Newly confirmed drug czar Gil Kerlikowske sounds ready to start fixing the decades-long disaster known as the drug war:
The Obama administration’s new drug czar says he wants to banish the idea that the U.S. is fighting “a war on drugs,” a move that would underscore a shift favoring treatment over incarceration in trying to reduce illicit drug use.
In his first interview since being confirmed to head the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, Gil Kerlikowske said Wednesday the bellicose analogy was a barrier to dealing with the nation’s drug issues.
“Regardless of how you try to explain to people it’s a ‘war on drugs’ or a ‘war on a product,’ people see a war as a war on them,” he said. “We’re not at war with people in this country.”
Mr. Kerlikowske’s comments are a signal that the Obama administration is set to follow a more moderate — and likely more controversial — stance on the nation’s drug problems. Prior administrations talked about pushing treatment and reducing demand while continuing to focus primarily on a tough criminal-justice approach.
The Obama administration is likely to deal with drugs as a matter of public health rather than criminal justice alone, with treatment’s role growing relative to incarceration, Mr. Kerlikowske said.
I think Kerlikowske, the Obama Administration, and the traditional media are going to be surprised at how uncontroversial it is to take this stance. And not just here in Seattle, but across the country. People are sick and tired of this war and all the violence it causes. More and more Americans understand the relationship between the drug war and the unraveling of Mexico and recognize that what we’re dealing with is equivalent to what we dealt with during alcohol prohibition. You can tell how unpopular the drug war is becoming when news outlets have to resort to Stephen Baldwin to provide counterpoints against the reformers.
“more controversial”
Well of course the righties are gonna make a stink about anything that helps people.
I think it was in 1934 that J. Edgar Hoover had marihuana reclassified as a dangerous drug for the purposes of improving his crime fighting statistics and asking for more money to build his stoopid snoopin agency.
Catching peaceful, law abiding potheads is much easier than trying to catch the real criminals.
http://blogs.salon.com/0002762.....legal.html
“Marijuana has been illegal for less than 1% of the time that it’s been in use. … as newspapers in 1934 editorialized: “Marihuana influences Negroes to …”
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On topic comments only…
It’s definitely time to legalize the private use of marijuana. The whole thing, since the Thirties, has just been a scam to build a big government bureaucracy with lots of power.
Lee-
You and the other dope-smoking fiends at HA are clear evidence of the danger and impact of excessive pot on the human mind.
You have zero ability to even discuss the potential negative consequences of legalizing pot….caused by the death of your “consequence” braincells.
Keep suckin’ down the dope…and make sure your kids have plenty to smoke with you!
I see that today’s Rasmussen Daily Tracking Poll has the Presidential Approval Index at +8, one point higher than yesterday and 700% higher than May 2nd. It’s obvious that our president’s approval is soaring!
@6,
I’ve been hearing about “demon reefer” for about 50 years, and I haven’t noticed the world coming to an end.
Let’s face it: people want to use this substance, and, until the early part of the last century, the government pretty much stayed out of peoples’ personal lives and what those people chose to enjoy. Marijuana has been on the planet for millions of years, and it has been enjoyed by people for thousands and thousands of years. I saw a special on the National Geographic Channel where they unearthed an ancient tomb in what is now China, and the deceased had a small pouch of marijuana buried with him. Given the level of hygiene and the nature of civilization at that time, I suspect the pot had nothing to do with his death, but it was buried with him because it was enjoyable to use and brought relief from suffering. That culture probably believed he would need to pot in the afterlife, so this substance has been part of our experience for a long, long time.
It’s time to take a sane, adult stance on this issue. I see absolutely nothing wrong with people choosing to privately enjoy this substance, and I believe most Americans would agree with me that it’s at least time to decriminalize marijuana if not make it entirely legal.
@6 Whatever the mental effects (if any) of pot, they’re nothing compared to the brain rot caused by fucking goats.
Lee-
You and the other dope-smoking fiends at HA are clear evidence of the danger and impact of excessive pot on the human mind.
You have zero ability to even discuss the potential negative consequences of legalizing pot….caused by the death of your “consequence” braincells.
Keep suckin’ down the dope…and make sure your kids have plenty to smoke with you!
Would it interest you to know the US and Israeli Armies are studying the effects of THC, one of the primary active components of cannabis, as an antidote to nerve-agent poisoning’s destructive effects on brain cells?
It protects them, you see. It literally coats nerve cell sheathes and dendrites, which is partly why people with MS, whose nerve sheathes are degrading, causing ‘misfires’ like short-circuits in electrical wiring, report experiencing marked relief after toking. Whereas, alcohol kills said nerve cells by the truckload. Which would you prefer?
This substance acutally promotes embryonic and adult neurogenesis, it’s currently being studied at the University of Saskatchewan, at Saskatoon. Neurogenesis means it builds brain cells.
The Chinese army is studying it to protect their soldiers from nerve damage in a gas attack.
Most persons upon having a child actually mature as a result…but not lee. He prefers to stubbornly cater to his youthful, mind-altering indulgences rather than follow this time tested process of entering adulthood.
And, of course, there’s the fact that in 1974, under a US Gub’mint funded study commissioned by the NIDA, it was found that THC killed glial cell brain cancer tumors And lest anyone think this was a fluke, the study was recreated in 1994, with the same results. And again, in Madrid, Spain in 2000, in Milan, Italy in 2003 and since then, in laboratories around the world.
