by Gary Fields, (Source:Wall Street Journal)

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.”

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!

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

By Dominic Holden, NORML Board Member

Originally published by the Seattle Stranger’s Slog.

Last week White House appointee John Walters claimed on C-SPAN that finding people in jail for “first-time nonviolent possession of marijuana… is like finding a unicorn … because it doesn’t exist.” I had a hunch that some of the 775,138 people arrested for pot possession last year were actually unicorns…

But the drug czar probably assumed that it’s a freebie to call people with criminal convictions anything he wants, because they’re likely to be too ashamed to defend themselves. That’s certainly true, but it didn’t take me long to find credible people willing to vouch for the existence of first-time, non-violent marijuana offenders—excuse me, unicorns.

In just one hour, I’ve found five people who have seen the Drug Czar’s unicorns with their own eyes. Here are Slog’s exclusive unicorn reports:

Full Story

By Dominic Holden, Member, NORML Board of Directors

Obama selecting Biden is a punch to the gut. Like that sickening feeling you got as a high school freshman, walking up the steps to the big party—and you’re telling yourself, if I fuck this up, my dreams are shot. But if things go well, this could be an excellent four years.

I am anything but a single-issue voter, but I’m also a die-hard zealot against the drug war. Everything that could have gone wrong has been an unbridled catastrophe: Drug epidemics and cartel routes breeze across the continent, privacy laws are gutted for sport, kids try drugs younger and younger, our prisons are stuffed with young black men…

And it’s Joe Biden’s fault.As former chairman for the Senate Judiciary Committee, Biden is the person most responsible for passing a package of laws in the mid-80s that we think of as today’s drug war. Biden presided over the mandatory-minimum sentencing guidelines that required judges to sentence dealers’ girlfriends and small-time peddlers to decades-long terms in state and federal prisons, where thousands are rotting to this day.

He used hearings “to mislead his colleagues and the public… on drug policy where police, prosecutors and DEA officials got the opportunity [to speak] while opponents were kept out,” says Kevin Zeese, a former director of Common Sense for Drug Policy and a leading drug-law reformer in Washington, D.C. since the 1980s. “Pick a drug law you don’t like from the last 25 years and thank Senator Biden.”

But, since this is Obama’s campaign, I’m trying to hope—hope that Biden can change.

Read the rest of this blog originally posted to the Seattle Stranger’s Slog.

In what is passing for one of the first public debates ever between the government’s ‘anti-drug’ office (Office of National Drug Control Policy, aka ONDCP) and the world’s most famous pro-cannabis reform organization (NORML), check out my rebuttal to the ONDCP’s attempts to discredit the nearly 40 year effort to end cannabis prohibition.

To date, this unofficial debate between NORML and ONDCP has been one of the most popular public discussions ever at The Hill’s blog, which informs their editors (as well as other major publications’ and broadcast editors) that the issue of cannabis law reform is of great public concern and ripe for ongoing public policy debates about the future of cannabis prohibition.

Preview: In advance of you reading, and hopefully weighing in on The Hill’s blog, rather than engage in what I describe as the ‘flash card’ game–where every misapplication of science or anti-pot myth needs to be addressed–in my reply to the ONDCP’s rebuttal of NORML’s pro-reform advocacy efforts I try to focus on the larger issues at hand regarding personal freedom, autonomy, the proper role of the government in the private lives of it’s citizens and the obvious juxtaposition of the legal ‘drug’ industries (alcohol, tobacco and pharmaceuticals) to the failed 70-year old prohibition of cannabis.

More than 100 readers have posted comments in support of NORML’s recent guest editorial, “Criminalization of Marijuana Must End,” which appeared in The Hill’s influential ‘Congressional Blog.’ Editors at The Hill inform NORML that it’s the highest volume of readers’ response they’ve ever received on any commentary on any topic!

So it’s hardly surprising that the Drug Czar’s office has grudgingly and belatedly offered their two-cents worth in a factually bereft editorial entitled “Marijuana Decriminalization Bill Ignores the Facts.” It’s an unintentionally amusing essay — though judging by the comments it appears that few people, if anyone, have actually bothered to read it — topped off by this half-baked claim, “[L]egalizing marijuana [is] a topic more often heard in college dorms at 2 o’clock in the morning than in the hallowed halls of our Congress.”

Excuse me, but if debating the merits of America’s failed cannabis policy is, in the Drug Czar’s opinion, a topic only appropriate for midnight musings, then why is the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy straining their already diminished intellectual capacities responding to this discussion in The Hill (which, last time I checked, was not a publication frequently read by college students in their dorm rooms at 2 am)??!!

