Below is this week’s summary of pending state legislation and tips on how you can become involved in changing the marijuana laws in your state.

Montana: Legislative hearings were held this week on a pair of bills related to the medicinal use of marijuana. On Tuesday, members of the Senate Judiciary Committee heard testimony regarding Senate Bill 212, which seeks to impose a lifetime ban on qualified medical cannabis patients who commit certain driving indiscretions. NORML opposes this effort and is working closely with Montana Patients & Families United to derail this measure. Committee members are expected to vote on SB 212 as early as tomorrow morning (Friday, January 23), but you still have time to urge lawmakers to vote ‘no’ by visiting here.

On a more positive note, Montana’s House Human Services Committee is expected to vote by next Wednesday (January 28) on House Bill 73, which will allow patients greater access to medical cannabis. You can contact the Committee and urge their support for this common sense proposal here.

Minnesota: Senate File 97, an act to exempt qualified medical cannabis patients from state arrest and prosecution, has been referred to the Health, Housing, and Family Security Committee. Last year, a similar measure gained strong legislative support, but was tabled after last-minute opposition from the Governor. You can voice your support for this year’s proposal by visiting here and here.

New Mexico: The New Mexico Department of Health finalized rules last week governing the production, distribution, and use of medicinal cannabis under state law. The new guidelines specify that state qualified patients may possess up to six ounces of medical cannabis (or more if authorized by their physician) and/or 16 plants (four mature, 12 immature) in accordance with state law. State regulations also authorize non-profit facilities to apply with the state to produce and dispense medical cannabis. State licensed producers may grow up to 95 mature plants at one time. New Mexico is the first state to codify rules for the state-licensed production of medical cannabis by not-for-profit organizations.

Below is this week’s summary of pending state legislation and tips on how you can become involved in changing the marijuana laws in your state.

Washington: A dozen lawmakers introduced legislation (HB 1177) this week to reclassifying (read: decriminalize) the possession of up to forty grams of marijuana to a class 2 civil infraction. Passage of this bill would reduce the penalties on minor marijuana possession offenses from a criminal misdemeanor punishable by up to 90 days in jail and a $500 fine to a monetary penalty of no more than $100. According to data provided by the Washington State Institute for Public Policy, enacting this policy would save state taxpayers over $7.5 million annually. Residents in Washington are strongly encouraged to contact their House members in support of HB 1177 via NORML’s online advocacy system.

Montana: There has been a flurry of legislative activity this week pertaining to the medical use of marijuana. First the good news. House Bill 73, an act to revise the state’s medical marijuana law, has been referred to the House Human Services Committee. If passed, this proposal would benefit Montana patients by expanding the pool of health care providers who may legally recommend marijuana therapy under state law to include physician assistants and nurse practitioners.

Now the bad news. Senate Bill 212, an act to impose a lifetime ban on qualified medical cannabis patients who commit certain driving indiscretions, has been referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee. If passed, this proposal would sanction patients found to be operating a motor vehicle with even trace levels of THC (above 1 ng/ml) in their blood by disqualifying them for life from the state’s medical marijuana program.

Both measures will be heard by legislators next week. It is important that lawmakers hear from you. If you live in Montana, you can show your support HB 73 by going here. You can voice your opposition to SB 212 by going here. For more information on attending next week’s hearings, please contact: info@mtmjpatients.org.

New Jersey: In the coming weeks, the Senate is expected to vote on Senate Bill 119, the New Jersey Compassionate Use Medical Marijuana Act, which seeks to make New Jersey the fourteenth state to allow for the physician-supervised use of medicinal cannabis. Governor Jon Corzine backs the measure, as do many of the state’s largest newspapers. Residents in New Jersey are strongly encouraged to contact their senators in support of SB 119 via NORML’s online advocacy system.

Missouri: Ten lawmakers have introduced legislation (HB 277) to legalize the medical use of marijuana in Missouri. If passed, this measure would “give medical marijuana patients the same rights as other pharmaceutically medicated individuals.” You can learn more about the measure via NORML’s online advocacy system.

Capitol Hill Cannabis Law Reform Lobby Highlighted

Since the election of Barack Obama to the presidency, despite the government’s best, but utterly feckless efforts to suppress cannabis culture and use in America, the ‘buzz’ in Washington D.C. and nationwide these days about alternatives to cannabis prohibition is palpable.

