One thing you can bet we won't hear anyone talking about at the Democratic National Convention is marijuana. Nobody will be discussing how bad it is, how good it is or even acknowledging that it exists. Then, at the end of the day, a not-insignificant number of attendees will be getting high at every hotel in Charlotte and bitching about what a buzzkill Mitt Romney is.
It sounds silly to even suggest that marijuana would get a mention at our nation's biggest political showcase. Of course it won't, and I actually agree, in theory, that it shouldn't. But somehow our policymakers have managed to turn this mostly-helpful plant into a massive international fiasco that's becoming increasingly difficult to deal with from one day to the next.
I've heard many democrats address Obama's handling of the marijuana issue by asking, "what do you expect?" and I'm happy to answer them. I expect change. Absent that, I expect an explanation. An explanation is something you ought to have when you're arresting millions of people to protect them from a piece of plant material they put in their own pocket. The billions we spend trying to stop people from relaxing in this particular fashion should be subject to the same scrutiny as any other enormous amount of money our government spends, if not far more.
So, in June, I went through the appropriate channels to try to get that explanation. At an event in Washington, D.C., I asked Obama's drug czar whether marijuana users should be arrested and forced into drug treatment. His answer wasn't very helpful. From Reason:
The other good question came from Scott Morgan, of StopTheDrugWar.org, who asked if Kerlikowske supported compulsory treatment of casual drug users, and if arresting marijuana users and forcing them into treatment was an effective policy. This time, Kerlikowske played dumb.
"Again, that's a bit of a myth. If someone's arrested for a small amount of marijuana, and the determination is made they have to go into treatment, treatment beds and space are a valuable commodity. I think professionals can clearly assess when someone is in need of treatment. Compulsory treatment is not something I'm as familiar with in great detail at the local level."
If the drug czar isn't "familiar with" the punishments for marijuana possession and can't defend them, who can? His answer got worse from there, if you can believe it, and it's exactly this kind of convoluted incoherent crap that defines our drug policy and paralyzes efforts to fix anything about it. One minute they're saying we don't arrest people and force them to into treatment, then they're saying we have to do something aggressive to send the right message, and then they close by insisting that the system is working fine, whatever the heck it is.
Meanwhile, we lead the world in incarceration and we've got a gigantic drug war bloodbath bubbling under our southern border and nobody knows what to do about it. Nobody, that is, except the emerging majority of Americans who believe that marijuana shouldn't be illegal in the first place. Even as the Obama Administration is doing everything it can to alienate supporters of reform, a legalization measure is activating young voters and out-polling the president in a battleground state that might make or break the whole election. To say nothing at all at a time such as this is embarrassing indeed, and reeks of unpreparedness for a discussion that obviously matters a great deal to a great number of people.
Obama knows enough about public relations, and enough about marijuana, that you would think he could explain our current policies to us if any reasonable explanation existed. In that sense, his continued silence speaks volumes.
This post is part of the HuffPost Shadow Conventions 2012, a series spotlighting three issues that are not being discussed at the national GOP and Democratic conventions: The Drug War, Poverty in America, and Money in Politics.
HuffPost Live will be taking a comprehensive look at America's failed war on drugs August 28th and September 4th from 12-4 pm ET and 6-10 pm ET. Click here to check it out -- and join the conversation.
Follow Scott Morgan on Twitter: www.twitter.com/drugblogger
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 |
|
| Obama | Romney | |
|---|---|---|
| Electoral Votes (270 to win) |
332 | 206 |
| Obama | Romney | |
|---|---|---|
| Total | 65,899,660 | 60,932,152 |
| Percent | 51.1% | 47.2% |
| Democrats* | Republicans | |
|---|---|---|
| Current Senate | 53 | 47 |
| Seats gained or lost | +2 | -2 |
| New Total | 55 | 45 |
| Democrats | Republicans | |
|---|---|---|
| Seats won | 201 | 234 |
He promised to let science guide policy. Given the overwhelming public support for medicinal marijuana for serious ill patients who would benefit from its use, the mystery is why he didn't move forward on medicinal marijuana, out of respect for suffering, science, medicine and public opinion, specifically by having his administration end the DEA's "schedule 1" thuggery that marijuana has no recognized medicinal use.
He's shown utterly no respect for recreational marijuana users, and seems blissfully and reckessly ignorant about how much more deadly alcohol is than cannabis (100x more deadly? More?). Recreational cannabis users and those who love them were a significant part of his base and he hasn't even thrown them a crummy little bone.
Unlike the Bush Administration, the Obama Regime is actively persecuting medical marijuana users and providers. That is not "silence".
On this issue, I miss Bush. But, go on, potheads, vote for Obama again.
That is why Obama is silent. It's a direct reflection of the average education of American citizens.
GaryJohnson2012.com
22 million uninsured
22 million smoking pot
Are these the same people?
Vote for dope.
End unemployment with a new boom industry called bud.
End rising health care costs with medicine grown at home.
End the war on drugs for a peaceful, prosperous economy.
Legalize, regulate and tax the shit out of weed. DAH.
If General Motors was worth saving, isn't marijuana worth exploring? More $ is spent on weed than auto sales in U.S.
Alcohol, too, is for weaklings.
Pot is not benign, just not as damaging as alcohol. The sooner people quit misdescribing pot as 'harmless', the better off we will be to make actual policy.
FTA:
For the next six months, I spent every spare moment researching "the Devil Weed." Putting it bluntly, I was shocked. There was absolutely nothing "devilish" about it. All this remarkable information had been out there, waiting to be discovered and all I had to do was agree to view it with an open mind. I learned that Cannabis Indica had been compounded into liquid extracts in the late 1800's and up until the early 1900's. These extracts were recommended by medical doctors to alleviate everything from teething pain in infants to reducing the pain of arthritis and menstrual cramps.
I found out that contrary to what I'd been told, nobody has ever died from using marijuana in the thousands of years this plant has been available. In fact, I had no idea that its medical use dated back to around 2700 B.C. and was called a "superior" herb by the Emperor Shen-Nung (2737-2697 B.C.). I discovered that while I had been demonizing marijuana, thousands of people worldwide had been quietly and effectively curing or relieving a multitude of health problems, including Crohn's disease, migraine headaches, chronic depression, post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), insomnia, dementia, epileptic seizures, Parkinson's disease and even AIDS.
Getting high on street weed compared to a laboratory distillate is like comparing the buzz from a glass of wine to the effects of wine distilled into Remy Martin. In other words, either is useful but they patented the one that didn't get you stoned out of your mind on its concentrate. I imagine Obama would act to legalize pot immediately if he could figure out a way to distill these social, economic, scientific, Puritanical, and political concerns into a proposal as simple as rolling a joint.
Patent reference at http://www.google.com/patents/US6630507?dq=6,630,507&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ih5jUMuJJdDI0AGU4ICwBg&sqi=2&pjf=1&ved=0CC8Q6AEwAA
And we voters are the "policy makers". We're the leaders, politicians are followers. If the majority favored legal pot, it would be legal now. It's called "democracy": majority rule, not rule by advocates, OWS, Tea Party or NORML. The Founding Fathers had a king, didn't want another one. So they gave domestic power to Congress, to make sure radicals couldn't elect a dictator. You want to change the laws, change Congress. Just electing a President does nothing domestically, though outside the US the President is all-powerful.
( sic)
You could get big bucks for that kind of thinking!