Clinton and Webb Tackle the Biggest Taboo of All

My new weekly newspaper column this week gives huge kudos to Hillary Clinton and Jim Webb -- the two of them are trying (in their own separate ways) to begin a national conversation about one of the most taboo topics in American politics: drug policy.

In the same week President Obama childishly laughed off a question about drug policy reform, Secretary of State Clinton gave a speech acknowledging that America's demand for drugs makes us at least partially culpable for the drug-related violence in Mexico. Clinton was stating a truism -- but it's nonetheless controversial for a public official to say such truths in our immature political debate. That she went ahead and gave the speech anyway shows a lot of courage -- and hopefully previews a conventional wisdom-challenging term atop the State Department.

This week, Webb followed up Clinton's speech with the introduction of prison/criminal justice reform legislation that would examine legalizing marijuana -- the drug cartels' biggest cash crop.

As Glenn Greenwald has ably noted, there's little -- if any -- personal political upside for Webb in doing this. He's doing it because he believes in it (I know -- wow! A politician actually doing something on principle!).

There will undoubtedly be a lot of opposition to changing our drug laws. The Right has been selling the "law and order" nonsense for the last half century, and many Democrats in Congress are therefore too afraid to touch the issue. But public consensus has shifted, and now at least a few leaders are starting to soften up the political terrain for a real discussion about legalization and drug policy reform.

Read the whole column here

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Comments

[GoodBadUgly]

"In the same week President Obama childishly laughed off a question about drug policy reform, Secretary of State Clinton gave a speech acknowledging that America's demand for drugs makes us at least partially culpable for the drug-related violence in Mexico." - This is the funniest & saddest part of this article. Is Mr. Sirota insinuating that the Secretary of State is on a different policy path as the POTUS? How anyone could have expected that President Obama would have answered "yes" to the question of legalizing marijuana is incomprehensible. That person would either be living in a world of fantasy or has no clue as to the ramifications of governing or has no understanding of the pulse of the U.S.A or is just plain ignorant.
Mr. Sirota, i hope you are none of this and that this article was just an expression of your frustration?

[worldlyhick]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/04/world/americas/04mexico.html

This article at the New York TImes discusses a meeting of AG Eric Holder and Mexican officials. Holder proposes taking steps to make possession of smaller amounts of cannabis prosecutable under Federal law. Please read the article.

This does not sound good to me.

[allonfla]

You guys are incredibly naive. Article after article has been posted here about the benefits of legalizing ganja, all the money it would save and raise, you rattle off what you call facts and expect Obama to swipe his pen and legalize it.

Why so flippant about how to get a divided congress on board, or ignoring the vicious and discipline right wing message machine that will surely bury this if it came from Obama? Why so flippant about how to get the public to ok with this? I don't care what your friends or family think, I don't care that it was the number one question during the townhall - YOU ALL DO NOT REPRESENT THIS COUNTRY. There are still millions more people who believe this is a gateway drug and millions more - like myself- who don't want this crap in their neighborhood and would like to walk down the block without smelling this nasty crap - like I do some days.

You guys can't even get climate change policy thru and there are facts to support that and public consensus and STILL congress can't get anything done. Good Luck With Pot!

And David, please stop acting as if you are smarter than President Obama! It's embarrassing.

[WorkingClass]

Millions of people are wrong. There is no such thing as a gate-way drug. It is you who is incredibly naive.

[hippynanainblingland]

Oh, yes, there is, and it is called tobacco, which is used by most users of other drugs, unlike marijuana, which a lot of users of other drugs cannot abide.

A great many tobacco users started as kids, and even before starting to smoke their own cigarettes, got "hooked" on nicotine by inhaling their parents' smoke, indoors or in the car. . . some, many, even, got "hooked" in the womb. The irony is that, after a while, nicotine stops making one high, and then one must try other things to produce that high we all want, but can no longer get with a cigarette, thus, on to other, more powerful drugs, such as meth, heroin, coke, etc. But even failing to get one high, one needs nicotine to maintain normalcy, thus the lifelong smoker of tobacco, much to the delight of tobacco companies, who, might I add, spend uxti bucks on advertising aimed at young ones.

I don't know the figures offhand, but I'm willing to bet that the majority of potheads don't go on to other drugs--well, maybe using non-addictive drugs occassionally, such as Ecstasy, shrooms or acid.

Say whatever you want to about not wanting pot near you, but be honest and stop calling it THE gateway drug. That honor belongs to tobacco, and tobacco alone. (Working class, the chiding is not meant for you, but for the commenter you're replying to!)

