Former Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey “Lies” To Beat The Band About Cannabis…Then Again, What Else Is New?
In the media rush to cover the DOJ memo on the Obama administration’s redirecting federal law enforcement efforts away from arresting and prosecuting state compliant medical cannabis providers CNN’s Lou Dobbs interviewed former Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey and Cato Institute’s Tim Lynch…
Any long time observer of Mr. Caffrey’s m.o. when being interviewed is to tell some whoppers to an unquestioning media, but in these recent videos McCaffrey, again, wrongly claims that no one gets arrested for cannabis; no one goes to jail or prison for cannabis-related offenses; that he didn’t lose in the seminal case Conant vs McCaffrey; cannabis is de facto legal in the United States, etc…Geesh! I guess when the hundreds of cannabis consumers who call the toll-free number (888-67-NORML) or email NORML this week post arrest looking for legal information and assistance, we”ll just inform them, ‘Don’t you know, according to Barry McCaffrey, cannabis is de facto legal, and that you didn’t really get arrested.’
Makes one wonder how honest and credible McCaffrey has been for the last nine years as a paid, on-air military consultant for NBC News when his track record for anti-pot prevarications (I’m in DC…and therefore not suppose to use the word ‘lie’) are so obviously refuted. If he’d so obviously twist the truth about cannabis, would he mislead an audience or interviewer about America’s military and defense contractors?
A quick review from this week’s avalanche of cannabis-related news, comes a stark contrast that reveals: Four Prohibition Pragmatists And A Drug War Whore
Prohibition Pragmaticism
Wisconsin – When asked by the media about a recently introduced medical cannabis bill in his state, as well as to comment on the Obama administration’s new policies on medical cannabis, Governor Jim Doyle said he has no problem with the use of cannabis to treat severe pain and other medical conditions by way of a physician’s recommendation, and that restricting the use of medical cannabis makes no sense when doctors can already prescribe more dangerous drugs like morphine.
British Columbia – Stephen Gamble, president of the Fire Chiefs’ Association of B.C., recently came out in favor of fire department inspections of the home gardens of federal medical cannabis patients and caregivers in BC, to make sure the cannabis grow operations are safe, and not creating fire hazards. However, numerous medical cannabis patients and advocates in B.C. have spoken out against the proposal citing special federal privacy protections for medical patients.
Washington, D.C. – The Transportation and Security Administration (TSA), in numerous media reports, acknowledged another major departure from prior administrations regarding federal medical cannabis policies: State-compliant medical cannabis patients may not be harassed or arrested for their medical cannabis whilst traveling in federally-controlled airports.
Oakland NLC member Robert Raich, for years, has been pursuing the TSA to allow medical cannabis patients flying out of Oakland International Airport to lawfully possess their medicine in compliance with TSA rules, which are to concentrate on terrorism and public safety concerns, (i.e., weapons, explosives, knives, etc…), and that pilots and the airline crew are not liable for the presence of lawfully possessed medical cannabis.
New Hampshire – New Hampshire’s new US attorney, John Kacavas, told the media that he will not prosecute medical cannabis patients. [The new policy from Obama]…”is saying in a smarter battle against drugs, people who use it to improve their appetite, people who use it to alleviate their pain probably ought not to be prosecuted federally.”
Then…The Drug War Whoring
Washington, D.C. – In one of the grossest, most gratuitous, desperate attempts to get media attention I’ve ever seen (which says a lot…), former public relations flack for the infamous House Select Narcotics Committee (sui generis of many bad, failed and constitutional-warping anti-drug legislation of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Thankfully this congressional committee no longer exists, and these days the once leaders of the group, like powerful New York democrat Charlie Rangel, now support decriminalizing cannabis) and former drug czar Barry McCaffrey’s in-house anti-pot propagandist Bob Weiner employs PRNewswire to hump his absurd press release attacking President Obama’s and Attorney General Eric Holder’s clarification of their ‘hands off’ policies regarding the use of federal law enforcement in states with medical cannabis laws (and presumably in states without state protections for medical cannabis patients).
