Drug WarRant

DEA Boss Clings On Amid Campaign for His Ouster

Chuck Rosenberg was supposed to be a different kind of Drug Enforcement Agency leader, someone who could serve as acting administrator for the remainder of President Barack Obama’s time in office without rocking the boat like his embattled predecessor.

Instead, Rosenberg is under siege from activists and lawmakers after calling the use of raw marijuana to treat medical conditions “a joke” earlier this month, and he’s facing a campaign by reformers unseen even by the famously anti-reform Michele Leonhart, who stepped down in May after a sex party scandal.

[…]

On Thursday, seven members of Congress – Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., Sam Farr, D-Calif., Barbara Lee, D-Calif., Ted Lieu, D-Calif., and Jim McDermott, D-Wash. – wrote to Obama asking that he fire Rosenberg.

And on Friday, a group of nearly two dozen patients, caregivers and policy advocates visited the DEA’s headquarters in northern Virginia to present boxes stuffed with printouts of an online petition calling for Rosenberg’s ouster. The petition has been signed by more than 100,000 people and was spearheaded by Marijuana Majority leader Tom Angell.

Again, I reiterate, petitions are generally worthless. But what Tom has done here is really quite excellent. He started a petition, and, because he keeps really good relationships with a variety of media folks, he gets articles written about there being a petition, which gets more people to sign it. And because he has also developed relationships with political leaders, they write their own letters, which generates more press. Then he gets the press to cover the deliverance of the petitions, along with sick people who signed them.

And, because I’m on Tom’s press list, I get regular updates from him on the status of the petition, which makes me more likely to write about it. Good organization. Good activism.

Will Rosenberg be fired? Of course not. But that’s not the important thing – what we’ve got is major news outlets treating the DEA as under siege, putting them on the defensive, and giving medical marijuana patients sympathy for being treated “as a joke” by the bad government bureaucrats.

Well, at least there’s still a tiny bit of 2015 left.

The White House apparently finally released the 2015 National Drug Control Strategy on Tuesday, with no fanfare at all. This is a bit of a guess on my part, since there’s been almost no media coverage of the strategy, and no press release this year on the ONDCP website regarding the strategy.

Here’s the full strategy.

I’ve skimmed it, and, as far as I can tell, not much to see. More of the same kinder, gentler prohibition stuff that we’ve seen in recent years. “Criminal justice reform” essentially meaning “be nicer to people when you imprison them and help them get treatment.”

After a lot of talk about treatment, it’s still a lot of enforcement stuff – maximize spending on drug task forces, etc. – interdiction, cracking down…

There’s the obligatory section about focusing on drugged driving. And even that seems a bit half-hearted. While leading with strong headlines like “Preventing Drugged Driving Must Become a National Priority Equivalent to Preventing Drunk Driving,” they end up admitting that “The study found that marijuana users are more likely to be involved in accidents, but that the increased risk may be due in part because marijuana users are more likely to be in high-risk groups for becoming involved in crashes (e.g., young males).” and also talked about their education efforts including “ONDCP sent more than 50 tweets about drugged driving during a one-hour period and more than 30 national partners joined the chat to learn more about drugged driving.” Exciting stuff.

Interestingly, the subject of marijuana legalization was almost completely ignored. A few minor references in the little snapshot features of citizens who are making a difference, talking about how they had opposed legalization, and this small reference:

Increasingly, marijuana growers are modifying their methods to evade detection by law enforcement and the public. In recent years cultivation operations have moved away from outdoor grows on public lands to indoor grow sites. According to DEA’s Domestic Cannabis Eradication/Suppression Program, the number of plants seized from indoor cultivation operations nationwide increased from 302,080 in 2012 to 396,620 in 2014.130 This shift makes detection more challenging and complicates eradication efforts, particularly in states where the legalization of recreational marijuana or of medical use of marijuana has complicated law enforcement efforts to secure necessary search warrants. To address this growing threat, Federal law enforcement, in coordination with state and local agencies will aggressively deploy resources as efficiently as possible to eradicate indoor marijuana and dismantle the organizations that produce dangerously large quantities.

Yep, that’s their entire discussion about states legalizing marijuana.

I don’t have the answer to the violence in the world, nor do I know what we could have done to prevent it. I, like many people, have ideas. And when tragedy strikes, your mind can’t help trying to make the pieces fit together.