One interesting tea leaf for me to gather in this evolution towards cannabis law reforms at the national level is to see otherwise staid, Capitol Hill-based print publications such as The Hill and most recently Roll Call taking interest in the cannabis law reform lobby’s efforts in Washington—after decades of ignoring us.

Is real change afoot here as indicated by these mainstream, political publications casting needed public and political attention towards NORML’s nearly 40-years of grassroots advocacy?

Time, and increased public efforts by reformers, will tell…

Read a scanned version of Roll Call’s ‘Vested Interests’ article, here.

It brings me no joy to point out that some of the leaders of the law enforcement community in my home state of Massachusetts have apparently lost their minds in anticipation of a minor change in criminal law that will soon formalize the decriminalization of a small amount of cannabis. I say ‘formalize’ because for all intent and purposes cannabis was already largely ‘decriminalized’ in the Bay State. However, the laws and sanctions were applied nilly-willy, with no consistency town to town, cop to cop, and at great costs to the state’s taxpayers.

In the last few days, led in the media by the Massachusetts District Attorneys Association, Massachusetts media outlets–and now even National Public Radio–have picked up on the absurd arguments recently advanced by the losing side of the November statewide election to decriminalize cannabis that: employment drug testing is now in jeopardy, police will be able to use cannabis anytime they want and that if police confront a cannabis consumer seeking to write them a ticket for possessing and/or using cannabis and the individual refuses to produce an ID, police will have pot smoke blown in their face by sneering, goading cannabis users fearless of receiving a fine.

All are untrue.

How do I know? Duh. Look around people…almost 100 million Americans live in a state or municipality that have had decriminalized cannabis possession laws on the books for decades (From west to east: AK, OR, CA, NV, CO, NE, MS, OH, NC, NY and ME). Do these states unfortunately still have employee drug testing? Are police sanctioned in these states to consume cannabis without drug testing and fear of job loss? Do police seek and receive citizens’ IDs before writing them a citation for cannabis? Did these states contribute to the ever-increasing arrest rates for cannabis consumers?

You betcha!

Listen to the NPR story from yesterday, December 26, to get the flavor of the MDAA’s unfounded timidity.

Now, the way Massachusetts law enforcement is acting is not new for the profession that gets away with the whopper that ‘they don’t make the laws, they only enforce them’.

Full Story

“The war on drugs has been an utter failure. … (W)e need to rethink and decriminalize our (nation’s) marijuana laws.”
-Barack Obama, January 2004 (Watch the video here.)

“I inhaled frequently, that was the point.”
-Barack Obama, November 2006 (Watch the video here.)

Q: “Will you consider legalizing marijuana so that the government can regulate it, tax it, put age limits on it, and create millions of new jobs and create a billion dollar industry right here in the U.S.?”

A: “President-elect Obama is not in favor of the legalization of marijuana.”
-Statement from Change.gov, the official website of President-Elect Obama, December 15, 2008

Okay, count me among those disappointed, but hardly surprised to see that Change.gov — the official website of the incoming Obama administration — answered the above question, which finished first out of over 7,000 public policy questions submitted to the website, in the most curt and dismissive way possible.

That said, as StoptheDrugWar.org’s Scott Morgan writes, Obama’s brevity is, in fact, quite telling.

As frustrating and insulting as it is to witness an important matter brushed casually to the side without explanation, Obama’s answer actually says a lot. It says that he couldn’t think of even one sentence to explain his position. Within the vast framework of totally paranoid anti-pot propaganda, Obama couldn’t find a single argument he wanted to associate himself with. That’s why he simply said “No. Next question.”

All of this highlights the well-known fact that Obama agrees that our marijuana laws are deeply flawed. He‘s said so, and has back-pedaled recently for purely political reasons. If Obama’s transition team tried to give an accurate description of his position on marijuana reform it would look like this:

Q: “Will you consider legalizing marijuana so that the government can regulate it, tax it, put age limits on it, and create millions of new jobs and create a billion dollar industry right here in the U.S.?” S. Man, Denton

A: President-elect Obama will not use his political capital to advance the legalization of marijuana. While he agrees that arresting adults for marijuana possession is a poor use of law enforcement resources, he believes that the issue remains too controversial to do anything about it.

In fact, Obama essentially said as much earlier this year when asked about the legalization of marijuana for medicinal purposes.

