>> it's not associated with religion or got to refine the first guy and rejected for reasons. i believe we're in a nation full of people that love the of and was found on the principles of got to really lead a nation that is more shorty christian. ing returned evangelical christian and i believe very strongly in god and we can use a lot in our schools and prisons but on the other hand as a libertarian i don't force it down anyone's throat. i don't believe god should have a park or a role in the state. there's a separation between religion and state but america is a nation that believes strongly in god and has a deep abiding faith in god and until it libertarian candidate comes along with those beliefs weekend when major office i believe i give us the opportunity and my plan is to be libertarian candidate for president of the united states in 2016 and to be the first fifth third party candidate in history to win the presidency. >> this is booktv on c-span2.

we are at freedom fest held annually in lost biggest talking with several different authors and we've been talking with win ellen ruda who lives in las vegas. the conscience of the libertarian as the name of the books. >> book tv in is on location at the annual freedom fest conference and we are interviewing several different authors and are pleased to be joined now by the vice presidential nominee for the libertarian party for vice president of the united states, judge james gray who's also in author and his book is called with the drug will has failed and what we can do about it. if we could come start with your background. it's been a i was in ucla then i

was in the peace corps for two years and by the way you see and the vice presidential nominee for the libertarian party, will be the first peace corps volunteer to be elected in the national office and that this kind of pleasing. after that i went to usc and was drafted as a way joined the naval rotc and then i was a navy attorney for four years. estimate was that during vietnam? >> it was. that's why i was drafted. within a week of getting back in the peace corps i received my classification for the physical so guess what my future had in-store. after a got out of the navy i was a prosecutor in los angeles, standard cases, drug cases, didn't think about it much, ended up having the unit fraud against the government fha and va that sort of thing. after that in the private practice of law and then appointed to the bench so i was on the bench for 25 years as a

judge and now i am retired and running as you say for office. >> what cord were you a judge? >> a court in orange county california over 25 years pretty much did everything. as a part of that, you know, low level drug offenders in the system for no good purpose eventually it didn't take long i saw what we're doing isn't working. the tougher we are on the drug crime the softer br with prosecution of everything else so the robbers, rapists, murderers would be able to stay and get a lot less accountability because we're spending peace efforts on the prosecution of the nonviolent drug offenses. >> what was your attitude towards the julca law breakers against? >> you have to uphold all and i raised my hand to protect and defend the constitution as well as the state will but that doesn't mean i have to do it privately are quietly so i would

do that but you can't escape the drug cases in juvenile court drugs are involved, and probate -- you can't escape them but nevertheless, i see myself as an educator in disguise because what you're doing here isn't working and we simply have to put our head together and change it. we couldn't do worse if we tried. ask mexico for example that's 60,000 people died a violent death in the last five or six years because of president carter on's war on drugs and it has nothing to do with drugs but everything to do with drug money and it is our drug money causing those deaths and corruption and lack of respect for all. >> was there any particular case that kind of crystallized you're thinking? >> they're kind of was of the well was building up. i still remember i was carrying out another judge's sentence and we had a really bad guy charged with and pleading to going out with prostitutes, beating them up, reading them and stealing

their money and by the time the dust settled he only served another two weeks in jail before he would be released and when he was taken to the lockout after going through this he gave out a hoot as if he won and i remember thinking to myself he did win because we are so involved in a nonviolent drug cases using resources that the really bad guys are the skating. the tougher you wore on and on file that drug offenses the softer you get with regard to the prosecution of everything else. i'm going to do something about it and i have. >> what have you done? >> i talked about this publicly, as publicly as i can. i've been the o'reilly factor and in the order of seven or 800 various media events. i've written a book about the passan booktv but ten years ago when it cannot in 2001 and now it is updated at the beginning of this year, 2010 -- 2012 swing back talking about this issue and others. spinnakers the cover of the

second edition. >> specifically what are one or two things about the u.s. drug law or state control all you would change immediately? >> hold people accountable for what they do, not in their bodies. the justice system is able to come for example the frederic fan motor vehicle under the influence that is a crime and should be. why? by my actions and putting your safety at risk but as far as putting people in jail for what they choose to put into their body, it doesn't work and i'm a libertarian and proud of that and most people are. the government has as much right tricks control what we put into her body has put into my mind. it's none of their business. it doesn't work and you are contributing to problems because 90% so-called problems today are drug production problems that's not to minimize the harm themselves the the huge amount of the production problems like we had with alcohol prohibition, the bathtub gin problem for

