Kevin Sabet, Congressional Vote Counter

Kevin Sabet is particularly good at one thing: getting the media to quote him. He obviously works hard at this and has been quite successful at positioning himself as a go-to person for any kind of quote related to marijuana legalization.

After the Colorado and Washington votes, the press was frustrated by the lack of comment in the administration, so they turned to Kevin, who was happy to oblige with completely pulled-from-the-ass speculation as to how the federal government would react which, of course, turned out to be entirely wrong.

It didn’t matter that there was no reason to think he had any real knowledge, since obviously even the drug czar was being told to stay quiet.

In the L.A. Times, Richard Simon has this article: California conservative defends state’s pot law in Congress about Dana Rohrabacher’s long-term efforts to get the feds out of interfering with states on medical marijuana.

Then, out of the blue, there’s this:

Kevin Sabet, a former advisor to Kerlikowske, said Rohrabacher’s latest attempt would “likely suffer the same fate as his several previous failed attempts have over the past decade.”

So Kevin is now the expert to whom Richard Simon turns to find out how Congress will vote. Fascinating.

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54 Responses to Kevin Sabet, Congressional Vote Counter

  1. Johnston says:

    I get that we don’t agree with him, but why are you so obsessed young man? I recently met kevin at Bronw where he debated Aaron Houston. I agree with regulating marijuana, but Kevin is clearly an educated, nice guy who at least tries to use data. He has much more to offer than the other warriors – he wasn’t a Marshall scholar for nothing. Can we appreciate the nuance he brings?

    It’s funny though that you highlight this but forgot to mention that he was the top enemy to rolling stone on legalization.

    We can all be for legalizing, but why make it so personal Pete? I know ill be flamed for this by you guys. Especially Radical Russ.

    • Duncan20903 says:

      .
      .

      It doesn’t take a psychic to know that a false concern troll is going to get flamed when we notice he’s taken a dump on our couch.

      Hey, somebody tell the wiggle dude that the nice man left him a chocolate bar!

    • claygooding says:

      Kevin you get flamed here and in every article where you stand up and open your hyperbolic propaganda spreading mouth,,you signed on with an organization where you know you have to buy science and lie to keep marijuana illegal,,you are just as evil as the drug czars,,how much integrity and honor will you have to offer your next employer? We are here to make sure any future employer knows you have neither.

    • darkcycle says:

      Radical Russ doesn’t post here (usually, there have been exceptions), why would you be addressing him? Perhaps this comment was just trolled around on any legalization site that mentioned Kevvie’s name?
      Lets be very clear…Kevin Sabet is a professional liar.
      “Nuance”….that was good for a coffee spit.

    • Opiophiliac says:

      I agree with regulating marijuana, but Kevin is clearly an educated, nice guy who at least tries to use data.

      Sabet is educated about drug policy, which means he cannot claim ignorance when it comes to the costs of prohibition. Sabet may come off as a nice guy, but consider the policies he’s advocating. Sabet is against drug legalization, which means he implicitly supports criminal drug trafficking organizations, drug war sponsored sexual slavery (“Opium Brides”), the highest rate of incarceration in the world, tens of thousands of dead or disappeared in Mexico, and the million other consequences of the global war on drugs. But Sabet never talks about that, instead he promotes his brand of “kinder, gentler prohibition” while reinventing his own version of refer madness.

      We can all be for legalizing, but why make it so personal Pete?

      I won’t speak for Pete, but by opposing legalization Sabet is supporting policies that make accidental overdoses and poisonings more common. He supports policies that stigmatize and marginalize addicts; as well as encourage blood-born infections among injection users. He supports policies that encourage acquisitive crime and prostitution to fund habits that would otherwise be vastly less expensive in a legal marketplace. By advocating the coercion of all drug users into treatment, he wastes limited resources on those who do not need it. The morbidity and mortality of opiate addiction is far higher than it would be under legalization, which means Sabet supports policies that increase the probability that addicts will get sick and/or die. Why take it so personally? Because anyone who supports policies that deprive me of my liberty, try to kill me or my extended junkie family is my enemy.