In a country where approximately 75% of the population support medical access to cannabis, one has to wonder what is wrong with people like Bob Weiner. What does he not get? Or, is the only source for his revenue and self-being these days–almost eight years after taxpayers stopped funding his anti-cannabis propaganda when Weiner, a Democratic political appointee, lost his job when the Bushies took over in 2000–is to whore himself out to the media and anti-drug groups as some kind of anti-cannabis zealot, one that mocks science with his ignorance and drips contempt for the compassion that others seem to possess.
Weiner, a self-proclaimed expert on cannabis, does not seem to understand that 1) cannabis is not prescribed anywhere in the US, 2) the DOJ memo only impacts federal, not state attorneys, 3) Weiner claims, relying on unnamed law enforcement agents, that 9 out of 10 medical cannabis patients are frauds, citizens ‘faking’ a medical need ‘just to get high’, 4) Weiner oddly compares a non-toxic and therapeutic substance like cannabis to laetrile, therein invoking the late Senator Kennedy to supposedly prove the “false hope” of medical cannabis, when, in fact, Senator Kennedy supported both patient access to medical cannabis and active cannabis medical research at the University of Massachusetts @ Amherst, and 5) Weiner whines that politics, not science is the controlling factor; feigns there is a dearth of science regarding cannabis (when there are over 17,500 studies relating to cannabis and/or cannabinoids).
Watch Weiner and the so-called war on drugs get rightly ridiculed by Penn and Teller…or the entire episode here.
Feast your eyes on Weiner’s Wednesday PRNewswire release to see what a real drug war whore looks like seeking the media and public spotlight:
Medical Marijuana: ‘Be Careful,’ ‘Ex-White House Drug Spokesman Bob Weiner Tells DOJ About ‘New Lax Enforcement’ Policy; ‘Use May Explode in Healthy People’
WASHINGTON, Oct. 21 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — “Be careful about the new lax enforcement policy for medical marijuana,” former White House Drug Policy Spokesman Bob Weiner is telling the Department of Justice and the Obama Administration.
“You may get way more than you bargained for”, Weiner cautions of the new policy barring states attorneys from busting and prosecuting users and caregivers of so-called “medical” marijuana who act “in accordance with state law.”
“Prescription marijuana use may explode for healthy people.”
Unfortunately, as many as 90% of purchases at clinical distribution centers are “false defenses”, some law enforcement agents report – “which means individuals are not really sick but simply want the pot,” Weiner asserts.
“Medical marijuana is not as effective as other healing mechanisms for many illnesses such as glaucoma, pain, or nausea that users try it for because of false hype leading to false hope. Just as laetrile was legalized in the 1970’s in 27 states to cure cancer but was found to be useless apricot pits, leading Senator Kennedy in a Senate hearing to decry the ‘false hope’ delaying true treatment, ‘medical’ marijuana today could be a placebo delaying far better treatments,” according to Weiner.
“Many medical marijuana advocates press its use for pain killing and appetite enhancement,” Weiner asserted, “but you might feel just as good after a shot of gin. Science, not politics, must drive what is determined to be safe and effective medicine in America. The medical marijuana advocates never mention the potentially better applications of THC in marijuana from suppositories, jells, aerosols, or the already approved pill Marinol — they just want the high from the smoked version.
“There is a real danger that if marijuana is made essentially a prescription drug, its abuse and usage explosion could parallel other prescription drugs over the last decade, such as OxyContin, which have tripled nationally and quintupled in many locations because of the ease of availability.”
“No one wants to deny a dying cancer patient a hit of grass, if that’s what he or she wants. But to announce and implement a policy of broad-brush non-enforcement when there is so much loose about usage of medical marijuana and its distribution is a dangerous policy.”
“The new policy, a three-page DOJ memo anyone can download, does not only say leave the users alone. It also says leave the ‘caregivers’ alone if they comply with state law. The distribution centers, which are suppliers, and the staff could well be considered ‘caregivers’. DOJ would have serious problems discerning between illicit dealers and distributors.”
Weiner served as White House Drug Policy Office spokesman for 6-1/2 years and communications director of the House Select Narcotics Committee for five years.
