Drug WarRant

Late Friday, the White House answered the top-vote-getting petition and seven other marijuana petitions in one response (Friday afternoon is traditionally considered a good time to “dump the trash” — put out a bunch of stuff they have to release but don’t want to have noticed much, just before the weekend.)

LEAP has already responded

Late Friday night the White House issued a typical evasive rejection of the several marijuana legalization petitions that collected more signatures than any other issue on its “We the People” website. Even though recent polls show that more voters support marijuana legalization than approve of President Obama’s job performance, the White House categorically dismissed the notion of reforming any laws, focusing its response on the possible harms of marijuana use instead of addressing the many harms of prohibition detailed in the petitions. […]

“It’s maddening that the administration wants to continue failed prohibition polices that do nothing to reduce drug use and succeed only in funneling billions of dollars into the pockets of the cartels and gangs that control the illegal market,” said Franklin, who serves as executive director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), a group of cops, judges and prosecutors who support legalizing and regulating drugs. “If the president and his advisers think they’re being politically savvy by shying away from much-needed change to our drug policies, they’re wrong. The recent Gallup poll shows that more Americans support legalizing marijuana than support continuing prohibition, so the administration is clearly out of step with the people it claims to represent. President Obama needs to remember his campaign pledge not to waste scarce resources interfering with state marijuana laws and his earlier statement about the ‘utter failure’ of the drug war.”

Five of the top 10 petitions on the “We the People” site are about some aspect of marijuana or drug policy reform. The eight marijuana petitions that the White House’s Friday rejection was intended to address have collectively garnered more than 150,00 signatures.

Good job by LEAP.

Again, nothing surprising in the pathetic petition “answer” by Gil Kerlikowske.

According to scientists at the National Institutes of Health- the world’s largest source of drug abuse research – marijuana use is associated with addiction, respiratory disease, and cognitive impairment. We know from an array of treatment admission information and Federal data that marijuana use is a significant source for voluntary drug treatment admissions and visits to emergency rooms. Studies also reveal that marijuana potency has almost tripled over the past 20 years, raising serious concerns about what this means for public health – especially among young people who use the drug because research shows their brains continue to develop well into their 20’s. Simply put, it is not a benign drug.

And then he talked about the “balanced” approach, which is his nonsense mantra to deflect any criticism.

Again, this is nothing more than we expected. Nobody expected that we would put in a petition and the government would stop in their tracks and say “Oh, my. I never realized that. We need to stop this injustice immediately.”

It’s all about having one more option to promote a national discussion (as LEAP has nicely contributed with their release).

Classic. 1927 New York Times (via Radley Balko)

Next week is Drug Facts Week, an event organized by NIDA supposedly to promote facts, but in actuality more to promote propaganda.

So we have our own counter version at DrugWarFacts.com, which I’ve been advertising on Google (as well as on this site), and it’s gotten some pretty good hits, particularly lately. To take a page from their social marketing plans, I plan on doing some tweeting and facebooking of drug facts and getting others to do so during this week.

Give me your best facts. Real facts. Both drug facts and drug war facts. Ideally, these should be 98 characters or less including spaces (in order to tweet it and provide the appropriate link and hashtag). Short and sweet.

Examples (you don’t have to give me the character count — these are just to give you an idea of the approximate length you should aim for):

Fact: Most marijuana users never use any other illicit drug. What gateway? (74 characters)

The largest study (by NIDA) showed no increased risk of cancer for even heavy marijuana smokers. (97 characters)

And go.

Update: Give me a source link, when possible. I’m going to list these at the drug facts site and have links to the sources of info.

This one really cracked me up.

WASHINGTON — U.S. attorneys have a message for California’s medical marijuana advocates: Don’t blame Barack Obama. After it was announced that the crackdown on medical pot establishments in the Golden State was a collective decision by the four U.S. attorneys in California and not the result of any directive from Washington, spokeswoman Lauren Horwood emphasized that the administration never even green-lighted the ramped-up enforcement actions.

Really?

Anyone who has ever worked within an organization with a charismatic leader knows that if that is actually true, there are very few possibilities now that the U.S. attorneys have made that statement.