      • DonDig says:

        Well said. Very well said indeed! Beautiful.
        Anytime Sabet (or anyone) is lobbying for continued prohibition, you have to assume that at the least, they espouse controlling (limiting) how others live their lives, and that is such a defective and sorry ass starting point, that nothing else matters.
        EVERYONE thinks they are living their life the ‘right’ way, doing the best they can and attempting to be happy, (if not they can change it), but no one can nor should think they are capable of deciding how someone else should live period, period, period.
        The fact that all the drug war (or whatever you want to call it these days) is, is a ‘jobs’ program for the feds and their lobbyist buddies, makes that misguided deception even worse.

      • Sean says:

        Well and clearly stated.

        I forget the details, but certain of the nazis in the 30’s were famous for their good taste and breeding, the delicacy of their wines. They were, none the less, filth.

    • Kevin Sabet aka "Johnston" says:

      “We can all be for legalizing, but why make it so personal Pete? I know ill be flamed for this by you guys. Especially Radical Russ.”

      Kevin, Radical Russ kicked your ass in that debate down in Houston (glad you are still lick your wounds from that), so now you have been relegated to trolling blogs, giving one liners to the news and pretending to speak for the federal govt. Meanwhile a tidal wave of change is happening right before your eyes and you are just a little cork in the ocean being tossed around.

    • War Vet says:

      I think Pete liked his shirt and tie. Do little children living in Iraq or Afghanistan have the right to die just so you can be kept away from (legal) drugs? If Kevin really did go to college and get a PhD like he claims, then why isn’t he advocating on hiring tens of millions of American cops to go global, since British, Canadian, Somali etc cops don’t know how to do their job (which is stop 100% of all the illegal drugs at the end of their career or shift, the way WWII Soldiers stopped 100% of all the Nazis in Germany in under 5yrs) . . . if he was so smart, he’d advocate paying cops minimum wage with no benefits, no free education, no healthcare nor retirement as the consequences needed in hiring tens of millions of American cops to win the war on drugs (though that would still fail) . . . Taco Bell doesn’t pay their workers huge cop like salaries, nor hire but only a dozen or less workers because it would not be advantageous to the company. What gives the cops a right to earn a paycheck when they cannot even do their job . . . I mean, do you pay full price for 10% of a brand new BMW or a new swimming pool? Kevin is a fraud committing fraud . . . Kevin gets paid mad bucks to not complete his task: win the war on drugs. That’s why jobs like Kevin’s or the cops are easier than working fast food: they get paid huge salaries to not even be remotely successful, not even 15% successful: fraud. Imagine if all of us on this couch and off this couch got paid their wages or salaries to finish but maybe 20% or less of their job at the end of the shift or career? What if an oil pipe welder only ‘tacked’ the two pipes together or did nothing more than a ‘root bead’ before burying it and allowing millions of gallons of oil to flow through it? The pipes would fall apart and oil would spill . . . maybe even an explosion like in Mexico or NYC 2001 on Sept, 11th.

  2. Cannabis says:

    Kevin Sabet is the only person that I know who has worked his entire life to be ONDCP Director. He’s desperately trying to keep the whole Drug War going so it doesn’t end before he finally gets his chance at the brass ring.

    • John Boy says:

      He’s thirty years old, so it’s still not too late to change careers. ONDCP is a dead end and all the old hard liners like Calvina Fay are dying off or living what’s left of their wasted lives.

    • Duncan20903 says:

      .
      .

      Can’t we do something along the lines of the deal the British made with their royalty? He still gets his chance to play the HPIC on TV but we strip the position of any power to further screw up our society?

      (*HPIC = Head Parasite In Charge)

  3. Servetus says:

    OT. How useful does a class of chemicals have to be to finally be accepted as legitimate medicine by K. Sabet?