Contact: Bob Weiner/Rebecca Vander Linde 301-283-0821/202-306-1200
In an attempt to clarify an apparent gaffe made a few weeks ago to California media stating that “marijuana is dangerous and has no medicinal value”, drug czar Gil Kerlikowske in a new interview with his hometown media in Seattle has only slightly, almost imperceptibly, modified his remarks by now implying that somehow how ‘smoked‘ medical cannabis is not a legitimate and effective drug delivery method:
When asked about his comments a few weeks ago Kerlikowske told KOMO news “I certainly said that legalization is not in the president’s vocabulary nor is it in mine. But the other question was in reference to smoked marijuana. And as we know, the FDA has not determined that smoked marijuana has a value, and this is clearly a medical question that should be answered by the medical community.”
KOMO also reports:
Kerlikowske’s stand on legalizing marijuana for everyone is more clear-cut. The Office of National Drug Control Policy, by law, actively works against legalizing drugs.
Kerlikowske takes on last jab at cannabis by continuing his predecessor’s proclivity to mislead the media and public by claiming “You know from the University of Washington, the number one call from young people for treatment here, after alcohol, is marijuana. So I’m not seeing the benefit to society with legalization here.”
Number one, cannabis is not legal in Washington state, or anywhere in the US, 2) youth in Washington, and all around the US, after being ensnared by the hundreds of thousands per year by cannabis prohibition laws enforced by the criminal justice system (or university police), are provided with the Hobson’s Choice of either going to jail or so-called ‘treatment’.
Mr. Kerlikowske should cease employing this rhetorical straw man as he is intelligent enough to know its inaccuracy, but continues to adopt the failed rhetoric of prior hardliner drug czars Gen. Barry McCaffrey and John Walters, who consistently made the same claims during their tenure, and lost credibility every time they continued to propound such obviously misleading propaganda.
Kerlikowske’s latest unfortunate remarks affirm cannabis law reformers have much work left to do! Maybe our good drug czar should call actor Patrick Swayze and ask him ‘if he is benefiting from smoked medical cannabis?’
Patrick Swayze, who was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer over a year ago, is using medical marijuana to relieve the pain of his last days of chemotherapy.
According to a family insider, Swayze, 56, has found that smoking marijuana helps with his nausea, inability to sleep, and anxiety. The insider noted on the actor’s slight weight gain as well as adding that he (Swayze) feels more “normal than he has in months.”
Pictures have surfaced of Swayze out with his brother Donnie looking much healthier than he had weeks before.
“Patrick was rapidly losing weight because he couldn’t keep good down. He was so weak, he needed help getting around,” the source told the magazine.
“Marijuana works extremely well for many cancer patients. It helps fight nausea from chemotherapy treatments and may alleviate anorexia or loss of appetite,” Dr. Ron Kennedy of Santa Rosa, CA, said of the situation.
The federal government is not going to pull back on its efforts to curtail marijuana farming operations, Gil Kerlikowske, director of the White House’s Office of National Drug Control Policy, said Wednesday in Fresno.
… “Legalization is not in the president’s vocabulary, and it’s not in mine,” he said. … “Marijuana is dangerous and has no medicinal benefit.”
Most folks visiting this blog ought to recognize Kerlikowske’s first bit of hyperbole; after all, this isn’t the first time the Czar has admitted to possessing a severely limited vocabulary. It’s Kerlikowske’s second allegation — an outright lie — that truly has people flabbergasted. And with good reason.
Hundreds of scientific studies in peer-reviewed journals now document the therapeutic utility of cannabis. That’s why thirteen states, encompassing more than 25 percent of the US population, have legalized the physician-supervised use of pot. To add insult to injury, the Drug Czar was visiting a medical marijuana state (California) when he made his asinine remark.
Then again, the Kerlikowske is stunted by his limited vocabulary. So perhaps he is unable to read the findings of the hundreds of studies presently available in the scientific literature. But is that any excuse to deny what is taking place in front of his eyes?
For instance, a new study published in the Journal of Opioid Management just days prior to Kerlikowske’s foot-in-mouth speech affirms:
“Clearly, there is a growing acceptability of the therapeutic practice of medicinal cannabis use amongst organized medicine groups. … Estimates indicate that in 2008, approximately 7,000 American physicians have made such authorizations for a total of approximately 400,000 patients.”