And so, as I was driving cross country yesterday, my mind put this bizarre chain of events together…

1. 1986. Reacting to the death of Len Bias from cocaine, Democratic Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill demands “some goddamn legislation” and the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 is passed with lots of tough on drug provisions including severe mandatory minimums.
2. Due in part to the massive powder/crack sentencing disparities, the legislation ends up creating a situation where African-American males in particular are heavily targeted by enforcement and given vastly longer sentences. (See Len Bias – the death that ushered in two decades of destruction)
3. Drug sentences in many states resulted in disenfranchisement. In Florida, for example, in 2000, one in four black men were not allowed to vote. If they had been allowed to vote, it’s likely, in that time, that they would have voted for Gore over Bush, and George W. Bush would not have won the Presidential election.
4. It’s certainly arguable that a Gore presidency would not have included the war in Iraq (a war to which the French objected). The war was clearly a desire of George W. Bush.
5. It’s fairly certain that ISIL/Daesh was made possible by the destabilization caused by the Iraq War.
6. Therefore Tip O’Neill is responsible for the recent attacks in Paris.

Of course, that’s ridiculous. And you could probably construct many other linkages in much the same way.

But it does remind us that public policy is subject to a form of butterfly effect. Decisions made can have broad, unintended consequences.

Reason has an interesting piece looking at the various candidates, past and present, to support significant marijuana law reform:

Marijuana Legalizers Who Ran for President

Three days after Bernie Sanders unveiled legislation to repeal the federal ban on marijuana, Hillary Clinton proposed moving marijuana to a slightly less restrictive legal category. The former secretary of state’s faint echo of the Vermont senator’s bold bill—the first of its kind in the Senate—underlined how timid Clinton has always been on the subject of drug policy reform. Although the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee has had second thoughts about the mandatory minimum sentences she used to champion, the woman who a few years ago explained that we can’t legalize the drug trade because “there is just too much money in it” clearly is not ready to call off the war on weed, even though that is what most Americans seem to want.

The dueling marijuana proposals also showed that Sanders, whose chances of winning his party’s presidential nomination are remote at best, is nevertheless pushing Clinton to address issues she would prefer to ignore.

The article covers a variety of candidates, past and present, in addition to Sanders and Clinton, including Mike Gravel, Gary Johnson, Dennis Kucinich, Ron Paul, and Rand Paul.

This has been building for a little while now, thanks in large part to Tom Angell who started a petition to have the DEA chief removed…

DEA chief says smoking marijuana as medicine “is a joke”

DEA chief Chuck Rosenberg on Wednesday rejected the notion that smoking marijuana is “medicine,” calling the premise a “joke.”

“What really bothers me is the notion that marijuana is also medicinal — because it’s not,” Rosenberg said in a briefing to reporters. “We can have an intellectually honest debate about whether we should legalize something that is bad and dangerous, but don’t call it medicine — that is a joke.”

As more and more states experiment with loosening marijuana laws, Rosenberg said that people shouldn’t conflate the issue of legalizing recreational marijuana with medicinal marijuana.

“There are pieces of marijuana — extracts or constituents or component parts — that have great promise” medicinally, he said. “But if you talk about smoking the leaf of marijuana — which is what people are talking about when they talk about medicinal marijuana — it has never been shown to be safe or effective as a medicine.”

16,000 People and Counting Want DEA Chief Fired for Calling Medical Marijuana a ‘Joke’

More than 16,000 people have signed a petition demanding that the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) be fired for calling medical marijuana a “joke” last week. […]

Medical marijuana advocates quickly criticized Rosenberg, complaining that the DEA blocks medical and scientific research on weed. Many of the petition’s signatories include patients with chronic illnesses who say pot has changed their lives.

‘It worries me that he is so ignorant as to say that it’s a joke. My daughter’s medicine is not a joke to me.’

“While it’s nothing new for drug war bureaucrats to oppose sensible marijuana policies, Rosenberg’s comments go way too far,” the petition, posted on Change.org, reads. “Medical marijuana is not a “joke” to the millions of seriously ill patients in a growing number of states who use it legally in accordance with doctors’ recommendations.”

The petition calls for President Barack Obama to “fire Chuck Rosenberg and appoint a new DEA administrator who will respect science, medicine, patients and voters.

Of course, if they were to actually appoint a new DEA administrator who did those things, probably the first thing they’d do is shut down the DEA, or at least significantly change its focus.

The petition was started by Tom Angell, a leader of the pro-pot advocacy group Marijuana Majority. Angell told VICE News he hopes the number of signatures — including one by singer Melissa Etheridge — will “get the White House to take note that this administration’s DEA head is saying things that are offensive to millions of American families who have benefited from medical marijuana.”

I think this kind of thing is nice to see…

Mini joints: This Colorado mountain shop’s idea is a huge success

“We thought it would be really great to have something portable that had just enough for you and a few friends,” Andrew Salini, chief operating officer at High Country Healing, said in a recent interview.

