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

1. Go to your local discount store and buy a cheap pocket dictionary.
2. Find legalization inside and mark it with a yellow highlighter and a Post-It® or paper-clip on that page
3. Mail that dictionary to the Drug Czar at the address below.

Cheaper Option:

1. Buy a postcard.
2. 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.”
3. Mail that postcard to the Drug Czar at the address below.

Cheap and simple no-mail option:

1. Click that graphic up above to donate online to NORML.
2. Fill in the boldfaced fields.
3. Click the “Comments (Add any group affiliation here)”.
4. Enter “Dictionary for the Drug Czar” in that line.

MAIL YOUR DICTIONARIES AND POST CARDS TO:

Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP)
Executive Office of the President (EOP)
Attn: Director Gil Kerlikowske
Washington, DC 20503

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.

As a long time police chief, I have seen up-close the terrible impact drugs have on individuals, families, and communities. The earlier we can intervene to get people help, the better – that’s why prevention through schools and the media, and screening for substance abuse problems in a wide variety of health care settings is so vital. We will be expanding these existing efforts and working to ensure drug abuse treatment services are incorporated into our national health care reform process. These efforts will include expanded work to address the abuse of pharmaceutical drugs, a problem of increasing concern within the United States.

Further, we will make sure those caught up in our criminal justice system due to their involvement in drugs get the help they need. Many of those with the underlying disease of addiction commit crimes and thus, frequently come into contact with the criminal justice system. We can no longer afford to simply incarcerate them, while leaving their addiction untreated and their problems unaddressed. We must seize the opportunity to provide evidence-based treatment – either out of jail through diversionary programs like drug courts, or while in jail – to set them on a path to recovery. The Obama Administration is focused on providing treatment for Americans in need so they can permanently break the cycle of addiction and crime.

Our new Fiscal Year 2010 Budget proposes doubling funding for adult, juvenile, and family drug court, tripling Federal support for treatment in state prisons, almost tripling prisoner re-entry funding, as well as $30 million to fund the recently enacted Second Chance Act to address drug-abuse related recidivism.

Internationally, the United States also recognizes its responsibilities. We will continue to provide assistance to partners in Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Afghanistan and elsewhere to reduce the flow of drugs and to bring violent drug traffickers to justice. The United States will work with our partners around the world to stop the flow of weapons associated with drug trafficking, the corrupting impact of the large illicit profits, and to curb the flow of precursor chemicals used to produce drugs.

We will also dedicate ourselves to assisting countries and regions, especially in the developing world, grappling with the terrible impact of the drug trade. West Africa is an example. UNODC has been instrumental in calling international attention to the dramatic rise in narco-trafficking through West African nations. Already, this increased trafficking has been harmful to stability and good governance. Though domestic consumption in West African nations is not significant yet, we know from experience elsewhere that transit states develop domestic markets. There are signs this is beginning to happen in West Africa. I am gratified that the EU has been taking steps to assist African nations. Let me make it very clear that the Obama Administration will be a strong partner in this effort. In fact, we are increasing our counternarcotics assistance to West Africa. The President’s FY 2010 Budget Request includes $6.7 million for counternarcotics efforts in West Africa.

We are eager to collaborate with the UNODC and to share with treatment providers from around the world the latest information on effective treatment and prevention modalities. Our National Institute of Drug Abuse sponsors over $1 billion in research each year, both in the United States and abroad, and we have a responsibility to get those findings out to the field, where it can be put to use.

There is much to be done, but I believe we are on the right track with current and new initiatives to make the drug problem smaller for the United States and the world. Thank you very much.

Let’s see if I’ve got this straight. The UN notes that decriminalization in Portugal “keep[s] drugs out of the hands of those who would avoid them under a system of full prohibition, while encouraging treatment, rather than incarceration, for users” and “It also appears that a number of drug-related problems have decreased.”

Our drug czar’s response is that we’re going to double funding for courts that sentence non-addicted non-problematic marijuana users to addiction treatment, when his own numbers show that 37% of pot smokers sentenced to treatment haven’t even used in the past thirty days and only 15% of those who seek marijuana addiction treatment do so voluntarily, and even that’s an overestimate since many of those 15% are coerced by reduced sentencing or emplyer pressure.

Our drug czar’s response is that we’re going to continue to pour money into “Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Afghanistan and elsewhere” enacting the same strategies of interdiction and eradication that haven’t worked in 70 years.

Our drug czar’s response is that we’re going to pump another $1 billion into NIDA to fund only research that shows purports to find harms from marijuana and none that prove its medical efficacy and relative social harmlessness.

Some of that is good to hear when you’re talking about heroin, cocaine, and meth. People are terribly physically addicted and getting rehab and help to stay clean will help reduce crime and decrease recidivism.

But when we’re talking about cannabis, the underlying premise that its responsible use by adults is somehow a social ill that must be cured is mistaken. Marijuana prohibition is a solution in search of a non-existent problem.

