Like the stages people who experience grief due to a personal tragedy pass through, people concerned about modifying American drug policies have dialed through these five stages since Barack Obama was elected President of the United States:
1. Unbounded enthusiasm. Drug reform advocates, along with other progressives, were wild with anticipation when Barack Obama was elected President. Aside from his remarkable background and intelligence, he was extremely well-informed about drug reform initiatives -- including clean needle programs, discrepancies in sentencing for crack and powder cocaine (which punish minorities disproportionately), and noninterference with states that have enacted medical marijuana (MM) statutes. Moreover, he called the war on drugs an "utter failure."
2. Anxiety. During the run-up to Obama's selection of a Drug Czar, a name often mentioned was Jim Ramstad, former Congressman and a recovering alcoholic who opposed all major drug reforms (e.g., needle exchange, methadone maintenance). Why would Obama even consider such a Neanderthal, his supporters wondered. Where was he coming from in all of this, they asked themselves through sleepless nights.
3. Cautious optimism. Instead, the President selected Gil Kerlikowske, who was not known for being out front in reforming drug policies as Seattle Police Chief, but who also didn't fight the city's needle exchange program and low priority on marijuana possession enforcement, nor Washington state's MM laws. Ethan Nadelmann, director of the Drug Policy Alliance and the country's leading reform advocate, declared himself "cautiously optimistic" due to Kerlikowske's middle-of-the-road stance, even as he was disappointed that Obama had chosen a law enforcement officer rather than a public health advocate to be Drug Czar.
4. Euphoria. Not all drug policy change originates in the Office of National Drug Control Policy. And a number of local and state initiatives came to the fore, including continuing support by states for MM, some harm reduction measures, and - as the economic downturn hit hard - active contemplation of legalizing marijuana in order to tax revenues from its massive sales in California and around the country. Furthermore, the House Judiciary Committee eliminated the crack/powder cocaine sentencing disparity. Although he pushed none of them, these actions were all consistent with Obama's enunciated positions on drugs.
5. Disillusionment. But, from the start, Kerlikowske sounded like anything but a drug reformer. Shortly after his installment as Drug Czar, he brashly announced that any type of drug decriminalization would be "waving the white flag" and that the "legalization vocabulary doesn't exist for me and it was made clear that it doesn't exist in President Obama's vocabulary." Since then, belying his own state's policy and Obama's and Attorney General Eric Holder's statements, Kerlikowske has consistently maintained that marijuana has no medical value. All in all, Kerlikowske's orientation towards drug policy seems like, well, a cop's. And yet he seems to reflect Obama's position on reform.
Where oh where are you Mr. President? Hoping against hope that Kerlikowske is going rogue, the Drug Policy Alliance has started a letter-writing campaign to the President asking him to reassert the progressive views he had previously endorsed, and to rein in his recalcitrant Drug Czar. Of course, it seems unlikely that a control maven like Obama would really allow his Drug Czar to repeatedly defy the President's own inclinations in this area.
A more realistic scenario is that the President - facing opposition to his key policies from not only red states and hard core Republicans, but increasingly also independent voters and moderate Democrats - is unwilling to forge ahead on drug reform. Liberalizing policies towards currently illicit drugs would strike Americans as intensely alien - even as young and old Americans are turning more and more to prescription pharmaceuticals for their highs (and lows), so that there is increasingly little space between substances deemed "illicit" and "legal."
But Obama is not committed enough to drug policy reform to incur the symbolism taking any steps towards liberalization would convey. Can you imagine what the Congressional hearings, town hall conflagrations, and shrieking of people calling "I want my country back" would be like if he tried? American prudery about drugs, alcohol and whatever else will not be reversed any time soon.
Ok, fine.
The same argument was made about gay rights/marriage, DADT and many of Obama's other progressive promises. He can't spend the political capital before he gets the big one, health care, done.
But what about the part where he is blowing health care reform?
