Drug WarRant

Anybody who’s been involved in marijuana policy during the past, oh, 42 years, knows about scheduling. Cannabis was placed into Schedule 1 of the Controlled Substances Act, provisionally, and, despite the Commission report which should have removed it, was left there. Since then, every petition to change the scheduling has been blocked, not by scientific evidence, but by political decisions from the executive branch.

Of course, having marijuana on Schedule 1 has led to serious real harms, including the restriction on using a medical necessity defense in federal courts (US v. Oakland Cannabis Buyer’s Cooperative).

The Schedule 1 status has also had potent symbolic political power, with the DEA holding a death grip on the status to protect their enforcement turf (while simultaneously allowing easy and fast rescheduling for pharmaceutical products like Marinol).

Of course, in recent years, it’s become more and more obvious, to even the general population, how absurd it is to have cannabis classified in Schedule 1 (or, for that matter, to be scheduled at all, when alcohol and tobacco are not).

So it’s not likely to be popular to let people know that you have the ability to change that classification… and haven’t. Which may be why President Obama weaseled his way out of any responsibility for it in his most recent interview.

Confused About Power to Reschedule Pot, Advocates Say (by Steven Nelson in US News and World Report):

“What is and isn’t a Schedule I narcotic is a job for Congress,” Obama told Jake Tapper of CNN. “It’s not something by ourselves that we start changing. No, there are laws under – undergirding those determinations.” […]

Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., tells U.S. News it’s “very clear” that the law “actually permits reclassification administratively.”

“I don’t dispute that Congress could and should make the change, but it’s also something the administration could do in a matter of days and I hope they will consider it,” says Blumenauer, who is currently circulating a letter among colleagues asking Obama to do so. Eight members of Congress have signed the letter so far.

I, too, would like to see Congress step up, but there’s no doubt that the President can act independently.

Also pointing out the simple and uncontroversial fact that the President has the power to reschedule, was Jacob Sullum, who wrote: Obama, Who Evidently Has Not Read the Controlled Substances Act, Denies That He Has the Power to Reclassify Marijuana.

Obama often speaks as if he is an outside observer of his own administration […]

That led to this bizarre screed by Mark A.R. Kleiman: Futile pursuits: chasing rainbows and rescheduling cannabis. Kleiman, while not identifying a single inaccuracy in Sullum’s report, nevertheless chose to spew this:

The discussion of “rescheduling” marijuana is confused because most of the people engaged in it don’t know how the law works.

Jacob Sullum, always willing to let his ignorance be the measure of other people’s knowledge, utterly unwilling to let mere facts get in the way of libertarian ideology, and eager to please his paymasters by slagging a Democratic President, illustrates my point in his response to the latest CNN Obama interview.

Those who read Mark Kleiman’s blog on a regular basis know that he suffers from an extreme case of libertarian derangement syndrome. Mark is a big fan of nanny-state government and a strong promoter of intervention into the lives of those whom Kleiman believes are unable/unwilling to make appropriate/proper decisions for themselves. (You see this in his preferences for extremely high regulation of currently illicit drugs and alcohol, particularly as relates to those who abuse them.) One of his biggest fears appears to be a net reduction in government authority in our lives.

While he often criticizes government himself, it is with the idea of reforming or replacing the corrupt or improperly working program. Any attempt to suggest ending/reducing (or even criticizing) a nanny-state program without in the same breath pointing out the value of government intervention is met with this same libertarian derangement syndrome reaction.

Of course, I’m just conducting my own little Psychology 101 experiment in trying to read Mr. Kleiman, but the analysis seems to fit. It goes a way toward explaining the also bizarre decision to recently criticize Radley Balko’s work out of the blue.

Note to Radley Balko: Congratulations on your new gig at the Washington Post. Your criticisms of police excess – often spot-on – would have more cred if, just once, you celebrated police success, or noticed that liberty can be threatened by crime as well as by official misconduct. […]

I’m all for Radley’s exposes of police misconduct. I’d just prefer if he occasionally reminded his readers what the police are there for in the first place.

