis on incarceration as the “solution” to every perceived problem.

Some recent related posts:

• New Sentencing Project report on the “war on drugs”
• Politics and the war on drugs
• Could prison nation be approaching a tipping point?
• Congressional hearing on mass incarceration
• More on the JEC hearing on mass incarceration
• Obama talking about serious sentencing reform
• “Why Are So Many Americans in Prison?”
• Another strong piece examining incarceration nation