Now, you have to ask: why is it that the first discovery, made here in the US, was not followed through? Why is it that this taxpayer-funded study was effectively buried? Why is it that the Spanish researcher who REdiscovered the anti-cancer properties of THC had to be told by an American drug law reformer about the existence of the 1974 study?
What could possibly be the US government’s justification for refusing to further examine the extraordinary properties that THC has repeatedly demonstrated under lab conditions since 1974? Because, unlike standard chemo, the THC attacks only the damaged, cancerous cells, leaving the healthy ones untouched.
Why? Why have hundreds of thousands of people died of glial cell cancers and other types that THC has shown promise in eradicating safely, when the possibility of a very real cure had been discovered 35 years ago?
Don’t ask me. Instead, ask the career DrugWarriors, whose meal tickets are directly threatened by legal cannabis, for the answers.
One would think that the conservatives (you know, the people who want government out of our lives) would be all over this like white on rice! But I suppose when hypocrisy is a lifestyle…
Wait a minute! Wasn’t there a recent post that one of these guys didn’t want the government to know where their money came from? Got news for you, if you’re engaged in any form of legal commerce/labor the government already knows the source of your income. Perhaps we have some participants in the “underground economy” in our midst.
Unless the new stance includes some form of legalization (and Kerlikowske does not mention it), I don’t see how it reduces violence. There will still be drug sellers competing for clients.
Perhaps more treatment for drug users reduces the cases where people/property get assaulted for money to buy drugs.
Legalizing and making drugs close to free would probably be the only thing that would eliminate all drug-related violence. Let’s do it. It’s probably cheaper than enforcement.
I doubt marijuana will ever be made legal for the fact that it can be grown at home would mean the .gov couldn’t control it and tax it.
Nolaguy, you’re overlooking the “L” factor. No not “Liberal”, but “Laziness”.
Tobacco seeds are legal, and you can grow your own. But how many do? Why bother, when those who are addicted to nicotine can get their fix pre-wrapped, properly weighed, amount of drug dosage precisely determined and ready on the shelf? Xerox (I refuse to say ‘ditto’) for various forms and strengths of alcohol.
A RE-legalized cannabis market could operate exactly the same way.One would either get pre-rolled parcels, or loose leaf in a pouch, no differnet from pipe tobacco. Again, all measured, weighed, with strain and potency scientifically determined.
I have a good friend who’s a master microbrewer. His wife swears by his product. But he still buys the majority of his beer and liquor at a store. Because it’s frakkin’ hard work to make his home brew. Likewise with cannabis. Many growers really do consider it a ‘labor of love’ to produce the very best they can.
So…in a legal environment, most people inclined to toke will get theirs from a store. And be glad of it.
Hey Ricky Dumbass we hear your kids got taken away because you kept raping them!
It’s easier than growing tomatoes and even goldy can grow tomatoes. It grows wild. All you have to do in manicure the flower.
So simple the cavemen probably did it.
re 4: Thanks for reminding me, Lee, to stay on topic, as I had not veered from it in the first place.
Any inclination to do was thankfully squelched in time.
Stay on topic yourself, dipshit.
Mr. Stamn, the (largely non-psychoactive) ditchweed the DEA crows about digging up every year – at taxpayer’s expense – is what grows wild. It is nothing but industrial grade hemp, good for all kinds of things, except giving you a buzz.
Cannabis cultivated for its’ psychoactive properties is just that: cultivated. As in carefully monitored and tended. No weed connoisseur would want to mix ditchweed pollen with their grow, as it would quickly reduce the potency of the desired product.
‘The cavemen’ probably grew it, alright, as hemp seeds have been found in archeological sites of early humans as far back as 12,000 years. But the cultivation of it for the psychoactive properties required more than casting seeds on the ground. It required the kind of organization and agricultural inclinations that no hunter-gatherer society had, but city-dwellers developed. It takes effort, just as microbrewing does.
So, the idea that someone who isn’t dedicated to the kind of effort it takes to make really good weed can just pitch some seeds and wait, and won’t buy theirs in a store, just isn’t realistic…just as most people don’t run their own ‘shine stills, or grow their own tobacco. Too much effort; The “L” factor wins every time.
Personally I get my weed from behind the Big Bear Bar.
Gad!
Isn’t it amazing how much intense effort pot evokes? Now if we could just harness that behind fixing the effin schools and passing an income tax!
Driven by MJ fanatics, including Lee, we pretty much know that this stuff is pretty harmless. Maybe if we legalize the stuff, Lee et al. will find a more useful cause?
OTOH, we know very little about the harm done by excessive use of “vitamins,” ingestion of the MANY forms of chocolate, or the effects of excessive athletic training!
So, in the spirit of rationalism, why not legalize pot, require licenses to train, not allow anyone under 18 to train at all, make all vitamins prescription only, and relegate chocolate to the State Liquor Stores?
@21 “Isn’t it amazing how much intense effort pot evokes?”
So why do stoners have a reputation for being lazy? More propaganda?
@22 …
maybe there are lazy people are attracted to pot? Folks I have known always seemd to mer rather intense and perhpas to need pot to lower their angst.
Let’s not pretend this is a left/right issue. 90% of Americans are for the fascistic drug war.