Obama: “When it comes to medical marijuana, … my attitude is if it is an issue of doctors prescribing marijuana, … I think that should be appropriate. … Whether I want to use a whole lot of political capital on (this) issue; the likelihood of that being real high on my priority list is not likely.” (Watch the video here.)

So then, disappointed as we are, how should we proceed?

Answer: Just as we have been.

To be fair to President-Elect Obama, he never pledged to legalize marijuana. Quite the contrary, during his Presidential campaign he backtracked from his previous comments supporting pot decriminalization, and he even went so far as to pick one of the chief architects of the modern drug war to be his Vice President. In short, to believe that the Obama team would have responded to the legalization question any other way was idealistic at best, and foolish at worst.

But that hardly means that we activists should write off the next four years.

In November, editors at the website Alternet.org asked me to draft “a progressive agenda for Obama” regarding marijuana policy. At that time, I listed several realistic, practical actions Obama could take to substantially reform America’s antiquated and punitive pot laws. (Note, legalizing marijuana by Executive Order was not on my wish list.)

These actions include:

1. As President, Obama must uphold his campaign promise to “not … use Justice Department resources to try and circumvent state laws” that legalize the medical use of cannabis. (Watch the video here.)

2. Obama can appoint leaders to the US Department of Justice, DEA, and the Office of National Drug Control Policy who possess professional backgrounds in public health, addiction and treatment rather than in law enforcement.

3. Obama can support the autonomy and health of Washington D.C. voters by encouraging Congress to lift the so-called “Barr amendment” (passed by Congress in 1998 and reinstated every year since then), which prohibits the District of Columbia from implementing a 1998 voter-approved ballot initiative legalizing the use of marijuana by authorized patients.

4. Obama can call for the creation of a bipartisan Presidential commission to review the budgetary, social and health costs associated with federal marijuana prohibition, and to make progressive recommendations for future policy changes.

Ultimately, of course, it’s Congress, not the president, who is responsible for crafting America’s oppressive federal anti-drug strategies. Moreover, it is clear that in the coming years this battle will continue to primarily be fought — and won — on the state level, not in Washington D.C.

That’s not to say that we should not continue to keep the pressure on Obama by continuing to post questions to websites like Change.gov. (My suggestion for the next round of voting… How about: “On Election Day, over 3 million voters decided to legalize the medical use of cannabis in Michigan, making it the 13th state to enact laws allowing the legal medical use of marijuana. While campaigning, you pledged: ‘What I’m not going to be doing is spend Justice Department resources to try and circumvent state laws on this issue.’ As President, will you and your Attorney General uphold this promise not to target and prosecute patients and providers who are in compliance with state medical marijuana laws?“)

However, we must always remember that it will be the actions of tens of thousands — not the actions of just one man — that will ultimately bring an end to America’s vindictive and senseless war on cannabis consumers.

Now let’s get back to work!

Capitol Hill is talking about cannabis, again!

Earlier today The Hill’s influential Congress Blog posted my commentary:

Legalizing Marijuana Tops Obama Online Poll
via The Hill

Last week, the website Change.gov — the official website of the Obama Transition Team — asked the public to provide them with a list of the top public policy questions facing America. Visitors to the site were then asked to vote on which questions should take priority for the incoming administration.

According to the website, “participation … outpaced our expectations. … Since its launch … the Open for Questions tool has processed over 600,000 votes from more than 10,000 people on more than 7,300 questions.”

Ironically but perhaps not surprisingly the top question for the new administration — as chosen by the general public — was one most politicians seem utterly unwilling to talk about.

“Will you consider legalizing marijuana so that the government can regulate it, tax it, put age limits on it, and create millions of new jobs and create a billion dollar industry right here in the U.S.?”

… So will Obama’s team respond to the demands of the electorate and initiate an honest, objective, and long-overdue review of U.S. marijuana policies? Or will the incoming administration — like the outgoing one — hide their collective heads in the sand?

As we’ve noted before, The Hill is widely read by lawmakers and by the national media; it is vital that we demonstrate the popularity of the marijuana legalization issue by commenting prolifically. Please post your feedback to The Hill and make a point of disseminating this essay to your friends and colleagues.

(Note: Comments to The Hill are moderated. That means that there will be a delay, sometimes a significant delay, between when you post and when your comment appears live online. That said, all comments will eventually be published. As you can see, my last Hill essay received over 200 comments, one of the highest totals ever received by The Hill on any topic!)

