“You can tell a lot about a country by who it incarcerates. Some countries imprison journalists. Others imprison political opponents. We imprison the poor, the addicted, the mentally ill, the survivors of abuse and sexual assault, and black and brown people. Our broken criminal justice system is a cancer on the soul of our nation that preys upon our most marginalized populations. It’s time we developed a cure.”
Cory Booker: It’s time for the next step in criminal justice reform
The Washington Post, March 10, 2019 | Cory Booker

“I fought hard as a mayor to open our first needle exchange center. Safe injection sites, I’m fully in favor of them.”
Cory Booker Confronted By Girl On Substance Abuse
NowThis News, May 19, 2019

“It was a big mistake when it was made. We thought, we were told by the experts, that crack — you never go back; it was somehow fundamentally different. It’s not different, but it’s trapped an entire generation… [I] may not have always gotten things right.” – At a January, 2019 breakfast commemorating Martin Luther King Jr. in reference to the 1988 legislation. Source

“We need to continue supporting evidence-based programs that we know work, which is why I support increasing our investments into the Ryan White Program and for networks of people living with HIV that provide peer support and combat stigma.”
Cory Booker Explains His HIV Policy Ideas
HIV+Magazine, September 9, 2019 | Jacob Anderson-Minshall

“Where I begin all of this isn’t the fight to get people in prison their voting rights. It’s to get them out of prison. That’s my fight. We should have 50 percent reductions in incarceration, and that would still not be in line with the rest of the industrialized nations that do not incarcerate as many people…. Let’s start with the larger fight. Why are they going to prison in the first place for nonviolent drug offenses? Literally, now, two of the last three presidents have admitted to felony drug use, but they get to be president and low-income people, drug-addicted people, people with mental illness, they have to go to prison and not just lose their voting rights, but lose their absolute liberty.”
Cory Booker Wants To Allow Some Prisoners To Vote
Huffington Post, May 30, 2019 | Kevin Robillard

“You know, these felony disenfranchise laws – if you go back to some of the state legislative debates that were happening after Reconstruction, they were designed to stop African-Americans from voting. These have racist roots to these laws. And it gets to a point now where you can see the fruit of that poison tree – is that you have some counties in America where 1 out of 4 African-Americans can’t vote. And remember; the overwhelming number of charges are for nonviolent drug offenses. So here, you’ve served your time, and now you’re going to have 10, 20, 40, 50, 60 years more as an adult. And you’re told that your citizen rights have been stripped from you? This is a way, I think, that poor people especially – low-income people are being stripped of their democratic power.”
Sen. Booker To Propose Next Steps In Criminal Justice Overhaul
NPR, March 7, 2019 | Steve Inskeep

“I get very angry when people talk about legalizing marijuana and then give no light to how marijuana law enforcement was done in ways that fed upon poor communities — black and brown communities,” Booker said. “This is a war on drugs that has not been a war on drugs — it’s been a war on people, and disproportionately poor people and disproportionately black and brown people.”
Why Cory Booker Declined to Co-Sponsor The New Marijuana Bill
Marijuana Merchant Account, April 24, 2019 | Brian Ellis

“I have a lot of respect for the Vice President [Biden]. He is – swore me into my office – is a hero. This week I hear him literally say that I don’t think we should legalize marijuana. I thought you [Biden] might have been high when you said it. Let me tell you, because marijuana in our country is already legal for privileged people… The War on Drugs has been a war on black and brown people. And let me just say this, with more African Americans under criminal supervision in America than all the slaves since 1850, do not roll up into communities and not talk directly to issues that are going to relate to the liberation of children, because there are people in Congress right now that admit to smoking marijuana while there are people, our kids who are in jail right now for those drug crimes.”

“We absolutely have to treat this issue as, at its core, a crisis of public health. The thinking behind the harsh sentencing laws of the 1980s and 90’s was sorely misguided, leading to a policy that was not only ineffective in reducing crime, but also disproportionately targeted at low-level, nonviolent drug offenders. These are the very individuals who would serve to benefit the most from a federal criminal justice policy that emphasizes treatment over punishment, providing resources to identify and treat incarcerated Americans suffering from drug addiction. By provisioning more resources for treatment, we can address the problem of recidivism – each year, around 600,000 Americans finish their prison sentences and re-enter their communities; but two out of every three are rearrested within three years of their release.”
Lessons from New Jersey: How U.S. Senator Cory Booker is Addressing Addiction
Center on Addiction, November 15, 2016 | Nkem Osian

“As Mayor of Newark, I fought for and helped open the city’s first needle-exchange center and saw firsthand how effective they could be.”
Cory Booker Explains His HIV Policy Ideas
HIV+Magazine, September 9, 2019 | Jacob Anderson-Minshall

From the 2018 letter to the HHS director, sent by 17 senators: “No police officer, no firefighter, no public health provider, and no person should be unable to save a life because of the high price,” the lawmakers wrote.“By bringing down the cost, we can get this life-saving drug in the hands of more people as called for by the Surgeon General. Doing so will save countless lives.”
Klobuchar, Smith, Senators Call on Administration to Take Immediate Action to Reduce Price of Naloxone, a Life-Saving Opioid Overdose Reversal Drug
Klobuchar Senate Website, April 30, 2018