I would be remiss to let Black History Month go by without mentioning one of my political heroes, Kurt Schmoke, who was Mayor of Baltimore from 1987 to 1999. Mayor Schmoke was part of a remarkable generation of Black leadership that came out of Baltimore in that era, including the late Congressman Elijah Cummings and former NAACP Chairman and current Congressman, Kweisi Mfume.
I saw Mayor Schmoke speak once - at the time I was a high school student in Baltimore - and he described himself as a young man who "once had a great future." That was his go-to joke in every speech. He was well aware that he had dug his political grave through his opposition to the drug war.
In 1988, at the height of the Reagan-era moral panic and associated human tragedy of the "crack epidemic," Mayor Kurt Schmoke threw away his prepared notes prior to a speech before the U.S. Conference of Mayors and instead declared that the drug war makes no sense, that it is impossible to arrest and incarcerate our way out of the problem.
He asked the Mayors to urge Congress to open a national discussion on treating substance use as a matter of public health rather than criminal justice.
This call was met with silence and scorn. Mayor Schmoke was deemed an apostate and disavowed even by his allies.
In advocating for the decriminalization of marijuana and medicalization of other drugs, Schmoke's ideas presaged the modern harm reduction movement. It took 35 years and an overdose crisis that broadly affected white people, but laws and attitudes have gradually been shifting toward what Mayor Schmoke was proposing.
Last year's landmark Medically Assisted Treatment Act, sponsored by NH's own Senator Maggie Hassan, is an example of how a public health approach to the problem of substance use can save lives.
Though the road from Mayor of Baltimore to Governor of Maryland is generally a well-worn path, Kurt Schmoke never made that jump. That said, it should be noted that the people of Baltimore twice saw fit to re-elect Kurt Schmoke as Mayor. He is currently President of the University of Baltimore.