[FunkyP]

Your desire to not smell that 'nasty crap' is certainly your right, but making Hemp legal would change little in that respect, because, as you admit, you deal with it now and it's not legal. It's like gun control, which I'm guessing you oppose. What is the point of gun control anyway? With millions of guns already in the hands of Americans, it would be impossible to collect them all. Hemp is everywhere too, and keeping it illegal only enriches the criminal class.
The fact is, keeping hemp illegal also enrich our pharmaceutical industry (who, with the paper and textiles industries, face stiff competition from an easy-to-grow substitte for their products) and they have more influence over congressional legislation than does the citizenry. So on the legalization front allon, you are probably right.

[Guitarsandmore]

Just remember, once you have damaged your heart, you may not be able to get it fixed. when doctors find out the damage is caused by drug use, they probably will not be willing to waste their resources on you.

Same applies to kidneys and liver. You may be risking permanent damage or even death when you dabble with drugs.

We see people up here all the time sailing off of cliffs and mountain tops in their cars that having been sober would have lived a long life, but they just had to party and be cool and wound up dead cold.

Stay sober and drive safely.

[Jeany]

Mickey Mantle? George Best?

[hippynanainblingland]

And according to a lot of what I've read, you risk the same amount of damage, and even more, using pharmaceuticals. . . so there!

BTW, pot does NO damage to any bodily systems, and in fact, helps heal damage done by other things, such as tobacco, pharmaceuticals and pollution.

[Pupadup4oBama]

Just one comment here...I know you say Obama laughed it off, my feeling is that he's stuck between a rock and a hard place. I'd rather leave it UP to other politicians such as Webb and Clinton...­.let Obama deal with everything else going on right now.
Don't you think if he had said something to the affect of "yes, it would stimulate the economy" - the neocons would be farther up his bum even more than they are now.

[TJCole]

But if we decriminalize then how will the Mexican Drug Gangs have the money, to buy our Guns..?

[mjc]

Thought it was courageous of Hillary Clinton to say that Americans have a drug problem that is fueling the drug running from Mexico and elsewhere. Did not know of Webb's efforts. Guess it must the media's way of keeping the war on drugs alive because they certainly don't want anyone of any stature to promote legalizing marijuana or having Americans to know that there choices. In my day...the dark ages....th­ere wasn't much of a popular drug culture. In college kids drank themselves sick and went on to alcoholism, and smoking was another forbidden that added to the reason....­imo. But my children were certainly effected by a pretty vast drug culture, even in high school. And from what I know today it hasn't abated much there either. But crime has been the cry of those who want....at least it seems they want.... to end drugs of all sorts...ev­en though there are many middle-age Americans who enjoy marijuana on their boats..in my region or perhaps on their vacation weekends. They can afford the weed and they are not the sort the police want to catch. The dispairity is in the age and class of those using it. There has to be some eveness in applying the rigid standards of the law. Hurry the day....

[makesmecrazy]

I have been interested in this topic since I first began discussing it with students in "current events" classes in the late 80's. I am continuously surprised that the prohibition has remained in place. Good news that it has come up with Jim Webb doing some good work in one direction, Hillary in another. While I didn't appreciate Obama's answer to the question, I do think that his appointment of the former Seattle Police Chief is pointing in the right direction.

[Jeany]

David.

Obama's answer wasn't childish, it was precise, no we are not planning to legalize and tax pot as part of the recovery. Think about it.

Obama talked about the community destruction and unacceptable waste wrought by incarceration rates during the campaign. He knows perfectly well that it's of a piece with the "war" on drugs and bone-headed sentencing guidelines­... and do you know that the private prison industry enjoyed a huge boom during the Bush years? I do, and I'll bet Obama knows it, too. If you're an inner city kid, you're just an opportunity for growth to the prison-industrial complex.

Jim Webb talked about it when he was beating Allen, and that makes him 1 to Obama's 2 of 2. I don't hear other pols talking about this. I see there are a few signing on to making hemp legal to grow, but that's a small-bore peripheral issue to the huge stinking gelatinous mass of mistake that is The War on Drugs.

I hope you've read yesterday's blog post from Lee Stranahan http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lee-stranahan/watch-5-benefits-to-legal_b_182263.htmll], watched the 20 minutes of video of self-described conservative Judge Gray from Orange County laying out the case of the WOD. The final word was, "the WOD is unwinnable, but it is eminently fundable."

[Jeany]

**Part 2**

The cohort of profiteers from this war is huge, and they all lobby.

Think about what you know about politics and our media as it exists today.

Do you seriously think Obama could have amicably entertained the question put to him without raising an absolute crapstorm of distraction? If you believe the answer is yes, your perspicacity lacks any depth or subtlety.

Webb's legislative proposal, Clinton's artless admission, and even the hemp bill are puffs of smoke from signal fires. Obama is moving against the WOD, but it will take a long campaign to surround and overwhelm the profiteers. If he doesn't get a second term, he wants the ground prepared for someone else to carry on.

Going straight at the issue would be like the way Clinton did health care reform, and the way The Lesser Bush did Social Security privatization.

[Pupadup4oBama]

Great comment!
I agree with you wholeheartedly.

