Marco Rubio Apparently Isn’t Buying Into Criminal-Justice Reforms
The Florida senator seems to be behind the times on the war on drugs, unlike the rest of the 2016 GOP field.
Olivia Nuzzi
10.03.14
As prominent Republicans across the country lead the way on criminal-justice reform, at least one—Florida Sen. Marco Rubio—seems to be casually clinging to the war on drugs, and it could have fatal consequences for his potential presidential bid.
In an op-ed for the conservative Washington Times, Rubio made the noncontroversial case that whomever succeeds Eric Holder as attorney general should be “committed to the Constitution,” and in doing so, seemed to make a vague endorsement of the war on drugs—placing him out of step with a large and loud faction of the conservative movement.
“While individuals from a variety of perspectives have made a compelling case that American law has been over-criminalized and over-federalized,” Rubio wrote, “…reform should not begin with careless weakening of drug laws that have done so much to help end the violence and mayhem that plagued American cities in prior decades.”
As reported by The Daily Beast in April, the right wing seemed to be arriving at the consensus that the war on drugs has failed, and modern criminal-justice policy needs a major overhaul at both the state and federal level. Emma Roller of the National Journal notes that even as crime rates have fallen, incarceration rates have stayed the same, and the rate of incarcerated parents has risen dramatically since the early 1990s.
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