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Obama Nominating Seattle Police Chief as Drug Czar
According to the Washington Post President Obama is set to nominate Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske as Drug Czar today. The Post also reports that the Obama administration will remove the position's Cabinet-level status -- overturning an elevation of the office under President George W. Bush. The Post says the decision to nominate him was delayed over the last month as information of drug arrests involving his stepson emerged.
While I'm disappointed that President Obama has nominated a police chief instead of a major public health advocate as drug czar, I'm cautiously optimistic that Kerlikowske will support President Obama's drug policy reform agenda.
What gives me hope is the fact that Seattle has been at the cutting edge of harm reduction and other drug policy reform developments in the United States over the last decade. The city's syringe exchange programs are well established and harm reduction is well integrated in Seattle's approach to local drug policy. Marijuana has been legal in Washington State for medical purposes for a decade. In 2003, Seattle voters passed a ballot initiative making marijuana arrests the lowest law enforcement priority. And the King County Bar Association has demonstrated national leadership in exploring alternatives to current prohibitionist policies.
While Kerlikowske has not spoken out in favor of any of these reforms, he is clearly familiar with them and has not been a forceful opponent. Given the high regard in which he is held by other police chiefs around the country, Kerlikowske has the potential to provide much needed national leadership in implementing the commitments that Barack Obama made during the campaign. He also surely recognizes that substance abuse or run-ins with the law can touch anyone, including his own family. He will hopefully advocate for treatment instead of incarceration for nonviolent drug law offenders.
As a presidential candidate, Senator Obama said the 'war on drugs is an utter failure' and that he believes in 'shifting the paradigm, shifting the model, so that we focus more on a public health approach.' He also called for eliminating the crack/powder cocaine sentencing disparity, repealing the ban on federal funding for syringe exchange programs to reduce HIV/AIDS, and stopping the U.S. Justice Department from undermining state medical marijuana laws. The Drug Policy Alliance will do everything in our power to ensure that Kerlikowske is thoroughly vetted at his confirmation hearings, and held accountable to the President's commitments and standards.
Ethan Nadelmann is the executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance
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Beside the person on the recent phone call to 911 (posted somewhere) who thought his wife and he were dying because of "pot brownies" I have not heard of anyone suffering negative effects (other than extreme Gilligan's Island dependence). Even those who quit smoking, they just quit. I have not heard of detox programs for pot. That might be wrong though. Pot should be available for adults. With a good tax on it and getting it out of the criminal element -I think it would be a financial benefit all the way around. Regardless we should not put kids in jail for possessing or smoking pot.
The only reason Canada has not legalized pot completely is because our conservative government has been allowing itself to be intimidated by the Bush administration for the last eight years. Time for us to lead the way to sanity because we're not going to get any heat from President Obama. In fact I think he would encourage us at least in private. C'mon Canada do the right thing
Ethan you are one of America's heroes. Perhaps you can help Rush too.
A better choice would have been Seattle's old police chief, Norm Stamper. As his articles on huffpo have shown, he has a sensible and well thought out position on prohabition (it doesn't work~!)
The people have spoken!
The only thing that the new Drug Czar can do is -Announce an end to the ridiculous War on Drugs-Cease fire!
And let the 500,000 plus African American males out of prison for non-violent drug offenses.
The country boys who house them outside the metro areas are going to have to find other jobs besides housing minorities in dozens of god awful redneck towns in rural america. F-the whole process.
Billy Bob needs to get a job making an HONEST living.
thats the truth if I ever heard it .Its sad because 500,000 + lives have been screwed up because those country bumpkins refuse to get a education or learn anything more than the town they live in so they become "cops" who are for the most part uneducated and even ignorant about laws they pretend to enforce.So we end up with bunch of "cops"who do not protect and serve but harass and wait on the day can fire their weapon. or put people in jail .its rather disgusting .I digress
It's a valid complaint. There is definitely something wrong if even students are at danger in the face of police. Cases of police beatings are almost never justifiable. If the people we trust to protect and serve us are the ones we're afraid of, the only other option is to protect ourselves.
We need to speak out on the issue and have zero tolerance for any such incidents. Discussion is great, but action is what will get things done. 99problems.org is a group worth a look, and to get an idea of their community outreach: http://www.blackplanet.com/99ProblemsDotorg/
Obama can't try to legalize now. Timing is important, like gay rights, the American public has to get used to the idea. Obama has his plate full right now to go expending political capital on this.