Nearly six years ago, Deputy Drug Czar Scott Burns mailed a two-page letter to every prosecutor in America urging them to target and “aggressively prosecute” marijuana violators, including first-time offenders.  

At that time, I spent some 5,000 words addressing Mr. Burns numerous lies and exaggerations — which included this shocking statement, ”No drug matches the threat posed by marijuana.”

Yes folks, in 2002 that was the official position of your federal government.

Fast forward to today and you’ll see that little, if anything, has changed among the Czars who cohabit the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.

Earlier this month Scott Burns flew to Humbolt County in northern California where he gave this revealing (as in, it reveals just how clueless this man really is) interview with the editors of the Arcata Eye, explaining why the White House continues to believe that pot remains the most dangerous herb on the planet. However, rather than bleed my fingertips to the bone responding to Mr. Burns’ inherent inability to tell the truth, this time around I’m simply going to let his words speak for themselves.

An interview with Scott Burns, deputy drug czar – July 25, 2008
via The Arcata Eye

Eye: Is it realistic to keep marijuana as a Schedule 1 drug, in with cocaine and heroin?

Burns: Yes it is, and I’ll tell you why. … You can’t talk to a counselor in this country, Republican or a Democrat or an independent or a Marxist, and they will tell you, political beliefs aside, everyone that is addicted to drugs in this United States, started with either alcohol and/or marijuana, and they started when they were 13, 12 or 11. That doesn’t mean everyone that used those substances goes on to be a heroin addict, but you don’t have to have an IQ over 120 to figure out that if you can keep young people off marijuana, you can keep them from being addicted for life.

The last thing I’ll say is, we were talking about Nora Volkov, the head of NIDA, National Institute of Drug Abuse, who before said there is no correlation between smoking pot and rewiring and damaging the developing brain of young people, who now will tell you unequivocally that there is. Because of the higher potency, it is the same as cocaine and methamphetamine and heroin. They see it from the MRIs, the PET scans. They also are seeing psychosis and other mental problems from young people smoking this higher potency, which frankly should be called marijuana 2.0, drug. So yeah, it should remain a schedule 1.

Eye: … Is there enough research to indicate that [marijuana] has no medical efficacy? I can bring you chemotherapy patients who would tell you that it is the only thing that suppresses their nausea and gives them an appetite. So is there nothing to what they’re saying and feeling?

Burns: … Anybody can say something makes me feel better anecdotally. And I hear that a lot. “Marijuana is the only thing that makes me feel good.” I say you should try crack, because from what I hear, crack cocaine will make you feel really good as well.

This is not about making people feel better, it’s about as a country and the effects it will have on all of us, all 305 million of us. Because someone tells me that “smoking crack cocaine releases my nausea and allows me to have healthier appetite,” does that mean that we legalize it nationwide, and that its available to kids in a greater number? We have to make those kind of policy decisions. And we ought not make them on people who say, “Me personally, it makes me feel better.” … Yeah, the whole thing is a con. If you wanna call it what it is, it’s a joke.

Eye: … I could tell you without question that there are innumerable, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of people who smoke marijuana on a regular basis, are fully functioning contributing citizens. Other than the fact that they do something that the government tells them is illegal. They’re contributing, they’re motivated, they obey the law, they vote, they pay taxes, they have children and they smoke marijuana. What about that? Doesn’t the federal government’s prohibition of this drug simply put a lot of profit in it for criminals, breed criminal enterprises and also breed disrespect for the authority of government?

Burns: … Whether or not they are functioning or not, there are others that say, they sit on the couch and eat Cheetos, and I’ve talked to hundreds of moms and dads that have said I wish you could do something, because my son has done nothing in 25 years but sit around and smoke dope. So for every person you have that you say is a taxpaying successful person, I could give you, I think five, of a mom and a dad or a loved one say, “My god, this addiction to this drug is a horrible thing.”

Eye: … [T]he whole premise of America’s freedom and self determination. How can we reconcile that with the government telling us what we can ingest and what we can’t?

Burns: … [O]n many issues … I think most Americans would agree that it should be that way. But on some issues that affect all of us for the good of the order we have to come to some consensus. And not everybody’s happy, are they? And every time we don’t get to do what we want, I know there are states where they really really like to marry young girls, 12, 11, or 10 and they would argue to you, “How dare the federal government preclude us from engaging in certain activities?” Well, in some instances we just say your, quote, “constitutional rights” and your freedom to do certain things gets trumped by the rest of us who say, “You know that’s just not a good idea.”  

Those of you who wish to try and stomach the entire interview — I recommend having a strong anti-emetic nearby — are welcome to click here.

And if you’re looking for even more information on Mr. Burns visit to Arcata, NORML podcaster Russ Belville has a two-part interview with Eye editor and publisher Kevin Hoover on the NORML Daily Audio Stash here.