Obama and Clinton on Drugs: Just Say No. . . Sometimes?

Drug wars in Mexico are serious business, but, north of the border, the left hand seems to have forgotten what the right hand is doing. All the way to here in hazy San Francisco.

Hey government dudes! (male and female). Give the bong back to Michael Phelps and make up your mind.

Hillary Clinton hit Mexico City yesterday and, in the new Obama confessional of personal responsibility, conceded that our "insatiable demand for illegal drugs" is the fuel that gases up the violent trade that's become a corrosive acid on both sides of the migra fence. And that's admitting a lot, given the recent body bag action.

How often do you hear big governments and their armies described by the POTUS himself as "brave" for taking on drug cartels? Probably not since the bleached white heights of Colombian cocaine hyperactivity.

Only this is much closer to (our) home.

Mrs. Clinton, continuing an impressively but surprisingly low-profile promenade around the world's trouble spots, preferred to concentrate on weapons smuggling back and forth, even though it's a lot harder to get gun control through the US Congress than it is drug legislation. (A cranked shout out to Ohio, where the Columbus Dispatch reports that prosecutors are seeking to eliminate some mandatory sentencing for dope offenses, including possession of some related chemicals.)

So how to cauterize this transnational wound? Unclear from the secretary of state, other than promising to ship down there some more choppers and night vision goggles, which are probably pretty cool when you're loaded.

The demand side went completely unaddressed. Remember: Bill didn't inhale. Maybe she'll resurrect Nancy Reagan's popular and successful "Just Say No" campaign. A slightly easier form of abstinence to sell. Or, at a minimum, she might talk Forbes magazine out of putting Mexican drug emperor Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman on its world's richest people list just as a painful reminder. How would we feel if they put Bernie Madoff on theirs?

Then there was that inconvenient Congressional withholding of about $200 million in drug counter trafficking funds for Mexico.

"There have been lots of different voices from the Obama Administration," the NYTimes quotes Andrew Selee, director of the Mexico institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center, as understating. Kind of like all the voices on those old "Firesign Theater" records.

Back in the US, things are equally contradictory.

Not to confuse medicine with recreation, but the new Attorney General, Mr. Holder, just a week ago said the Administration wouldn't go after medicinal pot distributors (legal ones.) That caused a federal judge in LA to postpone sentencing of a medical marijuana dispensary. Then two days ago, federal drug agents raided Emmalyn's California Cannabis Clinic on Howard St., even though they had a license from the Public Health Department.

The Chronicle's ace reporter, Rachel Gordon, had a government source tell her the bust was about "alleged financial improprieties related to the payment of sales taxes."

But wait! The president himself, asked at his virtual town hall Thursday about legalizing pot as a way to help our current money crisis, said he didn't think that good citizens growing weed and giving the government a bud or two worth as a levy "is a good strategy to grow our economy."

So they're busting pot clubs for not paying taxes, don't want to tax pot otherwise and meanwhile five-foot-tall El Chapo ("Shorty") is the 701st richest man in the world. The Seattle Weekly says, "Maybe Shorty Can Help with Our Budget Deficit."

Exhale.

For more, read Bronstein at Large.

Comments

[Ganja-Rebel]

I guess our president missed this while 'admiring' President Lincoln:

"Prohibition goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts
to control a man's appetite by legislation, and makes a crime
out of things that are not crimes."
Abraham Lincoln
http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/e_blog/Abraham.Lincoln.Quote.
563D

"A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which
our government was founded."
Abraham Lincoln
http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/e_blog/Abraham.Lincoln.Quote.410A

[illinoisan]

Great quote but the attribution to Lincoln is apochryphal. The earliest attribution scholars can find is to a Texas state legislator in the early 20th century when alcohol prohibition was being debated. The quote does not appear in any known Lincoln writings.

Lincoln was a Temperance man but likely understood the folly and unconstituionality of substance prohibition. His Address to the Washingtonians stands out as one of his great early works on the subject.