The real crime in the Prohibition of Marijuana and Industrial Hemp (IH) is the excessive empowerment of abusive police agencies that live off anti-marijuana laws. Kids know a lie when they see it and fabricating anti-Marijuana lies can do real damage to efforts to keep people off really dangerous drugs, like meth.
Beside police agencies that benefit from anti-Marijuana/IH laws we must include many corporations who profit by keeping IH illegal. The many hundreds of uses/benefits of IH will energize our economy in many areas. We could use the money wasted on drug laws for schools, hospitals, & infrastructure. Pot use if anything, is a health/social issue, NOT a police, court, incarceration issue. IH is an agriculture and industrial issue, not a criminal one. We are wasting billions on this prohibition scam, & the continuing illegality of IH costs our economy billions more, not to mention all the lives/families disrupted and worse by the criminal "justice" system, arresting 700,000 otherwise innocent people annually, an utter waste and abomination!
Stand up people & demand an end to this waste, fraud & corruption! End the phony "War on Drugs"! LEGALIZE RECREATIONAL HERB! LEGALIZE INDUSTRIAL HEMP!
http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/ncnu02/v5-284.html
http://www.votehemp.com/overview.html
http://nynorml.org/news.html
http://www.cyberessays.com/Politics/92.htm
We don't need no stinkin "Drug Czar", especially in this "economic downturn"; all the money could be used much better elsewhere, unless he will work for de-criminalization. Some of our most revered artists, musicians, scientists, athletes, people of all pursuits & interests have smoked pot to greater or lesser degrees. Bob Dylan, Bing Crosby, Louis Armstrong, Michael Phelps, Carl Sagan, the list is long! Throughout history people have been law-abiding & still experimented with pot, opium, hallucinogens, & have had constructive, non-violent extraordinary careers - something we cannot say for many cops who seem to revel in busting heads. 75,000 deaths annually are tolerated from alcohol abuse, Hundreds of thousands of deaths from tobacco use are tolerated, costing our nation billions in health care costs. “Legal” drugs pushed by “Big Pharma,” kill tens of thousands (that are identified!) annually & hospitalize millions yearly. Marijuana use is claimed to have never directly caused the death of any person. Humans have evolved with Cannabinoids and they have numerous benefits for us, including Cancer treatment. See the links. No more abuse of citizens for using Marijuana! Legalize it!
http://www.safeaccessnow.org/article.php?id=748
http://www.thc-ministry.net/cannabinoids.html
http://americanmarijuana.org/Guzman-Cancer.pdf
RESIST THE PHONY WAR ON DRUGS!
sdskelono3 says "I agree with you on legalization, but why do liberals have to tax EVERYTHING?" I am thinking you don't live in California. While "Ahnolt" talks closing hospitals and parks, cutting school budgets, laying off state emplyees, etc. because we are SO in the red, marijuana is close to $400.00 an ounce on the street. I have a friend who smokes America Spirit cigarettes - they just went from $5.00 a pack to $6.38. This is due to a raise in taxes.
Imagine how many new schools and hospitals and all the green technology we could afford if pot was taxed. Taxes are the only thing that will let Government legalize it anyway, so let's pay the taxes, get it regulated, stop the drug cartels, and end the madness!
It has been calculated that if pot was legal, taxed and sold in liquor stores to people over 21, a pack of twenty would be about $20. Even I can afford that.
Maybe alcohol, tobacco and caffeine should be held to scrutiny about whether THEY have "legitimate medical purposes" the way pot is. The hypocrisy of drug law and its underlying ideologies is beyond belief, and until that hypocrisy is addressed, this will be a slow, slow change. Of course, I hope I'm wrong.
Free da weed, indeed!
No one in any position of real power dares to speak the truth about the connection between the banks, hedge funds, brokers, military, intelligence, and the international drug and arms cartels. Wall Street is totally dependent on the black market cartel money. Yet, no sensible discussion of the economy can take place without factoring this in.
Americans must wake up to the fact that our government agencies at the federal level have been so corrupted by access to all the black market cash, that we may never be able to repair the systemic damage they have caused.
Imagine a sane world, a world where people's welfare takes priority over the welfare of large corporations.
Why do we even need a drug czar?
Let's legalize the stuff already.
Alcohol is much more dangerous than pot. I mean come on!!!!
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