    Synthetic derivatives of THC may weaken HIV-1 infection to enhance antiviral therapies:

    “HIV/AIDS has posed one of the most significant health challenges in modern medicine,” said John Wherry, Ph.D., Deputy Editor of the Journal of Leukocyte Biology. “Recent high profile vaccine failures mean that all options need to be on the table to prevent or treat this devastating infection. Research on the role of cannabinoid type 2 receptors and viral infection may one day allow targeting these receptors to be part of combination therapies that use [and] exploit multiple weaknesses of the virus simultaneously.”

    • claygooding says:

      If synthetics work how about the real thing?

      • allan says:

        in modern terms…

        real, natural, grown – BAD

        distilled, synthesized, MANufactured – GOOD

        I’m tellin’ ya, it’s all being foisted upon us by the aliens. If they can induce us to poison ourselves into extinction then they will be free from those pesky galactic civil liability penalties that kick in when a semi-sentient specie is extincted due to another specie’s actions.

        • DonDig says:

          Allan,
          Luv ya man, but I have to disagree. Any alien who can exert influence here is undoubtedly so much more advanced than we, they couldn’t even be bothered considering how to slow us down. 🙂
          It’s got to be patentable! I understand, but Ugh.

        • allan says:

          Don… if you don’t like that one, my other theory about the aliens amongst us is even better!

          See, it seems they been hanging around the sun a lot recently and that presence implies what is to come.

          When contact is made they will be (as with any first contact) the low hanging fruit, the exploiters (think pre-Europe Americas and Conquistadores), wishing to beat more legitimate (and stable!) entities to the punch at this new potential planetary market. They will come with open arms and offering us insurance (like maybe Milky Way Progressive) against asteroid collisions. Easy enough to point out recent close calls… and only after we pay with future generations’ potentials will they say, “oh… we also sell asteroid deflection systems but they’re realllly expensive.”

          By then tho’ their competitors will begin showing up and will provide a cosmic whistle blower’s testimony that the first aliens (those in current near sun images) have been nudging asteroids into near-collision trajectories to raise our fear level and thus more willing to open our wallets and sell off our children’s earthly inheritance.

          And I sincerely believe that conspiracy theory more than I believe the postulation that the Boston bombing was a gummint conspiracy.

        • Plant Down Babylon says:

          AH HA!
          So you’re saying there’s a possibility…..

        • allan says:

          ya got me! That’s too funny, thanks P.

        • DonDig says:

          Love it!

        • claygooding says:

          My theory is that,every atom is a star and planet system and we are are actually living on a proton or neutron of an atom within the continuously enlarging collection of atoms,,also every atom in your body is another solar system made up of continuously shrinking atoms,,,so we can never meet any aliens cause they are too large to even need anything we have and all the ones smaller than us are safe from us for the same reason.

        • kaptinemo says:

          Bad enough we got Human snake-oil oil salesmen (ONDCP) on the payroll already; this is one time when ‘buy American!’ has less than patriotic overtones…

          So, let’s not be bringing in them thar furrin’ Aliens peddling their junk, okay? It’s liable to to start some domestic disturbances, such as (crotchety old-fart voice) “Aliens, cain’t you read? Sign says ‘No soliciting’…and get offa my lawn!”

  4. allan says:

    OT…

    but a good read:

    Kathleen Frydl on the drug war: ‘Here we have total and complete failure.’

    One of the parts of the book I hope gets some attention is the way that the drug lobby is behind the current structure of our drug war. Looked at from a political perspective, Schedule I drugs represent a regime of trade protection.

  5. War Vet says:

    Knock Knock

    Who’s there?

    Kevin

    Kevin who?