Of course, I suppose The Hill should thank their lucky stars that the Drug Czar responded at all, given that no representatives from the ONDCP, CADCA, or other ‘pro-prohibition’ groups will ever agree to engage with NORML in a face-to-face debate in a public forum. I mean, it wasn’t all that long ago that federal officials were distributing a guidebook, “How to Hold Your Own in a Drug Legalization Debate,” that recommended that prohibition advocates decline invitations to publicly debate drug policy issues.

My how times have changed!

Ever want to see a perfect example of rank government propaganda? Watch this public relations stunt filmed by CNN of moralist-masquerading-as-drug czar John Walters making a flaccid attempt at being funny, and relevant. The video immediately goes into a 2:30 story about outdoor cannabis in California that largely parrots the government’s party line.

Some thoughts after watching the videos:

-John Walters, the self-described anti-1960s warrior (well, in the video he apparently has moved onto hating the ‘values’ of the 1970s), lumbers up a hillside for a highly staged public relations stunt and the best message he can stammer out is to try to shame ‘Hollywood’ (a favorite target of rightwing moralists) into ‘helping us spread the word against cannabis’ (this is the very same rhetoric Reagan and to a degree Bush 1.0 employed to incite emotional contagion in the media against ‘drugs’ in the halcyon ‘just say no’ days).

Help the ONDCP? Is Walters whining that Hollywood is no longer an ONDCP stooge?

Is Walters forgetting the hundreds of absurd and insulting ads from the Partnership for a Drug-Free America, produced largely gratis by, well, ‘Hollywood’? Or, when the ONDCP used to sneak anti-cannabis ads into popular TV shows produced in, well, Hollywood, before NORML successfully sued them via the FCC?

-What is it with the obsession these drug czars have with trying to pigeon hole every derogative thing they can think to say about cannabis into what they believe is a witty dig on ‘Cheech and Chong’? Clinton’s Drug Czar, former General Barry McCaffrey, frequently would deride medical cannabis as “Cheech and Chong medicine”.

How’d that work General? Apparently, Walters has not learned from such blundered, detached-from-science rhetoric.

Also, my guess is that Walters is likely a big Bill O’Reilly fan. Shocking, I know. Why do I surmise as such? Did you catch all the weird references from Walters in the video to people who use cannabis being in their “basement”? The only person I’ve ever heard, on numerous occasions, make references to cannabis consumers as ‘boobs in the basement’ is O’Reilly.

Ironically, on the times that O’Reilly disparages cannabis consumers as ‘boobs in the basement’ he is usually quick to add that he favors decriminalizing cannabis for adults.

BTW, while NORML’s blogs are not usually the environ for a commercial plug, but since Walters chose to waste the taxpayers’ money in southern California to propagandize, I think it only karmic that I let readers know that Cheech and Chong have just re-united and are going out on tour in September. Get your tickets here…think of it as good time protest against the government’s war on cannabis consumers. Also, there is a rumor that Cheech and Chong will be speaking at the upcoming Democratic National Convention. If true, how those apples Walters?

Tommy Chong is a NORML Advisory Board member and served 9 months in a federal prison for selling bongs.

-Walters and company claim to care about the safety of law enforcement personnel trying to enforce our country’s feckless cannabis prohibition laws, namely the effort to eradicate domestically grown cannabis? If true, 1) prohibition, rather than tax-n-control policies create any attendant violence associated with the uncontrolled sales of cannabis and 2) I think it entirely avoidable for the deaths of three to eight police officers and pilots that perish annually flying over the countryside in the US looking for ‘needles in a haystack’, not because of prohibition-created criminals, but from junky, faulty and old Viet Nam era helicopters often used on loan from state national guard units.

Hey, Czar Walters, any law enforcement personnel die last year flying around looking for tobacco, grapes, apples, barley, corn, potatoes, etc…?

Yep…I thought not.

-Walters and the ONDCP care about illegal aliens who grow cannabis on public and private lands? Really? Any illegal aliens growing tobacco, grapes, hops, potatoes, apples, etc…?

If Walters cares about illegal immigrants supposedly being forced by who he claims are Mexican drug cartels to tend illegal cannabis gardens, then he can’t morally and intellectually continue to support the failed policies of cannabis prohibition that creates a distribution system for cannabis where some of the players will camp in the woods and live off of the grid.

