Quotable: Banman’s Infamous ‘Lock ‘Em Up’ Quote

For the record, while Mayor Bruce Banman may have forgotten his now infamous quote about locking up drug addicts because they are criminals, we have this annoying habit of keeping track of such things.

This is Mayor Banman’s comment, which he denied out loud tonight, when Barry Shantz made reference to it at the Harm Reduction forum.

In an interview earlier this spring, Banman challenged the harm reduction assumption that addiction is primarily a health issue, saying, “You are, if you are a drug user, a criminal. You’re not a helpless victim. You are, and choose to be, a criminal. It is an illegal activity that you are doing. If you are a pedophile, you are a criminal. And how we deal with criminals is we lock ’em up.”