Congressman Newt Gingrich proposed legislation that would impose the death penalty for people caught carrying as little as 2 ounces of marijuana.

Newt Gingrich has had a pretty rough couple of weeks, and things just got worse today when most of his top staff resigned. I hate to hit a man when he is down (actually in this case I don’t mind too much, Newt is as slimy a politician as his name suggests), but last night I was reading Illegal Drugs: A Complete Guide (don’t worry mom, it is for school), when I came across this on page IX:


Congressman Newt Gingrich, the Speaker of the House, proposed legislation that would impose the death penalty for people caught carrying as little as 2 ounces of marijuana. (1996′s HR 4170). He excused his own past marijuana use by explaining that pot smoking ‘was a sign that we were alive and in graduate school in that era.’”

Now that takes a set, to propose the death penalty for something that you did in the past.

But like any nanny state politician, he is doing it for the children:



“it is because you have made the personal decision that you are prepared to get rich by destroying our children. I have made the decision that I love our children enough that we will kill you if you do this.”

He goes on to propose mass public executions to make a statement that we are hard on crime:


“The first time we execute 27 or 30 or 35 people at one time, and they go around Colombia and France and Thailand and Mexico, and they say, ‘Hi, would you like to carry some drugs into the U.S.?’ the price of carrying drugs will have gone up dramatically.”

Newt further justified his change in opinion with this statement that is so incoherent it is difficult to believe he was sober at the time:


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 is why you get to go to jail and I don’t.

Nana Nana Bo Bo, Stick Your Head In Doo Doo.

When it comes to medical marijuana, he has also had a significant change of position over the years. In 1982 then congressman Gingrich wrote a letter to the editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association supporting medical marijuana stating in part:


This outdated federal prohibition is corrupting the intent of the state laws and depriving thousands of glaucoma and cancer patients of the medical care promised them by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.


[link to caffeinatedthoughts.com]

[link to frwebgate.access.gpo.gov]