A politician admitted to thousands of students Thursday night that “alcohol is many more fold dangerous than marijuana” and even asked, “Why can’t we protect the liberty to put into your bodies whatever you choose?” As if the crowd wasn’t rowdy enough, the youths on The University of Texas LBJ Lawn went even wilder as Ron Paul presented his beliefs to them.

Despite only having 80 delegates to front-runner Mitt Romney’s 846, Paul told his followers that this was a great time to continue the revolution because no matter what changes were going to happen soon.

“People have woken up and said, ‘Look, this isn’t working so well anymore,’” said Paul. “This monetary system doesn’t work, this entitlement system enriches the rich and not the poor, and also we have a foreign policy that is deeply flawed and most people by a large majority say it’s time to come home.”

Paul went on to say that getting back American’s liberties was his focus. He said that even though Americans managed to stop the “Stop Online Piracy Act” (SOPA), politicians still went into the House on Thursday and “overwhelmingly passed” a new bill called CISPA, or the Cyber Intelligence Sharing in Protection Act.

CISPA, similarly to SOPA, is a controversial bill due to its potential to violate privacy rights as it allows websites to hand over your personal data to the government. It’s intent, however, is to protect America’s intern interests against attacks.

Other controversial bills that Paul denounced were the Patriot Act and the National Defense Authorization Act, saying that these bills and other laws were passed due to careless interpretation of the Constitution. He said that once he’s elected president he would get rid of “40,000 useless laws.”

The topic turned too war, and Paul acknowledged that not a single war has been declared since World War II. Paul said American needed to follow the law and only declare war by the people through their elected representatives.

“Had we been following that law we’d have been in no wars since World War II,” he said. “Think about how much wealthier this country would be; think of how much less death and destruction we would have.”
Paul said that the national debt has been pushed up by $4 trillion due to wars in the Middle East, and that politicians on both sides of the spectrum were too eager to jump into more wars with Syria and Iran. Later on, he also claimed that 9/11 had nothing to do with Iraq and that there was no need to invade it.
As for other reasons for our national debt, Paul discussed the need to repeal the Federal Reserve Act, and lessen government regulation.

On that note, Paul hit a popular note by also mentioning that he believes the war on drugs has done more harm than the drugs themselves, and that the government has no business regulating personal lifestyles.
Aside from his hands-off approach to recreational drugs, President of Libertarian Longhorns Jose Nino said that there are other reasons students love the GOP nominee.

“The reason why I think students love Ron Paul so much is that most of the population is very disillusioned with the ‘business as usual' type of politics that dominates both seats, whether Republican or Democrat,” said Nino. “Also the wars and national debt issues are starting to pile up, and our generation is going to have to foot the bill sooner or later and that’s why most of the people are starting to get up in arms about this.”

This visit was Paul's second during a three-day campaign in Texas that ends with a rally at the University of Houston Friday night.