Ian MacKaye Rocks

PunkNews has recently started republishing a bunch of old 'zine interviews with punk pioneers. In a very cool one posted today, originally published in Fracture Magazine in 2001, former Minor Threat/Fugazi frontman Ian MacKaye forcefully bahses the drug war and comes out in favor of drug legalization.

[MacKaye:] I think that most people who are in prison have no business being in prison. This country has gone insane. I just heard on the radio this morning that there's twice as many jail sentences being handed out today then there was 10 years ago. It's completely absurd. This is drug stuff I'm talking about.

[FM:] You feel they should be rehabilitated instead?

[MacKaye:] Absolutely, I don't think people should be put in prison for doing drugs, that's stupid. Actually, I don't think that drugs should be illegal necessarily. I definitely don't think marijuana should be illegal. I think that drug laws are nonsense. I think there's a massive industry surrounding police weaponry and the prison lobby. There's such an organization behind pressuring for that kind of stuff. The people that make guns to sell to the police have made a fortune over the past couple of years on this so called "War on Drugs". There's so many people becoming the fattest millionaires and billionaires over building institutions to house people, and the only thing they need is for people to be put in these houses. That's the way they keep their business going. I'm completely opposed to it.

Me, too. It's cool that the guy who in 1981's Minor Threat classic Out of Step (along with their song "Straight Edge") laid out the straight-edge mantra -- but made explicit that it was "no set of rules/I'm not telling you what to do" -- is still adhering to these principles.

PunkNews piece here. Good Salon profile (also from 2001) here.