To his credit, Schmoke refused to back down in the face of criticism. To the contrary, when he was asked months later by Rangel to testify before the House Select Committee on Narcotics Abuse and Control, he again presented a case for decriminalization. “We have spent nearly seventy-five years and untold billions of dollars trying to square the circle, and inevitably we have failed,” he said. Instead of a law-enforcement response to drug use, Schmoke proposed “a measured and carefully implemented program of drug decriminalization.”