Finally, please take a moment to drop a note to your local news outlet highlighting the results of Obama’s online poll. Currently, this issue is reverberating throughout the blogosphere, but with your help, we can make this a mainstream news story as well.

It has been painful from the outside looking in to watch President-elect Barack Obama begin to cobble together his cabinet officers and senior staff in regards to what prospects there are for substantive cannabis law reforms in this first term.

There are only a couple of key appointments left that may signal the political tea leafs for cannabis law reforms in Obama 1.0 — head of Drug Enforcement Administration (which serves under the Attorney General at the Department of Justice) and the Drug Czar (see below regarding rumored nominee).

Who among current Obama nominees are giving me some acid burn?

In order of importance:

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel

“For us regarding opposing drugs and any reforms, it is: harms criminal justice; children; the pharmaceutical process and the legalization stalking horse.” -R.E., 1997

As a longtime observer of Rahm’s ascendancy into the stratosphere of politics (Chicago Mayor Daley’ staff, President Clinton’s White House, Congress, and now back to the White as Chief of Staff) what has me most concerned about Rahm is that for so long he has been so consistent in opposing drug policy reforms, most especially cannabis law reforms. In the Clinton White House he played a major role in domestic policy making, with a strong nod to matters of criminal justice. He was effectively the White House’s point man with the Drug Czar. In my view, Rahm was not concerned with effective policy-making as much as image making, so as to help inoculate the President (and Democrats) from the historical albatross hanging from their necks during most national elections—fear of being viewed by the Republicans, and more importantly the general public, as being ‘weak on crime’.

To put it bluntly, Bill Clinton and Al Gore lied their way up and down the countryside running for the Oval office in the summer of 1992, promising liberal donors, gay activists and drug policy reformers that if elected, at a minimum, they would expand the federal government’s Compassionate Investigative New Drug Program (a.k.a. IND, run by the Public Health Service), which allowed for a small handful of federally-approved medical patients to receive up to 300 ‘joints’ per/month for a serious medical condition.

When Clinton and Gore took office in 1993, they immediately felt the political pressure from state politicians, major gay donors and activists, notably from California, who’d impressed upon Clinton the need for medical cannabis for AIDS and cancer patients.

However, and disappointingly, rather than expand the important research program, Rahm and Co. moved to dismantle it, and by late July 1994 Clinton had canceled the IND program, grandfathering the group of eight patients in the program a columnist at the Washington Post deemed the Acapulco Eight.

Taking a far more politically pragmatic path than a compassionate one, Rahm chose to ignore the science (and the Constitution I’d hastily add) and conflate the somewhat easy to distinguish and politically popular battle for patients to access medicinal cannabis with the decidedly unpopular ‘War on Some Drugs’.

In the spring of 1997, a writer and author who interviewed Rahm for a major Rolling Stone piece on the ‘Drug War’, after he’d walked the 3 blocks from Rahm’s White House office to NORML’s K St. office, kindly shared with me his three pages of shorthand notes. The writer, who’d spent a few days in DC interviewing all of the major players in drug enforcement and drug policy reform had wanted to get an interview with Rahm, because absent the President, there was likely no other person in the nation at the time who had more sway over which way the Executive branch implemented drug control strategies.

When I asked, “Well, how was the interview, where does Emanuel stand on the issue of marijuana?” The writer looked up from his notes and said, “NORML is so screwed. In Emanuel you have the prototypical liberal drug warrior: More government intervention, more laws, more arrests; less freedom and personal responsibility.”

What do these notes reveal from 1997?

When asked why did the Clinton Administration so actively oppose the 1996 ballot initiatives in California (and Arizona) to legalize medical access to cannabis, Rahm’s replies:

-We opposed the Arizona initiative because it had to with sentencing and harder drugs;

-We opposed the California initiative because it sent the wrong message to children and we believe that there is downward trend in use right now that these laws will hurt; send wrong message.

-This procedure should not be done by initiative. We have procedures whereby drugs are tested and approved. These initiatives don’t follow those procedures.

-We took an unpopular position on this. Our position is based on policy even if polls are going the other way.

When asked ‘what makes Clinton’s drug policy any better than George Bush. Sr.’s?’, Rahm’s replies:

-We have passed anti-meth legislation before meth has taken off nationally. Law enforcement are telling me that we got ahead of it.

-Our four points for control: drug testing, drug treatment, coerced abstinence works and if the states want the money for prisons they have to adopt what is proven successful.