[Brinna]

Thank you for bringing up Senator Webb. I have been following this for some time
(see http://my.nowpublic.com/culture/finally-senator-balls-jim-webb-takes-prison-reform)

And you are so right. The media has virtually ignored this story. Obama laughing off this issue of cannabis policy reform, is the same as laughing off the issue of prison reform, for cannabis prohibition is the lynch pin with holds the War on Drugs in place. And the WOD is an ongoing assault on American civil rights, meant to fill our prisons.

Am I cynical? Two judges were convicted of sending juveniles to prison for kickbacks.
http://eddiegriffinbasg.blogspot.com/2009/02/judges-sent-juveniles-to-prison-receive.html

Prisons for profit (with prison stocks sold on Wall Street) means: More prisoners = more profit. Need I say more?

[mbaty]

These laws, including the Rockefeller laws, are so hypocritical, so completely irrational as to point to something possibly more sinister and profitable behind the scenes. I realize that Obama doesn't want to upset more people by admitting that legalization solves some problems and creates opportunities for profit--people who seem hell-bent on their negative opinion about Marijuana, but he will have to deal with this rationally at some point. He is so overloaded with important necessary changes to the country that things like DADT and pot legalization must seem a bit small in comparison. But we seriously want an explanation of why these laws continue in this country against all apparent logic. If there is a conspiracy here, I for one, want the President to admit to it and change whatever corrupt powers-that-be that continue to support these racist and irrational laws.

[Pema]

To have pot illegal is worse than having alcohol illegal. you never saw a stoned guy going home beating his wife and kids, he just wants to know where the doritos are. actually i prefer sun chips...do­ritos are from mars and sun chips are from venus i guess....
and phil this dudes and pass the bong stuff is demeaning, people aren't acting like one step up from refer madness..p­lease

[BusGreg]

The only ones acting like Reffer Madness are the ones who proffit from this obscenity they call the Drug War!

[MsLiz]

Everyone who is disappointed in Obama's reaction to the question about marijuana legalization, please consider the following:

The media already made a big deal over Obama's laughter in the 60 minutes interview, and we all knew it was gallows laughter the first time we heard it. Laughter doesn't mean one is being laughed at, or that the subject isn't taken seriously.

We giggle about pot. It doesn't mean we don't favor legalization. It may mean we realize that it is a touchy subject, politically.

The country and Obama have a lot riding on the economic recovery right now, and starting up another controversy, voluntarily, is politically foolish at this time.

Just because most readers of HP favor legalization, doesn't mean it will be easy to accomplish politically.

[BusGreg]

Here is the text of the question which was not in the top but in fact THE TOP question in its category:
"With over 1 out of 30 Americans controlled by the penal system, why not legalize, control, and tax marijuana to change the failed war on drugs into a money making, money saving boost to the economy? Do we really need that many victimless criminals?"
Not only did Pres O. NOT answer the question asked, he misrepresented it and phrased his answer in a way to completely skirt the part about the war on drugs not working.
His "funny" was inappropriatre and disrespectful to not only us who demand an end to this idiotic war on drugs, but the nation as a whole..
To this day the US Government issues a tin of rolled caanbis cigarettes under a compassionate care program. 5 of the original patients to this day receive monthly, govt funded, legal to be smoked medicine! The hypocacy in this is mind boggling. We have wasted over half a trillion dollars on the futile attempt to eliminate cannabis use, yet we continue this farce to pacify the moral inferiority and the Prison Industrial Complex.
A person who continues something over and over, expecting a different outcome is classified as insane. To year after year , decade after decade to insist that we outlaw a plant is insane. The waste of OUR tax money has long gone past insane. That waste has long ago become an obscenity!

[BusGreg]

Admin Notice
Not enough space:
The compassionate care program is 30 years old this year and was mentioned last night on Larry King Live in a discussion between Montel Williams and Stephen Baldwin. This program has also been mentioned in another documentary, but the name escapes me at the time.

