Drug WarRant

Lobby E-Mails Show Depth of Obama Ties to Drug Industry

The New York Times article doesn’t specifically address the question posed in the title of this post, but it does show a clear willingness on the part of the administration to give in to the wishes of the pharmaceutical industry if it would help pass health care.

It certainly wouldn’t be surprising to discover that a discussion had occurred about preventing the proliferation of non-pharmaceutical medicines.

This, to me, is an important point. Too many people think that drug laws are about catching criminals, when, in fact, they’re more about creating criminals.

Marijuana law just creates criminals by Hakeem Jeffries at CNN

The consequences of an arrest are severe, especially for young people of color who are already disproportionately subjected to criminal justice system intervention and incarceration. An arrest creates serious barriers to going to college or getting a job, and that person’s future may begin to spiral downward. The damage to police and community relations cannot be overstated.

Another serious problem is that these needless and inappropriate arrests detract from arresting and prosecuting serious criminals. Millions of dollars in law enforcement resources are wasted. Thousands of lives are damaged with the contamination of having a criminal record.[…]

The connected and powerful — including many in high political office — have frequently admitted to smoking marijuana when they were young. We didn’t unmercifully penalize them. We should stop needlessly criminalizing tens of thousands of our young people for doing the same thing.

LEAP is Hiring: Assistant Media Relations Director

Pro-Legalization Cops Seek Assistant Media Relations Director

Continue reading →

This AP story has been getting a lot of play around the media: Colo. vote on pot could affect Obama-Romney race

Whether to legalize marijuana will be on the Colorado ballot in November. President Barack Obama and presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney have identical stances on pot legalization — they oppose it. And neither is comfortable talking about it.

Yet Obama and Romney find themselves unwittingly ensnared in the legalization debate — and both may want to take it more seriously if their race in Colorado is close.

Again, it’s good to see this on the national stage this year. Even when both candidates don’t want to talk about it, they can’t avoid it.

And one thing the article didn’t discuss… How will they avoid talking about it, if a Gary Johnson, for example, starts spending some time in Colorado talking about legalization?

Heading for New York for a week. Will check in often.

If you’re concerned about the lack of posts, take a look at the comments, where you’ll find the other folks who hang out on Pete’s couch – and a whole lot of great content and activity.

They don’t come any dumber than Dennis. Unfortunately, a fair number are as dumb.

House OKs bill to ban flavored rolling papers

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — Flavored tobacco rolling papers that critics say are used to smoke marijuana would be banned under a plan approved by the Illinois House.

The House gave its OK to the bill sponsored by Rep. Dennis Reboletti Thursday night. The legislation would also toughen the penalty for heroin sales. […]

The bill would also send anyone who sells 3 or more grams of heroin to prison. The threshold is now 5 grams.

What a schmuck. He apparently thinks the state is just rolling in money.

In the meantime, the state legislature is gridlocked over how to resolve the Constitutional requirement that they pay their debts, they’re cutting education spending right and left, have run out of new casino income streams, and are pretty much broke.

But Dennis figures they can always spend some money hassling small store owners who sell rolling papers. And prisons? There’s always room for more. Right?

I wonder if former prosecutor Reboletti ever figured out that sending people to prison costs money.

He certainly can’t prove that either provision will actually do anything useful. It’s all about grandstanding with the taxpayers’ money.

Time for the residents of Elmhurst to take out the trash and elect someone responsible.

From the Moving towards a Drug-free Society: Statement made by the 2nd Congress of World Federation Against Drugs – WFAD, Stockholm, Sweden on May 23, 2012… (where our own Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske was a proud and eager participant):

[…] Realizing that advocates of legalization and decriminalization of drugs are driven by greed, disrespect of human rights and lack of understanding of the harms of drugs and of addiction, and that making drugs more legal to use, and thus more accessible, will escalate drug use and the chemical slavery of drug addiction; […]

The Congress of WFAD finds that states and all concerned individuals, groups and bodies need to support the international conventions on narcotics and to advocate for a balanced and restrictive policy that seeks to limit the harmful effects of drugs through prevention, law enforcement, treatment, and recovery programmes.