So which is it Gil? Are more than 7,000 US physicians really all just snake-oil salesmen? Are 400,000 US patients actually just suffering from one massive placebo effect? Or are you sir, just like your predecessor, simply full of sh*t?
Dictionaries for Drug Czar Kerlikowske - click here to donate online to NORML and we'll remind Director Kerlikowske and President Obama that "legalization" needs to be in their vocabularies.
Remember this statement from our Drug Czar that “legalization” is not in the president’s vocabulary, nor in his own?
Numerous writers in the blogosphere (including me) said, “Somebody get Gil a dictionary!” So we decided here at NORML to launch the official “Dictionaries for the Drug Czar” Campaign. Here’s how you can participate:
Dictionaries for the Drug Czar Campaign
Go to your local discount store and buy a cheap pocket dictionary.
Find legalization inside and mark it with a yellow highlighter and a Post-It® or paper-clip on that page
Mail that dictionary to the Drug Czar at the address below.
Cheaper Option:
Buy a postcard.
On the postcard write: “Director Kerlikowske, here is a new word for your vocabulary: le·gal·i·za·tion (noun): the act of authorizing something previously illegal.”
Mail that postcard to the Drug Czar at the address below.
The remarks from our Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy on the release of the UN 2009 World Drug Report, which endorsed drug decriminalization in a reversal of previous policy. Guess which 17-letter D-word never gets mentioned once in our “drug czar’s” 781-word statement?
Statement of R. Gil Kerlikowske
Director, National Drug Control Policy
Remarks at Release of the 2009 World Drug Report
June 24, 2009
It is a great pleasure for me to be here with UNODC Executive Director Antonio Costa for the release of the 2009 World Drug Report. I am also pleased that we can be joined today by Michele Leonhart, Acting Administrator of DEA, and William McGlynn, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL). Congratulations to Antonio and his team in Vienna for putting together this very comprehensive document. As the report shows, every nation is affected by the drug problem.
As we approach June 26th, International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Drug Trafficking, it is a good time to reflect on what we can do better. In the United States, we are moving away from divisive “drug war” rhetoric and focusing on employing all the tools at our disposal to get help to those who need it. We recognize that addiction is a disease and are seeking public health solutions. My top priority is to intensify efforts to reduce the demand for drugs which fuels crime and violence around the world.
14 May 2009
——- Kerlikowske Says Analogy Is Counterproductive; Shift Aligns With Administration Preference for Treatment Over Incarceration
WASHINGTON — 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.”
View Full Image Gil Kerlikowske, the new White House drug czar, signaled Wednesday his openness to rethinking the government’s approach to fighting drug use.
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.
Already, the administration has called for an end to the disparity in how crimes involving crack cocaine and powder cocaine are dealt with. Critics of the law say it unfairly targeted African-American communities, where crack is more prevalent.
The administration also said federal authorities would no longer raid medical-marijuana dispensaries in the 13 states where voters have made medical marijuana legal. Agents had previously done so under federal law, which doesn’t provide for any exceptions to its marijuana prohibition.
During the presidential campaign, President Barack Obama also talked about ending the federal ban on funding for needle-exchange programs, which are used to stem the spread of HIV among intravenous-drug users.
The drug czar doesn’t have the power to enforce any of these changes himself, but Mr. Kerlikowske plans to work with Congress and other agencies to alter current policies. He said he hasn’t yet focused on U.S. policy toward fighting drug-related crime in other countries.
Mr. Kerlikowske was most recently the police chief in Seattle, a city known for experimenting with drug programs. In 2003, voters there passed an initiative making the enforcement of simple marijuana violations a low priority. The city has long had a needle-exchange program and hosts Hempfest, which draws tens of thousands of hemp and marijuana advocates.
Seattle currently is considering setting up a project that would divert drug defendants to treatment programs.
Mr. Kerlikowske said he opposed the city’s 2003 initiative on police priorities. His officers, however, say drug enforcement — especially for pot crimes — took a back seat, according to Sgt. Richard O’Neill, president of the Seattle Police Officers Guild. One result was an open-air drug market in the downtown business district, Mr. O’Neill said.