-Some members of Congress want to defund the ONDCP, but General McCaffrey is different, brings energy and focus to the job.

-We [Clinton Administration] shifted resources from borders to domestic, community policing and drug free school efforts.

-There is nowhere near enough treatment space for the demand.

-This is about attitude and putting federal dollars to work.

When asked about medical marijuana community (doctors, patients, AIDS and drug policy reform organizations), Rahm slapped his head with his hand and said…

-“We oppose it [cannabis] because there is no doubt that the funding comes from those who advocate legalization. We thought this was the first of many battles and needed to fight.”

When asked about the high number of annual cannabis arrests in the US, Rahm said:

-“I’ve never heard of a police chief who says they waste their time on small time marijuana arrests. I would be surprised if very many people are being arrested for small marijuana possession.”

Further, “For us regarding opposing drugs and any reforms, it is: harms criminal justice; children; the pharmaceutical process and the legalization stalking horse.”

-“I think there is a sadder side to all of this that McCaffrey has spoken eloquently about how people who have used drugs in the past should not be disqualified or attack for their pasts.”

Regarding “marijuana”:

-“Yes, we believe it is a genuinely dangerous drug when it comes to kids. I’ll show you data after data that kids who go onto to harder drugs started off with marijuana.”

-“Laws signal acceptability or not. In this area we say its unlawful and we think that it helps parents say this is wrong.”

Whew. Well, there you have it, from NORML’s huge archives and directly from the writer’s notebook circa spring 1997. A couple of closing thoughts on Rahm and his views on cannabis…

Tactical and political savvy as Rahm clearly is, history proves the decisions President Clinton and he made regarding medical cannabis (and decriminalization) were demonstrably wrong. Rather than yield any quarter or embrace science, compassion and the Constitution in being so rigid and recalcitrant on the public health/criminal justice conundrum of medicinal cannabis, Rahm actually helped accelerate, not retard, the state-based strategy of reformers. From 1996-2000, the Clinton Administration failed to stop grassroots efforts to pass state initiatives or legislation in eight states that ‘legalized’ medical cannabis (Bush 2.0 and his Drug Czar John Walters have not faired much better opposing state medical marijuana laws, save for prevailing in the US Supreme Court twice, in 2001 and 2005. Though, despite the ‘high’ court’s adverse rulings in these cases, the number of medical cannabis dispensaries, cooperatives and even automated medical cannabis machines have steadily increased. If reformers lost at SCOTUS, functionally, what did we actually lose? My contention is not much as the court’s rulings don’t reflect the current political, public health and economic realities facing the respectable minority of Americans who, regardless of their state’s laws, currently employ cannabis as a therapeutic, often with their physician’s recommendation. Reminds one of prior SCOTUS rulings in our nation’s past regarding race, labor laws, women’s rights, internment of Japanese Americans, gay and lesbian equality and sexual reproduction laws where society (and often technology) is leagues ahead of legislation, and ensuing appellate court action–both of which move at a glacial rate (unless of course there is multi-billion dollar, taxpayer-funded ‘bailout’ to be performed, then federal legislative and court action is performed post haste).

Emanuel’s new boss, and admitted past cannabis consumer President-elect Obama has repeatedly indicated that he does not support the use of federal law enforcement to harass medical cannabis dispensaries in states that have approved medical marijuana laws; Obama historically supported decriminalizing small amounts of cannabis (until the end of the contentious Democratic primaries this spring where Obama ‘flipped-flopped’ on the issue, and now claims to oppose the decriminalization of cannabis) and believes that far too many young people are ensnared in an unwieldy and expensive criminal justice system.

Rahm is politically smart if nothing else, so I hope that he’ll follow his boss’ lead in the area of criminal justice reforms. Also, to his credit, after voting years against the Hinchey-Rohrabacher Amendment, in 2007, as member of Congress from Illinois, Rahm voted in favor of holding back federal funding from law enforcement (read DEA) to raid or harass medical marijuana cultivators and dispensaries.

Interestingly, and I don’t think a coincidence, from 2005 forward Illinois’ state legislature has held hearings on medical marijuana and prominent (and compelling) cases like medical marijuana patient Brenda Kratovil have been featured all over the major news media in the state. My supposition is that Rahm, in fact a smart, keenly attuned politician, only came to support clipping the DEA’s wings regarding medical marijuana raids on the west coast after paying close political attention to how citizens in his state—along with its editorial boards and prominent columnists—readily support seriously ill, dying or sense threatened medical patients with a physician’s recommendation to access cannabis.