1. Barack Obama does, in fact, agree with the decision and can be blamed.
2. Barack Obama does not, in fact, agree with the decision and the U.S. Attorneys either must stop what they’re doing, or they must stop what they’re doing while turning in their resignations.

So… which is it?

I mean, do they really think that they can somehow get Obama off the hook with the liberals who support medical marijuana with something that lame?

This morning, a large number of people got an official White House letter from David Plouffe, Senior Advisor to the President.

It was a letter to talk about the success of the “We the People” online petition initiative from the White House and to encourage more involvement. The opening of the letter was just what I had hoped for…

Good morning,

It’s part of my job to make sure President Obama gets to hear the voices and perspectives of people outside Washington – and lately, that’s not been difficult.

Everywhere the President goes, he gets the same message:…

Ah, here it comes. Finally. Acknowledgement from the White House that in every forum of this kind, drug policy reform is not only the top message, but usually the top 10.

…Americans just want folks in Washington to work together to build an economy that works for the middle class, not just the wealthiest – and is based on rewarding responsibility, hard work and fairness.

Wait. What?

Let me read that again. I must have accidentally skipped the words “marijuana” and “drug policy”… nope.

OK, I get it. He wants a chance to promote his agenda first, and then later in the letter he’ll discuss specifics that have come through the petition process.

Then, he’ll mention how thousands of citizens have signed the petition for drug policy reform, and how he understands the issue based on his experience with drugs in his youth, and that he has gotten the message loud and clear.

Let me scroll down further through the letter…

Ah, here it is!

In the past month, thousands of citizens signed a petition about…

See, I told you.

…student loans. These individuals rightly pointed out that the weight of this debt is preventing graduates all over the country from achieving their dreams.

It’s a message received loud and clear and one that President Obama – who spent almost a decade paying off his own student loans – understands.

Sigh.

So what else do you have? What’s the next issue you think needs attention? Make sure your voice is heard in our government:

http://www.WhiteHouse.gov/YourIdeas

We can’t wait to see what you have to say.

Sincerely,

David Plouffe
Senior Advisor to the President

… just for clarification, I’m just having fun with a completely and thoroughly expected letter content by the Administration.

The following article from The Voice of Russia sounds even more entertaining if you imagine it being spoken by Yakov Smirnoff.

U. S plans to legalize marijuana.

There is a term in the U.S.: “war on drugs” which describes the state’s attempt to wage war on the spread of drugs. The campaign is having a telling effect not only on the state’s budget. 80 per cent of all the prisoners in American jails were convicted for marijuana offence.

And most of them come out of prisons mentally damaged. Against this backdrop, 50 per cent of Americans are calling for the legalization of Indian hemp. This is not because Americans have become more liberal-minded, says Bill Piper, Chief of the “Drug Policy Alliance”.

In the past 50 years, the numbers of supporters of the “poison” has been increasing steadily, and towards the end of the 90s, a law which allowed obtaining of marijuana on a prescription, in a free medical marijuana dispensary, was adopted in 17 American states. […]

An organization called “Law emforces against ban” has been formed. The members have proposed legalizing all the existing drugs, arguing that this could help protest children from prohibited substances, remove drugs from the streets, and keep more effective records of drug addicts.

Some excellent conferences coming up shortly…

Reform Conference

This is the major biennial International Drug Policy Reform Conference being held November 2-5 in Los Angeles. Full of speakers, workshops, and social events with over 1,000 people in attendance.

The Cato Institute is hosting Ending the Global War on Drugs on Tuesday, November 15.

An excellent group of speakers including Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Former President, Brazil; Jorge Castañeda, Former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mexico; Mary Anastasia O’Grady, Member of the Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal; Luis Alberto Lacalle Pou, Speaker of the House of Deputies, Uruguay; Glenn Greenwald; Columnist and Blogger, Salon; Leigh Maddox, Board Member, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, Professor, University of Maryland Francis Carey School of Law; Ethan Nadelmann, Executive Director, Drug Policy Alliance; Tucker Carlson, Editor-in-Chief, Daily Caller

…

Unfortunately, my work schedule makes trips to either coast completely impossible right now, or I’d be trying to do one or both.

If there’s anybody who is attending either conference and is interested in sharing reactions and reports with our readers here, please let me know.

