Congressman Steve Cohen (TN-09), a senior member of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), also known as the Helsinki Commission, today participated in an international virtual meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly and spoke of the need for repressive governments to promote freedom.
In his remarks, Congressman Cohen talked about the pernicious allure of drug abuse in repressive societies and a fact-finding trip he made to Belarus. He said:
“The longer that governments repress peoples’ rights, and not give them free speech and free thought and freedom, the more people will use drugs. The answer to drugs, even more so than policing efforts to eliminate them, is governments allowing their citizens to have freedom…Freedom is the ultimate power that we must protect.”
Original source can be found here.