[strick9]

A point from the corporate perspective, if drugs became legal then the employer would have no reason to drug test their employee, invading their privacy. They would have to find another way to control their employee’s thought and behavior. I remember in the 60’s when the crackdown on pot came down. Stoners were not accepting at face value the BS the Whitehouse was spewing. Black, White, and Latin got high, talked, and compared their lives. They realized they were more alike than different and put aside their prejudices and hate. Something had to be created to keep the employees divided competing for the crumbs left over from the feasts of the rich. So the war against drugs was born! Random drug testing is used to control minorities, malcontents and troublemakers. After I learned to keep my mouth shut and do my job better than anyone else in the office I was never tested. Some states are proposing to drug test the unemployed and others that receive benefits from the state. If you self medicate and you don’t shut your mouth they can get your job and now even take away you right to unemployment benefits

[jhamm1]

"A point from the corporate perspective, if drugs became legal then the employer would have no reason to drug test their employee, invading their privacy."

Actually, they would, considering that even legal activities that compromise an employee's ability to perform his/her job present legitimate considerations with which to hire, reject, or even discharge an employee. Alcohol may be legal, but one who is constantly intoxicated on the job can easily be branded as pertinent to lack-luster performance and thus susceptible to immediate discharge.

GRanted, even in the face of potentially legalized drugs, use of cocaine, crack, and heroin should never be publicly encouraged, but the simple fact remains that incarcerating non-violent individuals who are compromising no one's livelihood but their own solves nothing in either the short- or long run, while legalization remains the sole means of putting drug cartels out of business, or at the very least, ineligible to any business prospects in the United States.

[Warren Holstein - Huffpost Blogger]

Great article. We still have a lot of obstacles to overcome on the path to legalization.

Check out my piece on the Huffington Post, “Operation Buzzkill: Random Drug Testing for the Unemployed” at:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/warren-holstein/operation-buzzkill-random_b_179960.html

[research]

watched Obama laugh about the drugs question again tonight on real time.

Remember that Obama has already de facoto legalized marijuana in many states.

he is floating the question.

He listens to the audience laugh,

then he goes along with them..

[MsLiz]

Excuse me, in what states has our president legalized marijuana? I must have dozed off.

[research]

Obama supposedly stopped raid on medical pot distributors,

But when I went looking for a reference, I found this instead:

http://www.sfbg.com/blogs/politics/2009/03/sf_pot_raid_clouds_federal_dru.html

[research]

Obama declared the DEA wouldn't raid the medical pot places, but the DEA did raid just a few days ago.

[Kamizar]

It's funny, Anslinger got cannabis illegalized because of racism, and here stands the first black POTUS, saying he doesn't approve of cannabis. In a way, it's almost as if Obama supports racism.

[twofish]

Nah, the 60's intervened, when the sons and daughters of the white middle class got ahold of it. It became such a great stick to beat the HIPPIES and RADICALS and ANTI-WAR DEMONSTRATORS with, there was no chance it would get legalized then. John Sinclair of the White Panthers Party got 10 years in the slammer in Texas for possession of 2 joints. So easy to plant on people! What's not to like?

[epochme]

i have to agree with ganga rebel this is a deal breaker mr president ... pharma tobacco alcohol private prisons dea have spoken ... hup two mr president ... continue the raygun disgrace ... continue the hypocrysy ... the war on drugs ... the war against your family and your friends and let world corporate laugh all the way to the bank ... americas prison industrial complex ... the disgrace of the "free" world ...

[epochme]

the powers that be want "illegal" drugs to stay that way ... and they have lots of reasons for this ... lots of $$$$$$$$ ...

