Thomas Ravenel: Government's drug war 'wrongly focused'

Former S.C. Treasurer Thomas Ravenel is breaking his silence on America's drug war by calling the government's response a failure and advocating the repeal of drug prohibition.

"Drug abuse is a problem, a medical, healthcare and spiritual problem, not a problem to be solved with a criminal justice model," he said.

Ravenel's comments - detailed in a opinion piece he submitted and that is running in Saturday's Post and Courier editorial pages - comes while he is still serving a term of three years of probation for the cocaine conspiracy charge that sank his political career in 2007, earning him a 10-month federal prison sentence.

In a separate telephone interview from where he is now living in south Florida, Ravenel said today that he opted to go public with his thoughts now because he has been studying the drug war extensively and declared it wrongly focused.

"All I want to do is open up a debate," he said. "I want people to start asking their politicians questions."

He hoped his celebrity as a former rising star of the Republican Party would help advance his position - namely that the criminalization of drugs is what has caused the rise of violent gangs that has trapped so many law-abiding people in their neighborhoods.

"They're not making anybody safer with all this," he said of law enforcement and the current code of anti-drug laws.

Legalizing marijuana and cocaine are among his advocacy points.

Ravenel was elected treasurer of South Carolina in 2006 but he resigned his post in July 2007 and eventually served 10 months in federal custody after pleading guilty to conspiracy with intent to distribute cocaine.

To read the complete story, see Saturday's edition of The Post and Courier.

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