Many of us in drug policy reform have received the brunt of Mark’s wrath many times for merely being activists. We see our job as being primarily to bring an end to the destruction of prohibition, and don’t all agree that the best replacement for it is heavy regulatory interference, regardless of whether we are liberal, libertarian, conservative, or something else. We also see the discussion of what to do about drug abuse post-prohibition to be its own valuable separate discussion.

And yet, Mr. Kleiman regularly takes honest anti-drug war activism (if it doesn’t also explicitly call for a sufficient level of nanny-statism), and equates it with the corruption and dishonesty of prohibitionists (worse-yet, the corruption and dishonesty of prohibitionists utilizing the power of government). That equation just doesn’t balance.

I have, in the past, pointed out that I believe Mark Kleiman to be quite intelligent and knowledgeable about drug policy, and I have noted numerous times when I have agreed with him.

But to use his own words, I think his policy recommendations would “have more cred” if he was able to accept the fact that there are critiques of specific government actions/programs (by libertarians, drug policy reformers, or others) that can be valid per se, without also providing some shibboleth of supporting governmental intervention.

Congress warms up to research on hemp

WASHINGTON — Hemp is a big winner in the new farm bill that passed the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday.

While Congress has shown little interest in legalizing marijuana, members are warming up to industrial hemp, pot’s nonintoxicating sister plant. […]

The farm bill would allow state departments of agriculture, colleges and universities to grow hemp for academic, research and marketing purposes in states that have voted to make cultivation legal.

Besides California and Kentucky, the measure would apply to Colorado, Maine, Montana, North Dakota, Oregon, Vermont and West Virginia, said Tom Murphy, the national outreach coordinator for Vote Hemp, an organization that backs legalization.

Naturally, Kevin Sabet had to get in on the action…

Kevin Sabet, the director of the University of Florida Drug Policy Institute and a former adviser on drug issues for Obama, said people could easily grow marijuana and hide it under the guise of hemp, frustrating law-enforcement efforts.

“This is purely a political move to further a pro-marijuana agenda,” Sabet said. “It has little to do with actually farming hemp, since the demand for that is so low. But in some states that need help on the job front, it’s good politics to claim that allowing this will create jobs. The sad truth is that it will do no such thing.”

Not only does he imply that law enforcement is too stupid to do their job, but he appears to be running off his mouth without even knowing the contents of the bill. He really gets more pathetic (and desperate) by the day.

…

Speaking of pathetic…

Check out the new billboard ad from Project SAM set to compete with the Marijuana Policy Project billboards:

It’s pathetic in a number of ways, not the least of which is the amateurish design.

According to the press release:

The ad is funded by Policy Solutions Group, Inc., a consulting company headed up by Dr. Sabet that sponsors Project SAM.

Based on an internet search for Policy Solutions Group, Inc., it appears that the company essentially only exists in Kevin’s bio. So who is funding Kevin?

…

Oh, and guess what? Now Kevin wants to compete with Marijuana Majority

Sabet says SAM soon will unveil a new site of its own that will clarify who’s against legalization.

No surprise: Obama Says Exactly Zero Words About Pot, Drug Policy Or Criminal Justice Reform in SOTU

Drugs vs. the drug war: A response to Michael Gerson. Radley Balko hits it out of the park in this piece that starts out as a response, but ends up being a rather comprehensive set of reasons to oppose the drug war. This is definitely worth sharing with friends.

Drug War Addict of the Year – a fine honor for Mr. Chabot from Diane Wattles-Goldstein.

One of the recurring themes I enjoyed on “The West Wing” was the big block of cheese day – an annual event where White House staff would hear concerns and ideas from citizens that normally would not get the government’s ear.

The current White House is resurrecting this notion with a virtual big block of cheese day on Wednesday.

In 1837, President Jackson hosted an open house featuring a 1,400-pound block of cheese. On Wednesday, January 29th, with a nod to history (and maybe the TV show the West Wing), White House officials will take to social media for a day long ‘open house’ to answer questions from everyday Americans.

