Asa Hutchinson Quotes
Certainly our democracy is not going to fall if you legalize marijuana.
Asa Hutchinson, Undersecretary of Homeland Security, U. S. Congressman (Republican, AR), Administrator, Drug Enforcement Administration, CNN Situation Room, March 5, 2013
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
This was a great surprise to most conservatives who assumed that Robertson, a major conservative leader and ordained minister would be opposed to drug legalization.
President Barack Obama had the week before, made a speech observing the fact that marijuana was less dangerous then alcohol.
The DEA is the Drug Enforcement Administration.
That was certainly true at that time in the United States. Marijuana was illegal, but alcohol and nicotine—cigarettes—were legal. Yet, over 350,000 deaths a year were caused by nicotine, over 100,000 alcohol related death the epidemiologists had found. But the number of marijuana caused death was just a handful, although there were hunreds of deaths of drug dealers fighting for territory, Nicotine an alcohol science had proved was addicting. Not so for marijuana which for some people was habituating, but marijuana never met the scientific criteria for addiction.
Marijuana was and still is a health and social problem in that people who tend to use it---especially young people---tend not to focus on their friendships, their work and study obligations, their own development and welfare. However it is nowhere near the degree of deleterious problems of alcohol and other drugs like heroin, cocaine, and methamphetamine. There is no record of anyone dying from an over dose or marijuana while alcohol and other drugs kill hundreds if not thousands a year. But none of those health emergencies compare with the flu which each year kills over 20,000 Americans who do not get inoculations or highway crashes which kill about 50,000. Yet Nixon did not characterize these as “national emergencies.”
William Asa Hutchinson II (/ˈeɪsə/, AY-sə) is an American politician serving as the 46th and current Governor of Arkansas since 2015. A member of the Republican Party, he previously was the U.S. Attorney for the Fort Smith-based Western District of Arkansas (1982–1985), U.S. Representative for Arkansas's 3rd congressional district (1997–2001), Administrator of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (2001–2003) and the first Undersecretary for Border and Transportation Security at the United States Department of Homeland Security (2003–2005).