    Kevin

    Kevinnnnn (Timyyyy)

  6. If a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it fall…

  7. Feds threaten medical pot dispensaries with 40-year sentences http://tinyurl.com/bubmpl7

    • Windy says:

      SMH at the stupidity and futility of Wo(s)D and puritanical prohibitionist parasites.

  8. Jean Valjean says:

    OT referring to Melinda Haag and her renewed campaign against MMJ in Southern California:

    “In January, Assemblyman Tom Ammiano told a San Francisco crowd that Haag had “gone rogue,” adding, “I’m sorry a house fell on her sister,” alluding to the wicked witch in The Wizard of Oz.”

    http://www.alternet.org/drugs/feds-threaten-medical-pot-dispensaries-40-year-sentences

    • claygooding says:

      That is pretty much on topic,,you have to hand it to the feds,,every heavy handed tactic they use drives more people to our side of the table. You can’t get better verification of failure than attacks on medical marijuana when 80% of Americans support mmj.

      • Duncan20903 says:

        .
        .

        It would be a dictionary picture worthy example of douchebaggery if the Feds seize the real property of Harborside’s landlord now that the landlord doesn’t have any say in the matter until the current lease expires. Everyone is aware that the landlord filed for eviction proceedings in both State and Federal Court and lost in both? Strangely enough Harborside’s wily management confused everything by being totally honest and straightforward when negotiating their lease. A lease application without any dishonest answers…now that’s something that doesn’t happen more than a couple of times every century. Who the heck could have predicted that?

  9. DonDig says:

    The more I think about this, and the more I try to understand how people can possibly believe any form of prohibition is the right approach, I’ve come to think the answer is that they think abstinence from drug use is a more moral, upstanding approach to living life, and they want everyone to adhere to it, and think everyone else would like it if everyone adhered to it as well. It would be a better world.
    The problem is they would be wrong. Many human beings believe they benefit by consuming both licit and illicit substances, or at least think/feel like they do: one form of the pursuit of happiness.
    But what does make sense to me, is for the government to minimize harm whenever possible. The government for the people, by the people … that means, ‘Don’t harm the people.’ That would seem to me to be the minimum admission ticket to be considered as a program, ‘At least don’t hurt the people.’
    Is there a single aspect of the war on drugs, prohibition, knowing what’s best for you, what-ever-you-want-to-call-it, that does not create harm? It’s time for a pragmatic approach. If nothing else, States in this country should test the Portugal model, and see if we can replicate the same positive, harm reduction they have experienced. Pot must be legalized, and nothing should be shut out irrevocably.

    • strayan says:

      Part of the reason they think like that is because they have been gulled into believing that ‘drugs’ are somehow quite distinct from ‘non drugs’. Much like people once believed that blacks and non blacks were inherently different. Most people are shocked when you tell them an apple is made up of roughly 300 different chemicals. They don’t realise that everything you put in your body is a chemical. Ask someone whether they think nutmeg or petrol is a drug. 9 times out of 10 they will say ‘no’ even though both have psychoactive properties.

      Language is everything!

  10. Irie says:

    Well, well, well, what do we have here…..http://www.tokeofthetown.com/2013/04/daughter_of_anti-marijuana_us_house_speaker_marryi.php#more

    I can say with complete certainty (since I married a Jamaican, I am one with a little knowledge on this) that many will be celebrating the union in Rasta fashion…..”build another spliff, mon”.

    • claygooding says:

      Just when you think there is no way to strike your powerful and unreachable enemy karma jumps up and bites them in the ass.
      ?Some of the posts hope his son-in-law will help Boner to see the light,,a construction worker doesn’t make enough money to make Boner see past his nose,,he needs to be one of the non-returning politicians in the House.

      • claygooding says:

        We really need to start compiling lists of prohibition supporters in congress,,just the sight of those names going up for the public to see might put some fire under the politicos and at the same time alert any legalization supporters of the need to help vote those people out where they can.

        • DonDig says:

          Sounds like a great idea to me. Are you up for doing that?
          Actually I’ll bet it’s already been done, I just don’t know where exactly.

