It’s difficult to write this and I think I’ve lost my mind; however, if you’re looking at the next presidential election only through the prism of which candidate(s) will be most helpful in bringing reform to the mandatory minimum schemes that plague federal drug offense, then you might be rooting for either Ted Cruz and Rand Paul, as opposed to Hillary Clinton. Paul and Cruz are both on record as supporting substantial sentencing reforms, including, in Paul’s case, effectively abolishing mandatory minimums. “I am here to ask that we begin today the end of mandatory minimum sentencing,” Paul said at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in 2013. On Bill Maher’s HBO show last fall, Paul declared, “I want to end the war on drugs because it’s wrong for everybody, but particularly because poor people are caught up in this, and their lives are ruined by it.” In contrast, Hillary points to the Drug Sentencing Reform and Cocaine Kingpin Trafficking Act of 2007 , which she co-sponsored six months after it was introduced. That bill, which would have eliminated the sentencing disparity between crack cocaine and cocaine powder, did not go anywhere. Three years later, Congress almost unanimously approved a law that reduced crack penalties, although they are still more severe than the penalties for powder.
http://reason.com/blog/2015/05/28/paul-and-cruz-are-running-to-clintons-le