Libertarian communicator Ron Paul strongly criticized the United States government’s war on drugs in a Saturday interview with host Michael Smerconish at CNN. The interview concerned the Thursday memorandum from US Attorney General Jeff Sessions that rescinded some prior US Department of Justice memoranda providing guidance for US prosecutors to refrain from certain prosecutions of individuals complying with liberalized state marijuana laws.

Addressing Sessions’ memorandum, Paul said that Sessions should be fired and that any attempt by Sessions to expand enforcement of US marijuana prohibition will not be successful in overriding state’s liberalizations via actions including states’ legalization of medical and recreational marijuana. Paul also took the opportunity to address the broader war on drugs, condemning it as a war on liberty.

“The war on drugs, to me, is a war on liberty,” declared Paul. Paul further states in the interview that the right to use drugs should be respected by government just as are the rights to eat the food we choose and to read what we choose, even if the food we eat or the ideas about which we read may potentially cause us harm. Ending the US government’s drug prohibition would return the US government to respecting individual rights as it did earlier in American history, Paul argues, because, through over its first hundred years of operation, the US government did not engage in drug prohibition.

Watch Paul’s s complete interview here:

Reprinted with permission from the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.