    • Plant Down Babylon says:

      I LOVE KARMA!!!! hahahahahahaha

      Does that make him exempt from gettn f@#ked with?! Florida sucks with their cannabis laws. Who’s gonna arrest the speaker’s son in law?

      Will they frisk him before he’s allowed in Boner’s royal castle?

      I hope he christens every room. Actually, now that i look at Boner’s eyes, he’s definitely a stoner! (but still an evil hypocrite)

  11. grossedout says:

    Devoting your life to being such losers. Have fun with that.

    • darkcycle says:

      Last time I checked, we were winning. Get back under your bridge.

    • claygooding says:

      grossedout,,devoting your life to lies,hyperbole and bought science so you can throw people in prison is the loser any time and anywhere.

    • allan says:

      I think this one might have rabies, don’t get too close

    • kaptinemo says:

      ‘Losers’. Hmmm. Let’s see. ‘Losers’ just managed to make cannabis legal in two States once more, despite all the money and resources available to the opposition.

      ‘Losers’? It should be obvious by now which side is losing, seeing as they have lost the generation they thought they could bamboozle into maintaining the huge con game that is government-enforced substance prohibition.

      The jig is up, and it’s all over but for the shouting. A long and possibly bitter denouement awaits the prohibs.

      But they had better pray that that’s all that awaits them. A lot of their victims have very long and harsh memories. For, when the ‘tumult and the shouting dies’, the quiet work of demanding an accounting of those who supported making their fellow citizen’s lives miserable will begin. The rot on our rights that led to this mess MUST be rooted out, lest it ever grow, again.

      • allan says:

        aye Kap, once again it is (metaphorically speaking) time to storm the Bastille.

        But these drive-by turd droppers won’t stay and discuss. They won’t defend their position because… well, because they can’t. The Prohibs have no momentum (and we have a massive freight barreling along at 300 mph!), no science (I’ll raise them a John Schwarz and this sort of fecundity is about all they have left. And I’m not discounting Kev-kev’s long-windedness (see also, bloviation, verbosity, logorrhea), of course… I used to be a salesman too.

  12. stlgonzo says:

    OT: To Smart to be a Cop

    I have always known this happens, but here is proof.

    http://tinyurl.com/ce4mw65

  13. allan says:

    anyone play taps?

    RIP, Mike Gray

    Cal NORML is saddened to hear of the death of our good friend Mike Gray. For many years, Mike worked with Robert Field at Common Sense for Drug Policy publicizing the abuses of the drug war and supporting local activists for drug reform. Among other accomplishments, Mike was the author of “Drug Crazy”, a a popular history on the origins of drug prohibition in the US. This January, he spoke at Cal NORML’s conference “Ending the 100-year War on cannabis.”

    In 2008, Mike and I toasted to seeing the end of cannabis prohibition at the NORML conference in Berkeley. Sadly for Mike, his friends, and the nation, he didn’t live to see it.

    – Dale Gieringer

    and here’s Mike, 2001, in the DrugSense chatroom:

    http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v01/n1702/a05.html?1249

  14. claygooding says:

    Well-Earned Retirement
    • In March, twin sisters Louise and Martine Fokkens, 70, announced their joint retirement after more than 50 years each on the job—as Amsterdam prostitutes. (In February, the minimum age for prostitutes in the Netherlands was raised to 21, but there is no maximum.) The twins estimated they had 355,000 client-visits between them, and Martine noted that she still has one devoted regular who she’ll have to disappoint. Louise, though, appeared happier to hang up her mattress for good because of arthritis. The sisters complained about the legalization of brothels in 2000 (with East European women and pimps out-hustling the more genteel Dutch women) and ensuing taxation (which required the women to take on more clients).

    They should be paid a pension,,after all we pay our legislators a pension for screwing us.

  15. primus says:

    My lady is 70 and hot to trot.

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