example of the quality-control went away when we revell alcohol prohibition. al capone was elbra involved in selling drugs. today you do not find children selling drugs -- excuse me, alcohol in their campuses but they're selling marijuana, ecstasy or whatever all the time. why? drug provisions we are corrupting our children by the truly feel the policy. >> okay. arguments against it include children shouldn't be taking ecstasy. estimate i agree. >> heroin addiction. marijuana use is the same as alcohol. should marijuana be the same as alcohol? >> yes. in a color ravenel the governor johnson and i and the campaign endorsed the same thing in the state of washington that talks about this. thank you for this other book as well. sure, you know, again the drugs are here to stay so i agree children should not be doing

this but i ask today what is easier for you to get, marijuana or alcohol? ask the first teenagers you find they will tell you it's easier for me to get marijuana. why? the dealers don't ask for i.t. to read today think about it the biggest oxymoronic of our lives today is the term controlled substances. why? as soon as you prohibit something you give up your control with regard to place of sale or click your quality or price or age restriction that is abandoned to the bad guys, the mexican drug cartels. most juvenile games have the biggest source of revenue from what sale of illegal drugs let's cripple the drug cartels and juvenile gangs. regulate marijuana like wine is the place to start. >> would you have marijuana etc. sold in the retail stores? >> treated like wallen and that

is the answer for most questions. if you grow your own? you can grow your own grapes and wine treated that way for responsible adults and taxable. what it be better to have these huge amounts of money go to pay or firefighters and teachers and fix the roads instead of funding juvenile gangs and mexican drug cartels? it's easy to answer. >> to of the people you dedicate the book to our george shultz and the late william f. buckley. >> that's right. in fact you can go on to say this was endorsed by milton friedman has a hero of mine also of course walter cronkite who is a hero in a lot of of the reza and george shultz like you said former secretary of state. you get those folks together on anything and it's pretty impressive. spinach you have another book out and this is a new one to read what is this one?

>> voters handbook. they're really are resolutions to these problems and honestly i wrote this without having any intention nor thought of being involved in another political campaign that it talks about health care and education and the failed policy of capital punishment which regardless of your philosophy isn't working. getting into responsible criminal-justice issues and the rehabilitation and i recommend we go on the metric system to start running for vice president with gary johnson. it's amazing because from a different perspective he's come out with of the same analysis i have on these issues like education. today the time that you are wearing you chose how much to spend, where to go. like all other goods that's how we get reasonable goods for the prices but education is completely different than that. education is funded from the tops of the federal government

has all this money and keeps a bunch of them gives it to the states and the schools use a lot of the administrative costs and it gets to the teacher. it isn't working today the schools are failing the children. if you allow it to be funded like your tie your shoes or anything else, that gives the parents the ability to decide where and how their children should be educated and they will then be a will to take their child to the school that best meets their needs and that would result in what? excellence, innovation because if your school doesn't work with the will to come to some other school. why are the leading my school? i better do something to keep them here or you will go out of business and someone will do it. competition works such that governor johnson and i both say we will bring back excellence within four years of installing the program.

we minute, too. >> judge james gray here is the voters handbook. why the drug laws had failed and what we can do about it. this is book tv on c-span2 we are on location in las vegas and we're joined now by thomas e. woods whose recent book is rollback repealing big government before the coming fiscal collapse. how would you describe the premise behind the book and what are the plans to get across? >> fiscal issues. i would rather drawn out the

window but to set the stage i'm explaining that we are on a trajectory that left or right or a democrat or republican we have to admit can't be sustained. obviously very wrenching changes are coming but the rest of the book is geared towards revisiting the arguments by which we were sold a big government. we would have this problem if it weren't for that one by am trying to suggest is when we cut back it's not going to be the chernobyl catastrophe might bear some area of to the country the silver lining is that it will cut back on these things and give a lot more scope for the entrepreneur ship and freedom. >> what are those budget items you could see being cut back that could be advantageous? >> here with a book like this and a publisher like mine on an assumed to be a right wing so i want to take the food stamps away from the poor people and so

on. i am a libertarian and i want to abolish everything but to me you take a low hanging fruit first and it's the pentagon ha. there was a time i thought if you want to cut the budget you must hate america and all that but when you look closely you have to understand the pentagon from the department of defense is the only department that isn't subject to audit. that doesn't mean they failed or look at all the things we found they are not even subject to what we've been figuring out piece by piece is that since 1911 the pentagon budget went up. the increase was 2 trillion. 1 trillion went to the board met with the other nobody knows where it went because the air force has been scaled back, the navy is scaled back and the army increased marginally but