Presidential candidate Andrew Yang on opioid decriminalization, gun buybacks, and giving prisoners the right to vote

Samantha Lee

• 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang, a New York-based entrepreneur joined Business Insider Today for a live town hall.
• In addition to discussing his policy plans, Yang answered questions from an in-person audience and comments section in the Facebook live-stream.
• The questions spanned a range of disparate topics such as opioids, guns, student loan debt, universal basic income, and much more. 
• Watch the full Business Insider Today town hall event here.
• Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.

2020 presidential candidate Andrew Yang sat down on Tuesday with INSIDER politics editor Anthony Fisher for a live-streamed Business Insider Today town hall to discuss everything from Yang’s universal basic income program — the Freedom Dividend — to data privacy and climate change. 

Here are some of the highlights from the event: 

• On impeachment:
  • Yang didn’t directly take a position on whether Congress should impeach President Donald Trump, saying, "it’s Congress’ job to investigate Trump and my job to beat him."
• On data privacy:
  • Yang explained his policy plan to give people property rights over their personal data monetized by companies, saying, "It does not seem fair for companies to benefit from our data and we don’t know about it … there’s a little bit of a Wild West going on. If we choose convenience, we deserve a sliver of the economic value. You can have my data, but if you commercialize my data, I should get some share of the profits."

Read more: Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang says incarcerated people should have the right to vote, just not murderers

• On opioids:
  • Yang said he believes opioid usage should be decriminalized to encourage more people to seek treatment without the fear their addiction will land them in jail.
  • "I feel strongly that the government was delinquent in allowing the opioid crisis to get started in the first place," he said, referring to the government not cracking down enough on Purdue Pharma, the makers of Oxycontin, from deceptively marketing the drug as non-addictive.
  • "There’s a plague killing thousands of Americans that we helped cause, the least you can do is say, our first priority is treatment and not a prison cell … we have to get resources in people’s hands, since it’s a human problem, and most people will not be deterred by a stiffer sentence."
• Why the Freedom Dividend is a better solution than free college:
  • In recent weeks, fellow Democratic presidential candidates like Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have rolled out plans to make four-year college free.
  • Yang, said, however, that his plan to give every American adult $1,000 per month would ultimately do more to solve wealth inequality since it would apply to people from all educational backgrounds. 
  • "Since only about a third of Americans graduate from a four-year college, making college free would only help that top of the third of the population," Yang said, further pointing that the current six-year completion rate for those who enter four-year college is just 59%.
• On student debt:
  • Yang said he supports a plan like the one Warren recently rolled out to forgive most outstanding student loan debt. 
  • "If you have a choice between hundreds of thousands of young people living in their parents’ basements or investing that money back into the economy, we should choose the latter," Yang said, adding that debt forgiveness would be like a "stimulus of the people." 

Read more: Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang supports forgiving most student loan debt but stops short of advocating for free college

• On climate change:
  • Yang says he believes climate change is an urgent crisis and that the Freedom Dividend would alleviate families’ financial burdens, and free up their energy to care about climate change, citing a "scarcity mindset" he believes exists in the US.
  • "The tough reality is that the US only accounts for about 15% of global emissions," Yang said. "While I support re-joining the Paris Accords and I support a carbon fee and dividend, the US can’t solve this problem all on our own."
  • Yang said that while he supports the "spirit" of the Green New Deal, he believes the Freedom Dividend would be a more direct solution to financial insecurity. 
• On guns:
  • Yang says he supports a federal buyback for assault rifles, which fellow presidential candidate Rep. Eric Swalwell has also advocated for. 
• On prisoners voting: 
  • The question of whether incarcerated people should have the right to vote has recently been a hotly-debated topic in the 2020 Democratic field. 
  • Yang said he believes that people in prison should have the right to vote "unless they deprived someone of their right to vote," presumably referring to people convicted of homicide. 

Watch the full Business Insider Today town hall event here.

NOW WATCH: This video shows the moment Sarah Sanders lied to a room full of reporters about FBI agents telling her they were happy Trump fired Comey

See Also:

• POWER RANKING: Here’s who has the best chance of becoming the 2020 Democratic presidential nominee
• 2020 candidate Amy Klobuchar just released 12 years of tax returns — here’s how she makes and spends her money
• A 2020 candidate who served in the Marines says Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Trump are both wrong about the Veterans Affairs administration

SEE ALSO: Andrew Yang is running for president in 2020. Here’s everything we know about the candidate and how he stacks up against the competition.

Source: Business Insider – gpanetta@businessinsider.com (Grace Panetta)