Finally, Walters says in the video ‘Hollywood and the American people need to know the consequence of these plants”.

Wrong! More importantly: Hollywood and the American people need to know about the misguided efforts and abject failure of cannabis prohibition, and Walter’s zealous efforts to perpetuate it.

July 30, 2008, Washington, D.C,: Today something rather historic on a number of counts occurred in the nation’s capital. Firstly, Congress is for the first time in a generation (1978) taking a serious look at reforming components of cannabis prohibition laws. In today’s Congress, the support of the Congressional Black Caucus is pivotal to passing any substantive cannabis law reform. So I was so very heartened that Reps. Barbara Lee (D-CA) and William Lacy Clay (D-MO) joined us on this very hot and oppressively humid day in DC, along with the always jocose Barney Frank (D-MA), the bill’s primary sponsor (along with Rep. Ron Paul, R-TX).

Second, the media attending today’s press conference on HR 5843, a bill that would decriminalize marijuana possession and use for responsible adults, fairly captured the event’s narrative, i.e., ‘it makes no sense to treat cannabis consumers like criminals’ and ‘why not start controlling cannabis in the same way society (and government agencies) already control alcohol products?’ with no double entendre or goofy ‘stoner stupidisms’. You can view a CNN video of the press conference here. Also, you can check out some YouTube footage here of my opening remarks.

Bill Piper from the Drug Policy Alliance spoke about the collateral effects that happen to citizens arrested for minor amounts of cannabis including, but not limited to: loss of student loans; denial to public housing, food stamps and job training; and denial of entry into the military and some government service jobs.

Rob Kampia from the Marijuana Policy Project discussed the broader implications of the federal government passing decriminalization legislation and how it could affect state efforts to reform cannabis laws, notably this November’s decriminalization initiative on the ballot in Massachusetts.

As has been noted by others who attended today’s press conference, there was a certain air of desperation coming from the part of the government who is responsible for supposedly ‘controlling’ currently illicit drugs. The Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP)chief propagandist David Murray attended the press conference, making himself available for questions afterwards and handing out his latest anti-cannabis handywork, and he seemed absolutely befuddled that anyone on the face of the planet could possibly compare cannabis and alcohol policies, and that there is no such thing as the responsible use of cannabis. Period. Even for medical purposes with a physician’s recommendation. Period.

Wow. Can you say, ‘flat earth’?

Indeed, there is much work to be done in cannabis law reform in the Executive Branch (which, astonishingly, is where ONDCP resides) and so-called anti-drug agencies. The tale of Hercules and the cleansing of the Augean stables immediately comes to mind…

As Chairman Frank noted in his prepared remarks, HR 5843 (and similar legislation HR 5842, which regards medical marijuana rescheduling) are not likely to come a full committee for vote until well into 2009. Given this candid assessment by Rep. Frank, for NORML members and advocates of cannabis law reform, there are still important phases that we can all help accomplish that will hasten passage of these important and reform-minded bills.

Rep. Frank and the other current co-sponsors of HR 5843 will be sending around a ‘Dear Colleague” letter soon encouraging other members of the House to join them early on in support of their bill for the decriminalization of cannabis for responsible adult use and, therefore, like all legislation in the Congress, the more co-sponsors of a legislative bill, the better chance the bill’s chance of passage.

With the change of presidency in the wings and a likely increase in the number of Democratic members being elected to the House of Representatives, NORML’s expectations for HR 5843 is for there to be both subcommittee and full committee votes on Judiciary regarding this important legislation late into 2009.

Importantly, NORML members and advocates of cannabis law reform, for the next six months, need to truly concentrate their advocacy efforts on actively recruiting each of our elected members of Congress to become co-sponsors of HR 5843. Of the many lobbying and advocacy efforts one can employ to advance cannabis law reforms in America, getting a federal cannabis decriminalization bill passed and signed into law is the single most politically achievable public policy advance that is likely to happen in Congress in the next few years.

As our democracy prescribes, states will continue to largely serve as the catalyst of change and innovation in public policy making regarding cannabis, and this is very likely going to continue to happen with more and more municipalities and states passing progressive cannabis laws—at some point, ultimately, positively affecting the federal government.

At least that is how it is supposed to work, right?

Stay tuned to NORML!

Update: a one-day CNN online poll on 7/30 asked citizens if they support legalizing cannabis: 76% in favor, 24% against. On July 31, the Washington Examiner in DC ran an online poll, resulting in a similar spread: 75% in favor, 25% against.

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.

Full Story