[avraamjack]

and yet virtually nowhere in the Media is there any discussion of Senator Jim Webb's newly introduced bill: "National Criminal Justice Commission Act of 2009"

To wit:

SEN. WEBB INTRODUCES "NATIONAL CRIMINAL JUSTICE COMMISSION ACT OF 2009"

Legislation to Evaluate and Overhaul the Criminal Justice System

On Thursday, March 26, Senator Jim Webb introduced the "National Criminal Justice Commission Act of 2009" in the U.S. Senate. The bipartisan legislation will create a blue-ribbon commission charged with undertaking an 18-month, top-to-bottom review of our entire criminal justice system and offering concrete recommendations for reform.

Senator Webb's legislation is the result of decades of investigation and more than two years of intense work in the U.S. Senate. It has already garnered wide support from Senate leadership, the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the Obama Administration. Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA), Ranking Member on the Judiciary Committee, joined Webb as the principal Republican cosponsor.

Senator Webb said on the floor this week: "America's criminal justice system has deteriorated to the point that it is a national disgrace. With five percent of the world's population, our country houses twenty-five percent of the world's prison population. Incarcerated drug offenders have soared 1200% since 1980. And four times as many mentally ill people are in prisons than in mental health hospitals. Our neighborhoods are at risk from gang violence, including transnational gang violence. We should be devoting precious law enforcement capabilities toward making our communities safer.

[iblogleft]

Are you kidding, a day after and 99% of the media is silent. Its insane.

Next we will step into "Non-criminal" drugs. Then they can charge a fine, send you too mandatory "rehab" and send you to jail if you don't meet the requirements.

Now tell me how a for-profit rehabs, drug test facilities, and prisons that trade on wall street by population, would ever allow decriminalization to leave people alone?

We don't want legalization, regulation and education, we MUST have it. It is the only answer to some very complex problems. You know what they say, "The simplest answer is more often than not, the right answer".

[MsLiz]

Perhaps the drug policy must be worked on quietly. No sense in riling up the right wing.

[ToolArmy81]

Another reason why if we could ever actually seperate church from state affairs, we would be a much more humane and prosperous nation. DRUGS ARE HERE... LEGALIZE THEM. The only way you can't get drugs anywhere in this nation is if you don't have any money (if you are a straight male, anyway). So why not make money off of them instead of us giving our cold hard cash over to some vicious war lord? Liquor, beer, and cigarettes can be purchased down the street from anybody, and are just as addictive and morally corosive as cocaine, weed, or crack. I never saw a man hit a joint and then go beat up his wife... no, he wanted to grab a burger and chill somewhere. Just like liquor and cigarettes, laws can be formulated to keep drug usage off the street, out of commercials, and even out of bars and social institutions, and just like liquor and cigarettes, I'm sure people will find ways to abuse them and yes, some people will even die from them. But our citizens will not keep going through this hopeless revolving criminal institution from illegal activity that will never stop (ever get locked up for a small bag of grass? Waste of time), and the blood might not flow so heavily through our streets from the vicious people who make their profit from solely how difficult or laws make it buy these drugs.

[iblogleft]

Very well said.

Cheers.

[BusGreg]

Excellent!
People forget (especially here in NC) that we are a FREE COUNTRY where religions and their practice are allowed. We are not nor must we ever be a christian country where freedom is allowed.
That is why the founding fathers included that pesky part about there never being a religious test as qualification for public office as well as that pesky first amendment guaranteeing us the freedom of religion. I demand that our legislators take this to heart and keep their religion out of political decisions, as they affect all, not just those who believe in talking snakes and virgins giving birth!

[Citizen54]

The hypocrisy, stupidity, and outdated puritanism of our government officials are mind-boggling and discouraging. (Or else they're really smart and are just being paid off.)

[zizyphus]

The main reason pot, coke and opium are illegal is that they are keeping the bankers, hedge funds and Wall Street afloat. The trillions have to be laundered, and that is big business. The money has corrupted every level of law enforcement, the judicial system and the any federal agency involved. The gangsterism bred during the first Prohibition flourished and grew during the Bush and Clinton eras, infecting most people it touched.