It’s newsworthy because it rarely happens: Pat Robertson said something reasonable.
He was talking about America’s marijuana policy:
“There’s something else we’ve got to recognize. We’re locking up people who take a couple of puffs of marijuana, and the next thing you know, they’ve got ten years. They’ve got mandatory sentences. These judges say, they throw up their hands and say there’s nothing we can do, there’s mandatory sentences. We’ve got to take a look at what we’re considering crimes and that’s one of them. I mean, I’m not exactly for the use of drugs, don’t get me wrong, but I just believe that criminalizing marijuana, criminalizing the possession of a few ounces of pot, and that kind of thing, I mean it’s just costing us a fortune and it’s ruining young people. Young people go into prisons, they go in as youths, and they come out as hardened criminals and it’s not a good thing.”
Chris Roslan, a spokesperson for CBN, tried to tone down the message after the fact:
Dr. Robertson did not call for the decriminalization of marijuana. He was advocating that our government revisit the severity of the existing laws because mandatory drug sentences do harm to many young people who go to prison and come out as hardened criminals. He was also pointing out that these mandatory sentences needlessly cost our government millions of dollars when there are better approaches available. Dr. Robertson’s comments followed a CBN News story about a group of conservatives who have proven that faith-based rehabilitation for criminals has resulted in lower repeat offenders and saved the government millions of dollars. Dr. Robertson unequivocally stated that he is against the use of illegal drugs.
I don’t see how the comments he made in the video are calling for anything but decriminalization of pot.
Don’t you love how, when Robertson finally says something logical, his PR staff is hard at work trying to explain why he didn’t mean it?