Obama can't just come running out of the gate with this. The laws have been in place for so long, and the issue is walking on eggshells, at best.
Think about what the neocons would have done to him if he HAD said something.

[WorkingClass]

Heaven forbid we take anything "head on". Incrementalism is born of political corruption and cowardice. But it has been with us so long that it is considered wise and even virtuous.

[Independent voter]

Obama's answer was immature, cowardly and insulting to the millions of people who are incarcerated for marijuana related offenses.

[TJCole]

We won't even lift the ban on Industrial Hemp which is clearly scientifically an important crop for our energy independen­ce...!

Though a bill to do so has been introduced recently, but even here the story is already being spiked..!

Green Jobs...

http://hemp4fuel.com/

[knowBuddhaU]

ObmB (O brother, my Brother)
IBIYVD (I bow in your virtual direction),
Prison rape is no joke; the cruelty and torture we export is mostly home-grown.

Why does self-professed "land of the free and the home of the brave" have the highest per capita incarceration rate of all? Could it be that, as was blatantly obvious during McCain's campaign, a warped power of myth is powering a strategic domestic disinformation campaign? Don't tell me academicians would angle for those exorbitant federal grants by weaponizing everything under the sun--and even within it, too?

We have reduced human psyches to Newtonian mechanisms, the better to jack US to hell like two-legged voting machines, and then stick US with bill.

This is how we've been doing, how we are doing it.

The myth, of the cosmos as Newtonian mechanism and of society as a ship of state at the hell-mm of which is our Lord and Savior, the next best thing to God himself, his loyal royal absentee-landlord, aka The Man, is being used like a burlap sack is used to drown eager kittens.

My question is, what are we NOW going to do about it? There's no "away" to which to run, now that you know (ask Neil Young), you know.

[fishgirl26]

Jim Webb--perhaps one of the most courageous politicians out there!

[allonfla]

and one with the least to lose - courageous my butt.

[anachoret]

Thanks for this post, David.

Making the argument for continuing our policies, at this point, is a position that deserves ridicule far more than most people in jail for possession deserve to be where they are. Legalizing the way to go. Decriminalizing is a half-step that would hand it over, with all it's profits, to the morality machines we call the American Corporation. With them it would probably be another victim of Monsanto.

But "Staying the course," in this drug war is the very definition of insanity.
Kudos to Hillary, Webb and yourself, as well as anyone else who won't stay silent on the issue any longer. Removing people's liberties without an extremely valid cause is about the least patriotic thing that a "free" society can do.

[capitalismisntamoral]

"Decriminalizing is a half-step that would hand it over, with all it's profits, to the morality machines we call the American Corporatio­n."

My first thought was that people can grow their own. But of course that won't be part of any decriminalization plan because it would cut into corporate profits.

I was expecting a different topic with a headline of "the Biggest Taboo of All", but the text has 'one of the most taboo topics". Ok, fair enough.

Oh, the other elephant in the room is the military/p­olice/weap­ons/prison­-industria­l complex and its extreme vested interests in the so-called drug war. Surprised it wasn't mentioned explicitly.

[anachoret]

I fear that decriminalizing would be a mess, when you consider what the multi-nationals could do with their influence in other, poorer places. By getting someplace like Jamaica to go full legal, after buying tons of land with the intent of turning it into farm fields, and playing it up as a boon the tourist trade (which it would be), they could wreak havoc and reap some serious profits. It would make Cuban cigars look like chicken feed.
I may be wrong, but I think baby steps might be worse than confronting this issue full face. Like pulling off a bandage, quicker is better.

[PlaceboStudman]

Folks, think about this one, based on another article right here at HuffPo, there is a bill in congress to legalize industrial hemp. Now, I'm no botanist, but my friends who do know a thing about industrial hemp tell me, someone who knows a thing or two about pot, that you can't tell the difference between industrial hemp and marijuana. So it is entirely possible to grow the two crops right next to each other. Which means, if this bill passes (we'll see) then there is no stopping anyone from growing marijuana, if yu do it right next to industrial hemp

[anachoret]

That sounds like a wonderful new way to enforce a different standard of law for urban and rural residents.

[PlaceboStudman]

Sadly, yes, that could be the unfortunate result of this. However, I may be in a fantasy land in believing that this is just one step in righting one of the many wrongs of social injustice between urban and rural areas. when marijuana is legalized across the board, and no one will have to suffer at the hands of the criminal justice system.

[CharlesWise]

Hillary is the best thing in the new administration - which has dissapointed many in the Democratic fold for lack of balls and lack of candor. For an SOS to say the USA has a consumption problem is truly a "hit" of fresh air.

[closetodemfection]

Well said!

[allonfla]

she works for Obama - and doesn't say stuff like that without his knowledge so please stop acting like she is an independent voice.

you guys are seriously naive.