Jacob Sullum takes exception to my post the other day on Jim Webb and the drug war. “It’s sad that politicians are deemed praiseworthy simply for acknowledging the plain truth,” Sullum writes about Webb’s views on interdiction, and further notes that “Nowadays, it is not true that the government is ‘locking up people for mere possession and use of marijuana,’” though it is is still arresting them. If Webb is simply against literally locking people up, he’s not in favor of anything other than what we already have: “If Webb had said ‘the time has come to stop arresting people for mere possession and use of marijuana,’ that would represent progress.”

I’ll only go so far in defending Webb, since as I said in my original post, his views in this regard are not so different from those of the typical liberal of 30 or years ago, which falls well short of the policy I’d like to see: an end to the drug war tout court. Sullum is right to point out that Webb is not explicitly advocating decriminalization of marijuana — and, when dealing with a slippery-tongued politician (even Webb) one has to be careful of tricky turns of phrase. Nevertheless, let me point out that the passages I quoted from A Time to Fight come in the context of an entire chapter directed against the prison-industrial complex. I think Sullum would appreciate Webb’s acknowledgment of the key role that mandatory minimums have played in creating that industry:

Twenty years ago, lawmakers frustrated with what they viewed as too much discretion beinn allowed judges decided to institute mandatory sentencing and harsher parole standards. By legislative decree, the mandatory minimum penalty for possessing five grams of crack cocaine, roughly equal to two packets of sugar, became a five-year prison sentence. Since 1986, approximately 100,000 people have been imprisoned as a result of these mandatory sentences, most of them nonviolent drug users and small-time dealers, with very few drug kingpins affected. Similarly, parole revocations are now estimated to account for one-third of all admissions to prison, twice the rate of the early 1980s.

This too counts as “acknowledging a plain truth,” but it’s praiseworthy nonetheless. Everyone knows full well that this is not a vote-getting: Americans do not typically reward politicians who say they will turn more crack possessors out on the streets. The public is into building prisons and filling them up, not asking questions about what the heck is wrong with a country that has a larger per-capita prison population than semi-Communist China. What makes all of this is doubly praiseworthy coming from Webb is that, to me at least, it’s unexpected: I knew that he was solid on second-amendment rights, but I had no idea where the ex-Marine had sensible views on the drug war.

Just how sensible is hard to say. Webb is short on concrete proposals — he likes the Japanese prison system and he rhapsodizes about the ability of “Uncle Sam’s Misguided Children’s” to take “some of the most headstrong, aggressive, antiauthoritarian members of our society and chang[e] the direction of their lives.” Does he want to send drug offenders to boot camp? I don’t think so, but he doesn’t say what exactly he does have in mind. “We cannot advertise to the world that we live in a fair system if we are preventing large numbers of our citizens from participating in this process [i.e., having a chance succeed] owing to early mistakes that involve stupidity, peer pressure, or nonviolent conduct.” Great. But what follows?

The chapter as a whole leaves the clear impression that Webb wants fewer prisoners and fewer nonviolent offenders going to jail. If he’s throwing up a smokescreen, it’s hard to see what he stands to gain: the public doesn’t like this kind of “soft on crime” talk. The worst that I suspect — and Sullum gives reason to fear it — is that Webb may simply not understand the problem, let alone be capable of figuring out the right answer. But I find it to be an encouraging sign that he’s at least broaching the subject.