However, I fear that Rahm will continue to advocate for a politically cautious (I’d say paranoid) path regarding cannabis law reforms; is prone to engage in the most oft-trotted out, and easily deflated, myths and canards about cannabis; and will be too centrist and deferential to law enforcement for political expediency sake.

I just hope his boss and can talk him out of it. If not his new boss, maybe he should listen to his old boss, Bill Clinton, who has acknowledged that he was wrong to oppose harm reduction tenets: cannabis decriminalization and needle exchange efforts.

Attorney General Nominee Eric Holder

Much has been written and fretted about in the last few days about Obama’s pick to be the nation’s top law enforcement official, Attorney General nominee Eric Holder.
There are excellent and probing commentary penned regarding what prospects for criminal justice policy reforms the appointment of Holder portends.

My remarks to Reason’s excellent ‘Hit and Run’ Blog:

“NORML has serious concerns about the choice of Eric Holder as the next Attorney General because he has a long history of opposing drug policy reforms, perceiving cannabis smoking by adults as a public nuisance worthy of constant harrassment, promoting violent governmental intervention into the private lives of citizens who consume cannabis, supporting mandatory minimum sentencing and so-called civil forfeiture laws.

His attraction to the myth of ‘fixing broken windows’ and using law enforcement to crack down on petty crimes will swell an already overburdened, bloated, expensive and failed government prohibition against otherwise law-abiding citizens who choose to consume cannabis.”

Vice-President Joe Biden

The pick of Joe Biden to be Obama’s running mate was my first sign of digestive tumult regarding the prospect of ‘CHANGE’ for drug policy reform. Suffice of to say here, because it was already said here, that Biden represents the decade and type of ‘liberal’ politician in the 1980s, who, rather than oppose the Reagan-inspired War on Some Drugs, decided to become an enthusiastic supporter and legislative booster. Biden was at the center of creating the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), mandatory minimum sentencing, civil forfeiture laws, the Rave Act, funding for DARE in public schools and the ad campaigns for the Partnership for a Drug Free America.

When asked in Connecticut this past May of pain management, Biden exhorted that “There’s got to be a better answer than marijuana.”

With Biden (and Emanuel) loyally by his side, from a purely political point of view, Obama (like a fellow Baby Boomer-type Bill Clinton before him) has wisely guarded against right wing attacks that he may be ‘soft on drugs’.

ONDCP Transition Team Director Dr. Don Vereen
As amazingly as it seems to most who come to know that the ONDCP is a cabinet level office (Thanks Joe Biden!), all cabinet level offices need an official transition team. So who is heading up the ONDCP transitional team? One of the principals is Don Vereen, a former ONDCP deputy director from 1998-2001.

Is Vereen a reform-minded health care professional and ready to embrace ‘change’?

Unlikely in my view as Vereen told the Psychiatric News in 1999 that he believed that doctors who prescribe marijuana as irresponsible and actually advocated arresting medical patients caught with marijuana. Yikes!

Vereen, like Emanuel (and so many other selective prohibitionists), has adopted the same rote cited rationalizations why cannabis can’t be legally controlled and taxed like thousands of pharmaceuticals currently: marijuana can’t be thought of as a therapeutic treatment because it’s usually smoked and because dosages are difficult to control.

Also, Vereen was on the losing side this past Election Day in Michigan where, in his capacity as director of Community Based Public Health at Univ. of Michigan, he claimed that a medical marijuana initiative ‘sends the wrong message to children’.

These folks sure do stick to the same talking points….I hope Vereen doesn’t pull a Cheney here and conclude that he is the best person for the job.

Former Congressman James Ramstad for Drug Czar?

As one of my favorite policy writers and commentators Maia Szalavitz aptly points out in her November 21 Huffington Post article regarding Ramstad:

On paper, Jim Ramstad — who is rumored to be Obama’s choice for drug czar — looks like the ideal man for the job . He’s a recovering alcoholic himself and a Congressman who championed legislation recently passed to provide equal insurance coverage for addictions and other mental illnesses.

Unfortunately, Ramstad may be a drug warrior in recovering person’s clothing. There is one issue that has consistently separated those who put science and saving lives in front of politics. That is needle exchange programs for addicts to prevent the spread of HIV and other blood borne illnesses.