All over the media this morning is the screaming headline from the Los Angeles Times:

Most California voters don’t support legalizing pot, poll finds

The subtext is, if California doesn’t support legalization…

Of course, it’s the Los Angeles Times, and the Los Angeles Times poll, and the Los Angeles Times has never been pot friendly at all. The actual numbers are 50% opposed, 46% in favor with a error margin of +-3.5%. So yes, the headline is hyperbole.

The actual question was a simple one tossed in with a whole bunch of other questions about a broad range of political topics.

For example, one question asked was:

Some people have proposed that the state legalize online poker and collect a cut of the proceeds from gambling websites. The 200 million dollars or more each year that some legislators say would come from these new fees could help pay for education, public safety and other government services. From what you know, do you favor or oppose this proposal?

However, for marijuana, the question was:

Do you think marijuana should be legalized for general or recreational use by adults?

No indication of tax revenue. No mention of regulation, etc. It’s not that the question is a bad one per se, but rather that the topic of marijuana legalization in particular is such a minefield with decades of intense propaganda, that unless you really define your terms specifically, lots of people really aren’t sure to what they are saying “yes.”

Compare it to the Rasmussen question recently that showed 56% of Americans supporting legalization:

Suppose that marijuana was legalized and regulated so that it was illegal for people under 18 to buy, that those who drove while under the influence of marijuana received strict penalties, and that smoking marijuana was banned in public places like restaurants. With such regulations in place, would you favor or oppose legalizing and regulating marijuana?

How you ask the question, and in what context within the overall survey, makes a big difference.

Breaking news:

Marijuana legalization supporter Beto O’Rourke has just defeated prohibitionist 8-term Congressman Silvestre Reyes in the Democratic primary for Texas’s 16th congressional district.

In early 2009, when he was an El Paso city councilman, O’Rourke championed a council resolution calling for a national conversation on legalizing and regulating drugs as a possible solution to the drug cartel violence just over El Paso’s border in Mexico. The mayor vetoed the unanimously-passed resolution and the council was set to override the veto until Congressman Reyes butted in to the debate and threatened that the city would lose federal funding if it insisted on pushing the legalization conversation. The override vote failed, but the national conversation on legalization has only gotten louder and louder.

Now, O’Rourke is all but certain to be the next congressman from the heavily-democratic district. His voice will fill the anti-prohibition void left by retiring Reps. Barney Frank, Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich.

The O’Rourke victory comes just two weeks after Ellen Rosenblum defeated former U.S. attorney Dwight Holton in the Democratic primary for Oregon’s attorney general, a campaign that largely centered on Holton’s role in cracking down on state-legal medical marijuana on behalf of the Obama administration.

It’s increasingly clear that the era of drug policy reform being a political third rail is over. Supporting clearly failed prohibition policies that cause so much crime, violence and corruption is becoming a political liability.

Watch this anti-O’Rourke attack ad that Reyes put out focusing on the drug policy issue to see exactly what DOES NOT work in politics in 2012: http://vimeo.com/37489037

And see http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/05/border-war-beto-orourke-silvestre-reyes for some more background on the O’Rourke-Reyes race.

This is great news. And despite an attack ad that specifically went after Beto for his legalization viewpoint. An 8-term Congressmen with a power base is defeated by a drug policy reformer.

Things are changing. With Rosenblum in Oregon and O’Rourke in Texas, the notion that being a prohibitionist is the safest political move is changing.

Paul Waldman’s post yesterday — Why Democrats Support the Drug War Status Quo — at The American Prospect seems a bit out of place today.

At the moment, there remains a strong incentive to support the status quo, lest you be targeted in your next race as some kind of hippie-lover. The incentives on the other side, on the other hand, are almost nil. When was the last time somebody lost a race for being too tough on drugs?

Yesterday.