Sen. Rand Paul, a Republican from Kentucky, told CNN that there's a generational divide within the party on the issue.
"I think there are people who were teenagers in 1937 watching 'Reefer Madness' and they're still concerned that Reefer Madness is going to take over and everybody is going to become zombies, hacking and killing everyone if they smoke pot," said Paul, a supporter of the bill. "And then there are a couple of generations after 1937 of people who don't see it with the same degree of evil."
"We had one of the senators in the lunch saying, 'You know how you get no recidivism? Don't ever let him out of jail. Zero recidivism!'" added Paul, referring to a closed-door meeting GOP senators held this week.
Paul did note that there were exceptions to his theory, including 85-year-old Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, a sponsor of the bill.
In response, Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, one of the fiercest opponents of the bill, said he didn't think any mandatory minimums should be reduced since "we're in the middle of a drug epidemic."
Of the generational gap, Cotton, who at 41 is the youngest current member of the US Senate, said that "older senators like Rand Paul" — the Kentucky senator is 55 — "take for granted all the gains that we've made because of the tough on crime policies of the 1980s and are willing to abandon those in misguided efforts to have compassionate understanding for depraved felons."
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Originally Posted by theimage13