The difference, obvious in the White House explanation, was that in the big block of cheese day on “The West Wing,” the White House staffers listened. Here, they will “answer questions.” Kind of misses the point.

What’s interesting to me about this is that a few brief years ago, many of us would have seen this as an opportunity to get drug policy reform “heard” by the government. No longer. Drug policy is clearly no longer the silent topic that nobody will discuss. These days, it’s hard to even keep up with all the national discussions on the issue.

That doesn’t mean, however, that we’ll be hearing a lot about it tonight in the State of the Union address. It might happen. If it does, I would guess it would have nothing to do with marijuana legalization or medical marijuana, but rather a brief mention of racial inequalities and/or treatment needs.

Which is at least better than the last SOTU that I remember where drugs were mentioned. In 2004, the President used the SOTU to call for additional money for school drug testing.

Demaryius Thomas was 11 when his mother and grandmother were taken from him and sent to prison for 20 years and life respectively as part of our unending drug war.

He’s certainly done well — better than most others who have lost family to the drug war. Finding your way is so much more difficult when your family has been taken prisoner.

I have no knowledge of the details of Demaryius Thomas’ mother and grandmother’s arrest and imprisonment. Maybe they are bad people — I don’t know (but I doubt it). What I do know is that they were swept up by bad laws.

And they are part of a story of thousands of families across this country that have been senselessly broken by this destructive and costly drug war.

Nick Gillespie has an absolutely scathing OpEd in Time: Obama’s Unfathomable, Bottomless, Contemptible Cowardice on Pot

What does it say about our elected representatives when even a president who grants that marijuana is no “more dangerous than alcohol,” jokes about his past drug use, and faces no more elections in his lifetime is terrified to go along with a massive and still-growing majority of Americans?

That we can’t look to them for anything resembling leadership. The campaign to legalize marijuana — and thus expand personal freedom while minimizing the massive harms that attend to prohibition regardless of the substance being banned — is decades old and has always had to fight first and foremost against establishment politicians and media outlets. […]

Citizens, it turns out, are more than ready to step and demand change when our leaders are too feckless to lead.

Nick well expresses some of the frustration so many of us have felt with our political classes.

Attorney General Eric Holder: Feds to let banks handle pot money at Politico

The Obama administration will soon announce regulations that allow banks to do business with legal marijuana sellers, Attorney General Eric Holder said Thursday.

“You don’t want just huge amounts of cash in these places. They want to be able to use the banking system,” Holder said during an appearance at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center. “There’s a public safety component to this. Huge amounts of cash—substantial amounts of cash just kind of lying around with no place for it to be appropriately deposited is something that would worry me, just from a law enforcement perspective.”

This is extremely important, not only for the safety of cannabis businesses and the convenience of cannabis consumers, but it also means that the banking industry will now benefit from legalization. And that’s good for the future of legalization.

Update: The Politico article has been updated:

While Holder spoke twice of new “regulations” that were being prepared, a Justice Department spokesman said later that the attorney general was referring to legal “guidance” for prosecutors and federal law enforcement. Such a legal memo wouldn’t be enforceable in court and would amount to less than the kind of clear safe harbor many banks say they would want before accepting money from pot businesses.

Jacob Sullum nails it: Chris Christie Will End The War On Drugs – Just Like Obama Did

It turns out that Christie, who first called the war on a drugs a “failure” in 2012 (eight years after Barack Obama did), has something similar in mind. He does not want to stop responding to drug use with violence; he just wants to make “drug treatment” more “available,” which entails forcing nonviolent drug offenders into treatment by threatening to lock them in cages. Sadly, that does count as an improvement. Most people arrested on drug charges no doubt would prefer treatment to jail. But what is the moral justification for compelling that choice? If the state does not take that approach with alcoholics (except when they have broken the law in ways that endanger or harm others), why should it treat users of arbitrarily proscribed drugs this way?