“Not everyone wants to smoke a gram. It’s a little intense,” Joe Lindsey, director of customer relations at HCH, said in a recent interview. “They see these Mini Js and they think, ‘That’s just right for me.’ ”

The downsizing of cannabis portions is not a new concept for the rapidly evolving marijuana industry. To address safety concerns regarding wildly popular marijuana edibles, Colorado regulators rolled out new rules in February requiring manufacturers to individually wrap edibles or demark products in increments of 10 milligrams (or fewer) of psychoactive component THC.

It’s been an about-face for the industry that, in the early months of legalization, was in a race to make the strongest edible.

Those who want the quantity can still get it, but as legalization gets past the initial novelty, it doesn’t always have to be about bigger and more. And that’s particularly good for the casual user and the experimenter.

Just got this news release from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration: “DEA set to announce comprehensive strategy to deal with heroin, r/x abuse, violent crime.”

And the release said”

Special Agent in Charge Gary Tuggle of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) Philadelphia Field Division announced today that Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania will be the first city in the nation where the DEA will implement a new comprehensive strategy to address prescription opioid abuse, heroin use, and violent crime. [emphasis added]

Wow. They finally have come up with a new strategy. Wonder what it’ll be?

Oh wait, they tell us:

The goals of the new strategy include stopping the deadly cycle of prescription opioid and heroin abuse by eliminating the drug trafficking organizations and gangs fueling violence on the streets and addiction in communities.

Um… really? This sounds vaguely familiar. Sure you haven’t tried this before? With a complete lack of success?

Oh, there’s more:

The strategy will also include partnering with healthcare professionals and engaging and strengthening community and social service organizations that are best positioned to provide long-term help and support for building drug-free communities.

Yeah, no, that sounds pretty familiar as well, and that “drug-free communities” thing hasn’t worked before either.

So they’re going to have a press conference to announce this tomorrow. All you media types will probably want to rush over to Allison Park, Pennsylvania to catch the details on this revolutionary new initiative.

The War on Drugs Could Be Making Our Communities More Dangerous by Justin Glawe at Vice.com.

“Sexual assault just isn’t at the top of the agenda,” says Ilse Knecht of the Joyful Heart Foundation, a sexual assault victim advocacy group.

She’s not the only one calling for a redirection of resources.

“We’ve been advocating that money be made available for robbery units, homicide units, sexual crime units,” said Neill Franklin, director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, a national coalition of former police officers and criminal justice reform advocates. “How about using some of that money to analyze the rape kits that are sitting on shelves waiting to be looked at?” […]

Franklin and other reformers are disturbed by the recent uptick in homicides, and are pushing for more resources to go toward preventing the killings and achieving justice for the victims and their families.

“In the 1960s and 1970s, we were solving nine out of 10 murders,” Franklin said. “Now, in some places like Baltimore, it’s more like three out of ten. Federal dollars that are going to law enforcement agencies need to be reevaluated, pulled back from drug enforcement, and redirected toward preventing and solving violent crime.”

The drug war gets all the extra funding – the asset forfeiture funds, the Byrne grants, etc. All the task forces, SWAT teams and other resources put into the drug war take away from police efforts on solving violent crimes, including murder and sex crimes.

And they say it well.

Excellent editorial: The Push for Legal Marijuana Spreads by the editorial board.

Support for making marijuana legal is increasing around the world, and that is a good thing. […]

Laws banning the growing, distribution and possession of marijuana have caused tremendous damage to society, with billions spent on imprisoning people for violating pointlessly harsh laws. Yet research shows that marijuana is far less harmful than alcohol and tobacco, and can be used to treat medical conditions like chronic pain. […]

What’s needed now is responsible leadership from President Obama and Congress. They ought to seriously consider the kind of legislation Mr. Sanders has proposed. His bill would remove marijuana, or “marihuana” as it is called in federal law, from Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act, which is meant for drugs that have a high potential for abuse and no medical use. […]

A growing group of activists, judges and lawmakers is showing the world a path to more sensible drug policies. Mr. Obama and Congress should join them.

Pot legalization bid in California gains powerful backers

“This is the one to watch. This is the one,” California Cannabis Industry Association Executive Director Nate Bradley, whose organization is endorsing the measure, said. “This one has this broad-based coalition behind it, the funding behind it…and still allows for a free market in the cannabis industry.’

The measure would allow adults 21 and over to buy an ounce of marijuana and marijuana-infused products at licensed retail outlets and also to grow up to six pot plants for personal recreational use.

Yeah, that’s more like it.

Although I’m still waiting for some state to pass the “Regulate Cannabis Like Tomatoes Act.”