Even President Clinton now says he was “wrong” when he ignored the recommendations of every scientific and medical organization in the world that has examined the question — from the AMA to the World Health Organization — and refused to lift the federal ban on funding.

Needle exchanges have been shown repeatedly to reduce HIV and contrary to the claims of opponents, they help addicts get into treatment.

But Bill Clinton had a drug czar — Barry McCaffrey — who said that needle exchange “sent the wrong message,” and would make him seem soft on drugs. McCaffrey fought against it and Clinton now says he “regrets” caving in to drug war politics.

Ramstad also — again, against the evidence – opposes medical marijuana and supports federal policing and prosecution of providers and patients in the states that have made it legal. These states have not seen the rise in teen drug use that opponents like the Congressman predicted.

The opposite, in fact, happened — as is the case in countries that have decriminalized marijuana like Holland. The UK’s “downgrading” of cannabis offense to a lesser status was also accompanied by a drop in use.

There’s simply no evidence that allowing sick people to get needed medication conflicts with helping addicts. Obama has said he does not support these prosecutions — will Ramstad push him in the wrong direction here, too? In an economic crisis, do we really want to spend federal time and money locking up medical marijuana providers and sick people?

That’s not change, President Obama — that’s more of the same. Don’t make the mistake that Bill Clinton did and install a drug czar who will ignore science and push dogma.

Amen Maia!

We’ve had our celebrations; now the real work begins.

In Massachusetts, where 65 percent of voters mandated an end to minor marijuana possession arrests, police and pundits are already calling on lawmakers to amend — or even repeal — the new law. Therefore, if you reside in Massachusetts, it is critical that you contact your state elected officials, as well as Democrat Gov. Deval Patrick and Attorney General Martha Coakley, and demand that they fully implement the will of 1,938,366 registered voters of the commonwealth of Massachusetts who voted “yes” on 2.

As for the rest of us, now is the time to make your voice heard federally. The election of Barack Obama, coupled with Democrat control of both the House and the Senate, presents a unique and critical opportunity for federal marijuana law reform. Voters on Election Day demonstrated overwhelmingly that they favor political reform in this country, and that reform includes new directions in marijuana policy.

Obama’s transition team has established a website, http://change.gov/page/s/ofthepeople, asking for “our ideas” and “help” to “solve the biggest challenges facing our country.” Unfortunately, neither the ‘war on drugs’ nor ‘marijuana’ appears on the “the agenda.”

It’s up to us — the cannabis community — to make it part of the agenda.

Please contact the Office of President Elect Obama and demand that our next President engages in a national dialogue on marijuana policy. Below are three suggested ways Obama can take immediate, practical steps to reform America’s antiquated and punitive pot laws:

1. President Obama must uphold his campaign promise to cease the federal arrest and prosecution of (state) law-abiding medical cannabis patients and dispensaries by appointing leaders at the US Drug Enforcement Administration, the US Department of Justice, and the US Attorney General’s office who will respect the will of the voters in the thirteen states that have legalized the physician-supervised use of medicinal marijuana.

2. President Obama should use the power of the bully pulpit to reframe the drug policy debate from one of criminal policy to one of public health. Obama can stimulate this change by appointing directors to the Office of National Drug Control Policy who possess professional backgrounds in public health, addiction, and treatment rather than in law enforcement.

3. President Obama should follow up on statements he made earlier in his career in favor of the decriminalization of marijuana by adults by calling for the creation of a bi-partisan Presidential Commission to review the budgetary, social, and health costs associated with federal marijuana prohibition, and to make progressive recommendations for future policy changes.

On Election Day, voters in Massachusetts, Michigan, and throughout the country gave President Elect Obama and the incoming Congress a mandate to end the Bush drug war doctrine. Now let’s get down to business to assure that our message is implemented.

You can learn a lot about the merits of a proposal by taking a good, hard look at who’s lobbying against it.

Take California’s Proposition 5, the Nonviolent Offender Rehabilitation Act, which would require the diversion of certain non-violent offenders to drug treatment and increase funding for state-sponsored rehabilitation programs. The measure seeks to expand upon the alternative sentencing programs initially enacted by Proposition 36, which is estimated to have saved taxpayers some $1.7 billion dollars and reduced the number of people incarcerated for simple drug possession by one-third. So who would oppose this proposal?

