Page:Carter and Crime (Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter 1st debate)(Gerald Ford Library)(1554405).pdf/15

RNC RESEARCH DIVISION CRIME/DRUGS

The key to lowering the crime rate, Carter says, is to find jobs for the seven per cent unemployed in America. He favors handgun registration, and prohibition of the sale of cheap firearms, as well as "heavy punishment for those who push any kind of drugs, including marijuana." However, he now believes that marijuana ought to be decriminalized (as opposed to legalized) making simple possession a misdemeanor.

Although he has not campaigned as a law-and-order candidate, his 1970 statement on campus violence and the restoration of order show him to be more conservative on the crime issue than he at first appears. He said that he would issue shoot-to-kill orders in campuses where disorder had become chronic and that he would "be as tough as I possibly can be in stamping out drugs." His positions on legalized gambling and capital punishment have varied.