“The average rank-and-file officer is saying, ‘He can’t control two blocks of Seattle, how is he going to control the nation?’ ” Mr. O’Neill said.
Sen. Tom Coburn, the lone senator to vote against Mr. Kerlikowske, was concerned about the permissive attitude toward marijuana enforcement, a spokesman for the conservative Oklahoma Republican said. [drug war]
Others said they are pleased by the way Seattle police balanced the available options. “I think he believes there is a place for using the criminal sanctions to address the drug-abuse problem, but he’s more open to giving a hard look to solutions that look at the demand side of the equation,” said Alison Holcomb, drug-policy director with the Washington state American Civil Liberties Union.
Mr. Kerlikowske said the issue was one of limited police resources, adding that he doesn’t support efforts to legalize drugs. He also said he supports needle-exchange programs, calling them “part of a complete public-health model for dealing with addiction.”
Mr. Kerlikowske’s career began in St. Petersburg, Fla. He recalled one incident as a Florida undercover officer during the 1970s that spurred his thinking that arrests alone wouldn’t fix matters.
“While we were sitting there, the guy we’re buying from is smoking pot and his toddler comes over and he blows smoke in the toddler’s face,” Mr. Kerlikowske said. “You go home at night, and you think of your own kids and your own family and you realize” the depth of the problem.
Since then, he has run four police departments, as well as the Justice Department’s Office of Community Policing during the Clinton administration.
Ethan Nadelmann of the Drug Policy Alliance, a group that supports legalization of medical marijuana, said he is “cautiously optimistic” about Mr. Kerlikowske. “The analogy we have is this is like turning around an ocean liner,” he said. “What’s important is the damn thing is beginning to turn.”
James Pasco, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police, the nation’s largest law-enforcement labor organization, said that while he holds Mr. Kerlikowske in high regard, police officers are wary.
“While I don’t necessarily disagree with Gil’s focus on treatment and demand reduction, I don’t want to see it at the expense of law enforcement. People need to understand that when they violate the law there are consequences.”
Anyone blind to the irony? Gil Kerlikowske, my successor, is on his way to the other Washington to assume the mantle of “drug czar.” I am, on the other hand, a proud and vocal member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. Gil will have a national, indeed international platform from which to make his case for a continuation of the nation’s drug laws. I’ll use this space, at least for this initial post, to make the argument that our drug policies don’t work, and that the “War on Drugs” has caused far more harm than good.
Since Richard Nixon pronounced drugs “Public Enemy Number One” and declared all-out war on them in 1971, we have spent over $1 trillion prosecuting that war. We’ve incarcerated tens of millions of our fellow citizens for nonviolent drug offenses, arresting wildly disproportionate numbers of young people, poor people, people of color–most for simple possession of marijuana. Wrenched from their families, these folks have lost jobs, forfeited school loans, been booted out of public housing. And to what end?
Drugs are more readily available today, at lower prices and higher levels of potency than in the history of the drug war. Prices fluctuate, use levels ebb and flow but one thing remains constant: the unrepealable law of supply and demand. If people want mood or mind-altering drugs, suppliers will make sure they get them. And, as long as those drugs remain illegal, the illicit, untaxed profits associated with them will continue to grow. As will the violence associated with their commerce.
Prohibition, as we learned during the 1920s, breeds lawlessness. In fact, it guarantees it. Yesterday’s bootleggers and today’s drug traffickers must arm themselves in order to protect or expand their markets. For years we’ve struggled with open-air drug markets, drive-by/drug-related killings, the police in one city or another occasionally shooting up the wrong house in a drug raid.
Americans wised up to the folly of alcohol prohibition, repealing the Volstead Act in 1933 and putting a virtual end to that era’s drive-bys (picture Al Calpone’s minions firing Thompsons from the back seat of a ‘29 Model A), drug overdose deaths (think bad bathtub gin), property values shot to hell, entire neighborhoods rundown if not abandoned altogether.
Replacing alcohol prohibition with a regulatory model worked. Not perfectly, of course, but well enough that it drove the bootleggers out of business. And it produced a formidable barrier between kids and products they ought not to be taking. (When’s the last time you heard of a street drug dealer carding a 14-year-old?) Regulation and control of alcohol made our communities healthier, our children safer.