This is one of the best articles I’ve read on the subject so far.

In a Strange About-Face, the President Tries to Hack Medical Marijuana Off at the Knees by Ray Stern in the Phoenix New Times.

There was no doubt about it: Obama was intent on killing an entire industry — in the middle of a depression, no less. Left unexplained was why, especially since he was giving the finger to voters in 16 states just a year before he would face them in his own election.

Except one group, says Salazar: “It’s a mystery . . . where the pressure is coming from. My sense is it’s coming from law enforcement.”

Makes sense to me.

As more research comes in showing that pot can be an effective treatment, and with America’s elderly population exploding in the coming decades, interest in its medicinal qualities apparently will only rise.

Ignorance, false propaganda, and rank political posturing tend to be the foundation of the anti-marijuana argument. (Throw in bureaucratic turf protection, as well. The DEA, for example, would need fewer agents if pot was decriminalized nationwide.)

Bingo.

The author does a great job of ridiculing the public servants who try to push propaganda rather than science:

Last December in Arizona, Will Humble, the state’s Department of Health Services director, held a proposed-rules-on-medical-marijuana news conference about the state’s new Medical Marijuana Act. He took a moment to remind reporters that more than 1,000 Arizonans died last year from accidental overdoses of prescription drugs.

But when asked how many of them died from marijuana, Humble refused to answer — to chuckles from the audience. He referred the question to his chief medical officer, Laura Nelson, who would only say she’d “have to do the research on that” before she could answer.

Then Nelson began stammering about the danger of marijuana related to “car accidents” — though she had done no research on that, either.

He covers the importance of state action.

Like women’s suffrage, the medical-marijuana movement has — in 10 states, anyway — benefited by the direct democracy of citizens initiatives. These elections have taken the pulse of voters in a way that congressional elections cannot.

And he points out the challenge that the crackdown faces:

[Pheonix attorney Ty] Taber thinks the president may have underestimated his foe. “The people behind this marijuana movement — they’re committed. They are zealots. And these are smart people — not stoners saying, ‘Hey, dude, pass another slice of pizza.'”

Not that there’s anything wrong with pizza.

Officials Use Ruse At Wolcott High To Clear Halls For Drug Search

Combine the War on Terror with the War on Drugs to help create a docile and obedient future generation.

At Wolcott High School one morning this week, an urgent announcement crackled over the intercom: a threatening intruder was in the building and students were told to immediately take refuge in classrooms.

Doors were locked and police, with dogs, moved in. Students stayed huddled in classrooms where they were told to stay away from the windows.

But what sounded like a frightening situation was just a search for narcotics. Drug-sniffing dogs combed the school while students stayed in locked classrooms, believing that an attacker was roaming the halls.

The schools, of course, just want to terrify the students in a positive way…

[Superintendent of Schools Joseph McCary:] “We are providing a safe and secure nurturing environment.”

No drugs were found.

But that wasn’t what it was about, was it?

Interesting (though a bit meandering in focus) piece by Robbie Gennet in the Huffington Post: How Do You Quantify a Hallucination? And Why Are They Illegal?

The DEA has a nice hallucinogen page, though it’s sorely lacking in footnotes to back up their “facts”. Nor does it tell us why hallucinogens are so dangerous as to be banned from use. […]

If the only reason that these drugs are illegal is that they make you have hallucinations (sometimes) and they can be scary (sometimes) but are often pleasurable and enlightening, how is that grounds for banning them? […]

So they are admitting that the substances listed are not well understood on a variety of scientific levels, they might not even been correctly named and that they don’t even always work. If you refuse to test and understand them, how can you justify making them illegal? Without correctly defining them, how can hallucinogens be accurately applied to a scheduling chart full of quantifying statements? And furthermore, how can they refuse to let said substances be tested for the kind of empirical data they would need to properly schedule them? Do they not want to test hallucinogens and have to schedule them honestly?

Or is it that you can’t quantify a hallucination?

Perhaps it is time to reschedule ALL drugs to create policy based on scientific rationale and empirical data rather than propaganda and fear.

Of course, our political leaders have never felt the need to justify making anything illegal. And the mere mystery of hallucinogens is enough to give sadomoralists the screaming heebie-jeebies.