Mr. Gingrich said his proposal, which he said he would make in a bill to be filed next month, would impose a mandatory death penalty on people convicted of bringing illegal drugs into the United States.
Why? because he loves children.
I have made the decision that I love our children enough that we will kill you if you do this."
And, he followed through:
He went on to introduce H.R. 4170 (Drug Importer Death Penalty Act of 1996) to the House of Representatives, which sought to “provide a sentence of death for certain importations of significant quantities of controlled substances”.
Section 2: Increased Penalties For International Drug Trafficking
What a stupid idea. No country in Central or South America, with the possible exception of Guatemala or Belize, including Mexico, would honor our request for extradition if we didn't take the death penalty off the table. The U.S. was the only country in either North or South America to carry out an execution in 2010. He was really offering the biggest importers, who never personally set foot in the U.S. unless they get extradited, a free pass.
At one time, Newt was for medical marijuana, acknowledging he smoked it and it was normal to do so.
“That was a sign we were alive and in graduate school in that era" May 1, 1995, New York Magazine, page 42
As a congressman in 1982, he wrote the AMA praising its support for medical pot and criticizing federal laws that prohibited it.
We believe licensed physicians are competent to employ marijuana, and patients have a right to obtain marijuana legally, under medical supervision, from a regulated source. The medical prohibition does not prevent seriously ill patients from employing marijuana; it simply deprives them of medical supervision and denies them access to a regulated medical substance…
....This outdated federal prohibition is corrupting the intent of the state laws and depriving thousands of glaucoma and cancer patients of the medical care promised them by their state legislatures…
In 1981, he introduced a bill removing penalties from medical marijuana in some circumstances. September 16, 1981, H.R.4498, 97th Congress, 2D Session
By 1996, he did a complete about-face. Why?
See, when I smoked pot it was illegal, but not immoral. Now, it is illegal AND immoral. The law didn't change, only the morality… That's why you get to go to jail and I don't.” August 8, 1996, Wall Street Journal
Memo to Newt: If you've been offering to run for President for 16 years, and your party has never taken you up on it, can't you get the hint they don't want you?