Seattle and the state of Washington are poised to take a strong leadership position in the campaign for sane and sensible drug laws. We’ve passed a medical marijuana law, and Seattleites have made simple, adult marijuana possession cases the lowest law enforcement priority in the city. University of Washington researchers Katherine Beckett and Steve Herbert just last week issued a report that concluded that “penalizing doesn’t reduce use of marijuana and lessening or removing penalties doesn’t increase it.”
Think of the money we’d save if we focused our law enforcement resources on people who drive under the influence of any drug, including alcohol. Or who furnish drugs to kids. Or who, under the influence of booze or other drugs, jealousy, insecurity or greed, steal a car, batter a spouse, abuse a child, rob a bank…
And think of the lives we’d save if we invested not in a futile drug war but in prevention, education and treatment.
I doubt our new drug czar will favor an end to prohibition. For one thing, it would put him out of a job. But perhaps, unlike former drug czar John Walters, he’ll be willing to listen to the argument. Or debate its merits.
This article was originally published by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Well, some of the much vaunted and promised ‘change’ under a President Obama appears to be coming true in the formal nomination yesterday of Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske, and the mainstream media certainly seems to be picking up on all of the positive and salient points about Chief Kerlikowske that drug policy reform advocates have been touting since his name was first floated almost a month ago. Listen to the coverage of the announcement at National Public Radio.
Unlike the prior Drug Czar, John ‘Unicorn’ Walters, a moral crusader (aptly dubbed Bill Bennett’s ‘Mini-Me’ by the DPA’s Ethan Nadelmann), Chief Kerlikowske crafted pragmatic public policies and law enforcement practices that immediately distinguish him from his predecessors such as Bennett, Gen. Barry McCaffrey and Walters.
To wit:
-200,000 pro-reform cannabis law supporters converge on the waterfront in Seattle in mid-August for the world famous Hempfest, where adults openly consume cannabis and the hundreds of police present make few to no arrests (and where, ironically, alcohol use is strictly forbidden).
-Local law enforcement in Seattle apparently does not harass the artisans who craft and market the remarkable glass paraphernalia (AKA, medical delivery devices) for which Seattle is famous.
Compare that with Walters’ and former Attorney General Ashcroft’s zealous pursuit and culture-smashing symbolism of arresting, prosecuting and actually incarcerating NORML Advisory Board member Tommy Chong for nine months in a federal prison for the ‘crime’ of selling high-end artisan, Chong Bongs.
-Seattle police have a generally good track record working with medical cannabis providers, physicians and patients—including Chief Kerlikowske meeting with medical cannabis stakeholders about how to best implement Washington State’s 2000 medical cannabis laws. Compare this with Walters and McCaffrey who collectively spent 14 years insisting that there is no such thing at all as medical cannabis (often comparing it to crack cocaine), patients who claim efficacy or relief from cannabis as ‘fakers’, recommending physicians as ‘kooks’ and the majority of citizens who’ve voted for medical cannabis law reform as ‘easily duped by legalizers’.
-Rumor has it that Chief Kerlikowske has actually employed the term ‘harm reduction‘ in a sentence without employing foul language! In fact, under his leadership (and that of former Seattle Police Chief and NORML Advisory Board member Norm Stamper before him) Seattle police both recognize and practice the increasingly popular, European-inspired police/public health doctrine known as harm reduction. Two of the important tenets of harm reduction are concentrating police resources on so-called ‘hard’ drugs rather than cannabis consumers and needle exchange to help prevent the spread of infectious diseases–both championed by Chief Kerlikowske, and totally dismissed as ‘tools for legalization’ by McCaffrey and Walters.
-Despite publicly opposing a reform effort in 2003 in Seattle to make adult cannabis possession a low law enforcement priority, once I-75 was passed by a majority of voters, Chief Kerlikowske shrugged off the lost, embraced the public-health centric arguments advanced by reform advocates, and met with law reformers in the Seattle-area like I-75 campaigner and NORML board member Dominic Holden, defense attorney and NORML Board member Jeff Steinborn, popular travel author/TV host and NORML advisory board member Rick Steves.