If you guessed: the folks who make their living arresting non-violent drug offenders, you’d be right! According to the ‘No on 5′ website, the California State Sheriff’s Association, the California Narcotics Officers Association, the California Peace Officers Association, the Police Chiefs of California, and the California District Attorneys Association all oppose Prop. 5.

However, even more disturbing is who’s bankrolling the ‘No on 5′ campaign. According to the Drug Policy Alliance, California’s powerful prison guards union has spent close to $2 million dollars to lobby against the passage of Prop. 5. After all, overcrowded prisons — In 2007, California declared a ’state of emergency’ in the prison system because of the lack of bed space — and more prison construction (in lieu of building additional public high schools and state colleges) are a financial windfall for prison guards, even if they spell disaster for everyone else.

In addition to expanding drug treatment in California, Prop. 5 would also reduce minor marijuana possession penalties from a misdemeanor (punishable by a $100 criminal fine with a criminal record) to a non-criminal infraction (punishable by a $100 civil fine with no criminal record). Now who would be against that?

If you answered: the folks who make their living by possessing a monopoly on the sale of legal intoxicants, you’d be correct! According to the DPA, the California Beer and Beverage Distributors have donated $100,000 to the ‘No on 5′ campaign. Could it be that the alcohol lobby is fearful of the day when they will have to legally compete with a natural product that is remarkably safe, non-toxic, and won’t leave you with a hangover? Do we even have to ask?

So now that you know who’s against Prop. 5, why not examine who is lobbying for it. That list would include the California Nurses Association, California Society of Addiction Medicine, the California League of Women Voters, and the California Academy of Family Physicians.

In short, those who have dedicated their lives to helping others in need are backing Prop. 5, while those who have dedicated their careers to destroying people’s lives (or who promote a product that does) vehemently oppose it. You do the math.

If you ever wondered how low the opponents of medicinal marijuana could possibly stoop, just check out the 30-seconds of vile propaganda above. (I recommend having a strong anti-emetic handy.)

For those of you who may not know, even though I’m NORML’s Deputy Director I live in California. Let me tell you that the claim that so-called “pot smoking clubs [are] in every neighborhood” is as false as it is absurd. Fact is, the county I live in (Solano County) doesn’t even allow for the establishment of dispensaries, nor has it — in four years since the passage of Senate Bill 420 — ever issued identification cards to state-authorized patients, as is required by law. Numerous counties and municipalities have passed similar moratoriums on patient dispensaries, and many others continue to resist issuing ID cards to qualified patients.

By contrast, those California cities that allow for the not-for-profit patient dispensaries have enacted strict zoning policies regarding where they can operate (”Just blocks from schools???” Please!), and imposing limits on the number of collectives that may operate in a community. (Just imagine if drug pharmacies like Walgreens were forced to endure similar restrictions.)

That is the reality in California, and that is why polls indicate broader public support for the legalized use of medical cannabis now than when Proposition 215 first passed in 1996.

Of course, those who oppose Proposition 1 in Michigan and who condone arresting and jailing patients for their use of cannabis are well aware of these facts — just as they are aware that Prop. 1, like the medical cannabis laws in eleven other states, does not even allow for the creation of licensed cannabis dispensaries. Yet in order to continue to prosecute and cage their fellow citizens, regardless of whether they are healthy or dying, our opponents rely on lying and fear-mongering  — the same tactics that brought us marijuana prohibition in the first place.

Will the scare-tactics work? They haven’t in past. (Of the ten state medi-pot initiative campaigns since 1996, nine have passed.) Unfortunately, like in Massachusetts, the negative campaigning is clearly having an effect — with recent polls indicating a drop in public support from an estimated 66 percent to 54 percent. Believe me, as one who bases his written words on science and facts, it pains me to say that.

That said, like in Massachusetts, I am confident that a majority of Michigan’s voters will see through our opponents cynical and dishonest smoke-screen come Election Day, and will choose to make the ‘land of 11,000 lakes’ the thirteenth state to authorize the legal use of medical cannabis.

Why do I say this? I say this because for the first time in recent memory it’s become apparent that our opponents are desperate. They are desperate because they know they are losing — state by state, community by community, and voter by voter.

As Mahatma Gandhi said, “First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win.” Well, it’s obvious that we are no longer being ignored, nor are we being ridiculed. Finally, with their backs up against the wall, the defenders of prohibition have decided to fight.

And we all know what comes next.