I have 4 kids and my wife is a school teacher, I have a disability and I use medical marijuana, but my point is this, when you give all control to a substance like marijuana to criminals they choose everything. they choose whom they sell to, your kids, where they sell, in schools, how much they sell for, far too high for a plant, and they gain all the money from it, to buy guns and even harder drugs. '
So the true question is, do you want ciminals to have the control of marijuana or would you reather like tobacco or alochol, have the state control it. Gee teen use of tobacco has dropped in half over the laty 20 years, I wonder why, well it could be due to the control that the states and federal governemtn has put on it. The We Card program is also why, we have tobacco in stores where only adults can get it, it take a willing adult then to use their ID to buy it for kids, and 99% of us will not do that. Alcohol is the same way we control it we regulate it and kids have a very difficult time getting it.
Pot has been around for longer than you or I have been around.. I have smoked "Marijuana for 35 years.. I dropped out of high school during my junior year.. I made a decent life for myself and my lovely bride.
I didn't sell drugs.. I didn't have connections.. I just learned to work.. Ethics! Work ethics. Maybe if we taught our children how to work. 50% of that 95% need to quit looking to the government and daycare centers to raise their kid's we wouldn't have this issue on the table.
We live in a different world.. We have violence and drug commercials. We have alchohol addiction.. we market and sell cigarettes in all kinds of flavors and colors..
Nope I don't buy the argument that we need to protect your kids from Marijuana.. The evil weed. The class 1 narcotic.. Did you know that the drug that killed Micheal Jackson was/is a class 2 drug.. It's safer than pot.. Go figure
I also doubt that legalization initiatives are going to pass in CA as the last initiative to liberalize drug laws failed. Prop 215 has de facto legalized marijuana in CA, and most "patients" are young and healthy. I voted for this prop because it was billed as compassionate for cancer and aids patients, not for headaches, insomnia, or anxiety, or even marijuana addiction, and I also didn't know that a few doctors would prescribe it for everything and anything just to make a buck. It is really a joke, and now some cities are pulling back from these so-called dispensaries.
We can't win the war on drugs any more than we can win the war on terrorism, but legalizing some or all drugs is not the answer. Ariana Huffington appeared on Bill Maher decrying how we overmedicate in our society. I agree--but to be consistent--that also includes marijuana.
You want them to have a criminal record?
You want them to have their lives ruined for something that is less harmful to them than a beer?
?
White flags and Surrender... seems to me that those are terms used in war. I thought old Gil said the drug war was over.. Why did he say that the term "The war on drugs" was not appropriate to use anymore. It was to closely identified with the massive amounts of Americans being sent to prison every year. But the war rages on... I to Mr. Gil have a white flag also.. But I will never use it either.. I will stand up and wave the good old American flag..
Texas "lawmaker's" you're history" Bad history! Would we be having any of these issues if campaigns where paid for with public money's.
US Patent 6630507 which claims “Cannabinoids have been found to have antioxidant properties, unrelated to NMDA receptor antagonism. This new found property makes cannabinoids useful in the treatment and prophylaxis of wide variety of oxidation associated diseases, such as ischemic, age-related, inflammatory and autoimmune diseases. The cannabinoids are found to have particular application as neuroprotectants, for example in limiting neurological damage following ischemic insults, such as stroke and trauma, or in the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and HIV dementia.”
How about it Gil? Care to explain the governments patent and claims if marijuana has no medicinal uses? Which statement is a lie? That it has no medicinal uses or that cannabinoids are useful for the treatment of a wide variety of diseases? Or will you simply keep talking out both sides of your mouth?
Maybe this will help,
http://www.alternet.org/drugreporter/141773/nbc,_cbs,_abc,_&_fox_happy_to_profit_from_marijuana,_as_long_as_nobody_talks_about_legalizing_it/?
If for-profit healthcare is the problem, how can the profiteers be included in the solution?
I think we're reached that final stage regarding his Big Pharma corporation policy as well.
I get the avatar. It's cool. It's perfect on many levels.
But it's way too small to see Jesus in it, so I just end up looking at some dog's ____ all the time....
It's pretty disturbing to be honest with you.
What about Jesus in the grilled cheese?