John Walters on the otherhand would not even appear in the same green room with me backstage on TV news show, let alone debate live on the same sound stage.
Looks to me like Chief Kerlikowske is a real man…not a moralistic, lie-to-beat-the-band bureaucrat.
-Chief Kerlikowske’s former colleagues on the police force, cannabis law reform activists, medical patients, civil rights lawyers and public health officials all seem to recognize that science and ‘smart on crime’ (as compared to ‘tough on crime’ and ineffective platitudes like ‘just say no’ or ‘drug-free America’) drive his policing—not ideology and a twisted sense of personal morality.
With the recent report from a pair of WA researchers affirming that the ONDCP under McCaffrey and Walters obsessed too much on cannabis prohibition, and not enough on meth, crack, heroin…a decided change in leadership at ONDCP can’t happen fast enough.
Lastly, it was also announced yesterday by the 1980s congressional author of the ONDCP charter, no less and with sweet karmic irony, Vice President Joe Biden, that despite the best intentions of placing the ONDCP into the President’s cabinet in 1988, from this point forward the ONDCP is no longer going to be a cabinet-level office.
Whoa. Now that is change NORML and taxpayers can believe in!
NORML, like most drug law reform organizations, waited with bated breath to learn who President Obama would nominate as the nation’s next Drug Czar. We now know that Obama has named former Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske for this position, and that he has accepted the President’s nomination.
Today, we join with many of our colleagues in expressing a cautious optimism that Mr. Kerlikowske will bring science and compassion to an office that, for far too long, has lacked either.
Why are we optimistic? As I explain in today’s edition of The Hill’s influential Congress blog:
On the positive side, Kerlikowske hails from Seattle — a city that has elected to make the enforcement of marijuana crimes cops’ ‘lowest priority.’ And although the police chief spoke out against the initiative effort — which passed with 58 percent of the vote in 2003 — he’s abided by the will of the people since then. Consequently, there are now fewer marijuana-related arrests in Seattle than in virtually any other major city in the United States.
At first glance, Kerlikowoske also appears to take a tolerant approach toward the medical use of marijuana. Since 1999, Washington state law has allowed for the possession, cultivation, and doctor supervised use of marijuana under state law. (Twelve additional U.S. States have similar laws.) Whereas Kerlikowske’s White House predecessor (John Walters) refused to even acknowledge that cannabis possessed even the slightest hint of therapeutic value, Seattle’s exiting police chief accepted the law and has made few, if any, efforts to undermine it.
It’s also worth mentioning that Seattle is home to the annual Seattle Hempfest, a several hundred thousand person gathering in Seattle’s Myrtle Edwards Park. Organizers of the event have consistently praised the attitudes of the city’s police force for treating the event’s attendees with the utmost respect and tolerance.
There are other reasons to believe that the nomination of Kerlikowske represents something more than just be politics as usual. NORML Board Members Dominic Holden, a Seattle native, and Norm Stamper — who served as Seattle Police Chief prior to Kerlikowske’s appointment in 2000 – touch on many of these reasons here and here.
Of course, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. As I wrote in The Hill, “Kerlikowske is first and foremost a cop. He’s served 36 years in law enforcement, and it would be foolish to assume that he will embrace the public’s desire to amend America’s antiquated and overly punitive pot policies with open arms.” Kerlikowske must also be approved by the members of the U.S. Senate, many of whom remain woefully unenlightened of the public’s demand for rational drug policies.
So here’s your chance to tell them. As I’ve written before, The Hill is widely read by lawmakers and by the mainstream media. That’s why NORML is asking you to take time today to comment on my latest editorial. Tell Congress that it is high time America confirms a Drug Czar who will demand reason before rhetoric, and who will put the interests of people before prisons.
President Barack Obama promised “change” inside the Beltway, and nowhere is change more sorely needed than in the Office of National Drug Control Policy. What changes would you like to see? WriteThe Hill and join the discussion.
Yes, we know that the Drug Czar 
The remarks from our Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy on the release of the 
NORML, like most drug law reform organizations, waited with bated breath to learn who President Obama would nominate as the nation’s next Drug Czar. We now know that Obama has named former Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske for this position, and that he has 