We have certainly succeeded in getting the public to realize that the drug war is something they don’t want. So now we’re in the ‘putting lipstick on a pig’ phase.

Of course, the two big stories in the news right now are the Superbowl and the President’s comments on marijuana.

Go to Google News and type in Obama and marijuana and you’ll get a ton of articles. Great opportunities for commenting.

Couple of things to watch out for.

1: Kevin and the SAM crowd is misrepresenting the President’s remarks.

As the President noted, the case for marijuana legalization is overstated…

Wrong. What the President said was:

“Having said all that, those who argue that legalizing marijuana is a panacea and it solves all these social problems I think are probably overstating the case.” [emphasis added]

Of course, the reality is that legalizers aren’t claiming panacea and even then, the President would only say that it would “probably” be overstating it.

2. The SAM club is also promoting the President’s “slippery slope” discussion. “Slippery slope is what the article’s author said, not the President, who rather referred to it as a “line-drawing” issue, which, of course, everything is. This is not a negative about legalizing marijuana, but rather the opening of a door to discussing where lines should be drawn.

Here’s the section on marijuana, alcohol, and other drugs in the extensive New Yorker interview by David Remnick with President Obama:

When I asked Obama about another area of shifting public opinion—the legalization of marijuana—he seemed even less eager to evolve with any dispatch and get in front of the issue. “As has been well documented, I smoked pot as a kid, and I view it as a bad habit and a vice, not very different from the cigarettes that I smoked as a young person up through a big chunk of my adult life. I don’t think it is more dangerous than alcohol.”

Is it less dangerous? I asked.

Obama leaned back and let a moment go by. That’s one of his moves. When he is interviewed, particularly for print, he has the habit of slowing himself down, and the result is a spool of cautious lucidity. He speaks in paragraphs and with moments of revision. Sometimes he will stop in the middle of a sentence and say, “Scratch that,” or, “I think the grammar was all screwed up in that sentence, so let me start again.”

Less dangerous, he said, “in terms of its impact on the individual consumer. It’s not something I encourage, and I’ve told my daughters I think it’s a bad idea, a waste of time, not very healthy.” What clearly does trouble him is the radically disproportionate arrests and incarcerations for marijuana among minorities. “Middle-class kids don’t get locked up for smoking pot, and poor kids do,” he said. “And African-American kids and Latino kids are more likely to be poor and less likely to have the resources and the support to avoid unduly harsh penalties.” But, he said, “we should not be locking up kids or individual users for long stretches of jail time when some of the folks who are writing those laws have probably done the same thing.”

Accordingly, he said of the legalization of marijuana in Colorado and Washington that “it’s important for it to go forward because it’s important for society not to have a situation in which a large portion of people have at one time or another broken the law and only a select few get punished.”

As is his habit, he nimbly argued the other side. “Having said all that, those who argue that legalizing marijuana is a panacea and it solves all these social problems I think are probably overstating the case. There is a lot of hair on that policy. And the experiment that’s going to be taking place in Colorado and Washington is going to be, I think, a challenge.”

He noted the slippery-slope arguments that might arise. “I also think that, when it comes to harder drugs, the harm done to the user is profound and the social costs are profound. And you do start getting into some difficult line-drawing issues. If marijuana is fully legalized and at some point folks say, Well, we can come up with a negotiated dose of cocaine that we can show is not any more harmful than vodka, are we open to that? If somebody says, We’ve got a finely calibrated dose of meth, it isn’t going to kill you or rot your teeth, are we O.K. with that?”

Although the President has been extremely disappointing in terms of his actual actions in reforming drug policy, this is a really incredible message for a sitting President to be making (again showing how far we’ve come). Publicly admitting that marijuana is less dangerous than alcohol? Obviously true, but not something we expect to hear from the administration.

And while it was presented in the context of ‘slippery slope,’ we actually just heard the President of the United States say that there might be a legitimate argument some day for legal, regulated cocaine or meth.