Want to ask the Drug Czar a question?

kerlikowskeGil Kerlikowske will be participating in an hour-long online event: A Dialogue with the Drug Czar

September 10, 2009: 6-7 pm (EDT)

It’s free and open to the public. Registration required. You need to have some software installed in order to participate, which heavily favors Windows users (so I probably won’t be involved) and I’m guessing those on dial-up won’t fare well. If you’re interested, check out the site and instructions and register.

Work on some ideas for questions in comments.

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14 Responses to Want to ask the Drug Czar a question?

  1. The Dude says:

    How about:

    “Dear Czar Kerlikowske*,

    The law creating ONDCP specifically states that your office must oppose legalization of any schedule I substance, and the General Accounting Office has confirmed that there is no need to examine the veracity of your office statements opposing legalization. Do you interpret this to mean that you have license to lie about marijuana if it serves to oppose legalization?”

    *Do people address him as “Czar Kerlikowske”? Ick.

  2. jhelion says:

    the problem with that whole thing is that he can lie about having to lie.

  3. Pete says:

    “For over 30 years, the federal government has been supplying medical marijuana, grown at their farm in Mississippi, to a select group of patients through the Compassionate IND program. If science is guiding policy, why has the federal government shown no interest in studying these long term medical marijuana patients?”

  4. ezrydn says:

    They want to put THEIR software in MY computer so I can ask this plick a question? Not in their wettest dreams. Why take such a chance just to hear another lie?

  5. jhelion says:

    Pete,
    (putting on GAO-approved lie filter)
    “We have studied Irv and his hippie buddies and have established the irrefutable fact that only big pharma-based poisons can provide any benefit”

    I hope someone asks about the patent the US govt holds for medical cannabis.

    EZ – tru dat…. I will only participate on some anonymous computer if available… I wonder if TOR would help.

  6. Pete says:

    Actually, jhelion, if he answered that way, it would be great. Somebody would be filing a Freedom Of Information act request the next day demanding the results of that study.

    No, he could say that the group is too small to be worth studying, but he can’t say he studied them without getting into some trouble.

  7. allan420 says:

    Pete… we know Gil doesn’t study. Hell, he doesn’t even own a dictionary. heh…

    I would home hope one of our wunderkind-dope-smoking-super-‘puter-tech-geek downloads the software and then dissects it. ‘Cause ez’s thought was picked up here, way norte of Mexico.

    And Pete’s point about what Gil won’t/can’t say? That is exactly why we will never hear the names (Peter McW, Donald Scott, Patrick Dorismond, Tom Crosslin and Rolle Rohm…) or the studies (Shafer’s, DEA ALJ Young’s…), or about the US Patent on cannabinoids as anti-oxidants and neuro-protectants or we won’t hear about the CIND and Irv and Elvie and all the others.

    Which is exactly why all those names and studies need to stay in their face. F’ ’em if they can’t take a joke. Especially when they’re the butt of the joke.

  8. SpGNo says:

    “People want to be told what to do so badly they will listen to almost anyone.” Don Draper

    I recommend reading this book:

    http://www.amazon.com/Made-Stick-Ideas-Survive-Others/dp/1400064287

    The Drug Czar’s office use propaganda techniques, and marijuana reform advocates are not. Never mind logic, getting ideas to stick in the collective unconscious is a science. What the marijuana reform movement needs is one set of ideas built up from the instructions in Made to Stick.

    Asshats like Newt Gingrich got power by being hyperaware of the power of language and repetition. We should shamelessly steal their techniques. If Newt Gingrich was in charge of marijuana reform, every marijuana reform advocate would be on TV talking about putting human beings in rape cages for plants in the same easily digestible language repeated over and over again. Testing would be done to see exactly how targeted demographics respond to specific words, and this would be the basis for deciding exactly what words get repeated over and over and over again. Here is a great sampling of GOP docs on using language for social control. We need to steal these techniques to win. http://www.skilluminati.com/research/entry/newt_gingrich_on_using_language_for_social_control/

    Yeah, we should want to ask the drug czar questions, but until our questions are informed by the same techniques of mass manipulation that got us a drug war in the first place, we won’t be effective agents of change. We need an army of people asking the same focus group driven questions in the same language at every opportunity.

  9. ezrydn says:

    Allen420,

    It hit me immediately. I don’t need special software to communicate with others on the net. Why do I need THEIR software? Is is certified bug free? By whom? Is it an IP reporter? That’s a list they’d love to have. Besides, it would all be for another lie so there’s really no reason for the chance. I may be ignorant about many things but I’m not stupid.

  10. ezrydn says:

    Check this page out: http://spywarefiles.prevx.com/RRGHDJ569034/LMSETUP.EXE.html

    You sure you want to install this to participate? On Gil’s “Instructions” page, the file name is listed.

  11. Pete says:

    ezrydn. It’s not Gil’s instructions page. It’s the instructions page for Harvard Kennedy Schools series (the host), which they use for all their online events, and the software is fairly basic Windows (part of some Microsoft Office packages). To have a live discussion on the web, you have to use some kind of software.

    Sure, I’m not interested in installing it (I can’t, I’m on a Mac), but I don’t think it necessarily warrants quite that level of paranoia.

  12. ezrydn says:

    Just conveying the report on it I found. You can either take it or leave it. I will say that I’ve used it in the past. A friend had me install it so he could work on my computer remotely. After he finished, I uninstalled the program and it took forever to get all the components out. A friend, I’d trust. Harvard/ONDCP, no trust.

  13. Pete says:

    I understand, ezrydn. I’m just saying that you don’t have to install anything to participate if you already have it installed because you use it for business or other purposes. This isn’t something you have to get from Harvard or the ONDCP.

    I, personally, hate putting Microsoft products on my computer (I find them clunky and overly intrusive), but I have to have some of them for business reasons.

  14. jhelion says:

    Q for drug czar: “We need to learn from history in order to avoid repeating mistakes, and most would agree that alcohol prohibition was a failure on many fronts. This includes the violence and power of gangs to the health consequences of bathtub gin etc. From a policy as well as a perception perspective, how is prohibiting the things we prohibit today different than the prohibition from the ’20s and ’30s?”

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