White House Press Secretary thinks “professional left” who criticize Obama “ought to be drug tested”

That "professional left" is what some might call "your base", Mr. President, and they think you should legalize marijuana.

Washington political news outlet The Hill reports on the recent “professional left” remarks made by the Obama White House’s press secretary Robert Gibbs.  Gibbs was expressing frustration at progressive activists who are complaining that the president hasn’t lived up to campaign promises on a number of issues.

The press secretary dismissed the “professional left” in terms very similar to those used by their opponents on the ideological right, saying, “They will be satisfied when we have Canadian healthcare and we’ve eliminated the Pentagon. That’s not reality.”

“I hear these people saying he’s like George Bush. Those people ought to be drug tested,” Gibbs said. “I mean, it’s crazy.”

Over 850,000 of these people will likely be arrested this year and branded "criminal" for the rest of their lives.

I don’t disagree that comparing Obama to Bush is crazy; Bush could push the exact bill he wanted through Congress and Obama can pronounce “nuclear”.  It’s the “drug users are crazy” slur, the “drug test” variant of the “what have you been smoking?” that offends me.  It’s that joking about these drug tests that ruin thousands of lives is a response from an official addressing the disappointment in the president felt by the people who voted for him.  Considering the vast majority of people who use “drugs” are using cannabis and the tests for “drugs” most often find cannabis metabolites, he’s talking about us, the 22 million* Americans who will use cannabis this year.

Full disclosure: I am one of the “professional left”** and attended that Netroots Nation conference Gibbs is obliquely referencing, representing NORML on a marijuana policy panel.

Republican, Democrat, we still get arrested. (We still have another year worth of George Bush data to collect.)

But NORML is a non-partisan organization, just as arresting marijuana consumers is a bi-partisan shame (4.9 million under Clinton, 6.2 million under Bush, but Clinton’s overall increase in the annual rate was +90% from beginning to end of his term while Bush’s was +17% between 2001 and 2008; we still await the 2009 final year arrest numbers which chronicle the marijuana arrests from the year before… think of the graph as “arrests up to 2009″, not “arrests up to and including 2009″.)

Gibbs said the professional left is not representative of the progressives who organized, campaigned, raised money and ultimately voted for Obama.

Legalization is actually pretty popular right now. More popular than the President and Congress.

Well, we know what President Obama and Robert Gibbs think of those of us who “ought to be drug tested”, especially us online activists in the “professional left” who helped get him elected.  We’re chuckled at when we suggest legalizing marijuana (see videos below), even as more than half of America on some polls – not just Left Blogsylvania – are beginning to think it is a damn good idea and California is voting on the issue this November.

Legalization is more popular than the Congress and the President – who once, like us, was just one bust away from being “Barry the Drug Criminal” for life – so maybe equating our criticisms of government to drug-induced psychosis isn’t the smartest political move.

One marijuana arrest in their past would have indelibly altered the lives of 41% of America, including these three fellows.

This is not to ignore the millions of cannabis consumers who find themselves on the right side of the aisle, the Libertarians and true small government, personal responsibility, states rights Republicans, who we count as our ideological allies in ending adult marijuana prohibition.  There are 102 million of us who’ve tried cannabis, including the last three presidents and eight of fifteen of the last major party candidates for president and vice president.***  Right now, our issue is the only thing on which members of the Tea Party and the Netroots Nation can agree on.  Somebody is going to get wise and start courting our votes.

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Legalizing Marijuana Is America’s Top Political Issue — Again

To the surprise of virtually no one who has been following public opinion polls for the past 18 months, the call to “legalize the medicinal and recreational use of marijuana” placed #1 in the 2010 Change.org online vote for the “Top 10 Ideas for Change in America.”

Open voting at the Change.org website took place for six weeks — during which time citizens voted nearly 210,000 times on over 2,500 different ideas. This morning the website released the top 10 results here.

Legalization’s first place victory was expected. After all, the issue topped a similar Change.org poll last year. Legalizing marijuana also finished #1 in the White House’s first ever Change.gov poll; it finished #1 in Barack Obama’s first-ever online Town Hall vote; and it finished #1 in the White House’s 2009 ‘Citizens Briefing Book.’

Yet despite these consistent first-place finishes, the administration and the mainstream media remain dismissive. President Obama has twice publicly retreated from the issue — the second time chuckling that such a question would even be asked of him. His press secretary discounted the issue’s true public support, claiming that groups like NORML had somehow stuffed the online ballot box. As if! Meanwhile, mainstream media outlets brushed off the results as the work of “Internet trolls.”

Trolls, huh? How do ‘trolls’ explain the consistent victories racked up by marijuana law reformers at the polls year after year? And how do trolls explain the rising public opinion poll numbers that now show that over 80 percent of the public supports legalizing medical marijuana, and a solid majority also backs legalization for all adults.

Will today’s latest poll results finally be the time that President Obama, his press secretary, stuttering Robert Gibbs, Drug Czar Gil ‘legalization isn’t in my vocabulary‘ Kerlikowske, and the members of the mainstream press start to heed the public’s message that marijuana legalization is not a political liability, but rather it is a political opportunity?

Probably not. But that doesn’t mean that we’re not going to stop telling them that it is.

Fox News: If You Support Taxing And Regulating Pot You Must Be An “Internet Troll!”

On three separate occasions, the White House has asked the public to provide them with feedback on the top public policy questions facing the nation. And on three separate occasions, the leading question for the new administration — as chosen on and voted by the American public — pertained to the legalization of marijuana.

One might examine these results and conclude that marijuana law reform is an issue that is becoming increasingly popular with America’s voters. Of course if you’re Fox News, you interpret these results another way.

Obama’s Effort at Online Transparency Stymied by Internet Trolls
via Fox News

“Three and a half million people participated in the event, but the ‘trolls’ had their way: Following a coordinated campaign by marijuana advocates to vote their topic to the top of the list, questions on the future of the U.S. dollar and the rising unemployment rate were superseded by questions about legalizing pot as an economic remedy.”

Got to hand it to the folks at Fox. (PS: For the record, Wired makes the same accusation!) National polls show that the public’s support for legalization has never been greater. Leading political and media pundits are now demanding that we end the criminal prohibition of pot. Yet despite all evidence to the contrary, the old guard at Fox News cynically clings to the notion that nobody supports taxing and regulating marijuana aside from a handful of “Internet trolls.” We report, you decide, huh?

Of course, Fox News didn’t come up with this spin on their own. After all, it was White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs — yes, the same Robert Gibbs who couldn’t come up with one valid reason to oppose regulating pot besides “uh” — who initially tried to downplay the popularity of marijuana law reform, telling the New York Times that “advocates for legalizing marijuana, … includ[ing] NORML, had mounted a drive to rack up votes for the question.”

So let’s set the record straight shall we. On the afternoon of March 25, with only a few hours left for voting in the White House’s poll, I posted the following blog to NORML’s homepage: “Obama ‘Open For Questions’ About The Economy — Ask Him To Support Taxing And Regulating Marijuana.” Here’s what I wrote in my post:

The topic of this week’s forum is the national economy, and not surprisingly, many of you have already put forward questions to the President regarding the taxation and regulation of cannabis.

For example, the most popular question in the category “Budget” is: “With over 1 out of 30 Americans controlled by the penal system, why not legalize, control, and tax marijuana to change the failed war on drugs into a money making, money saving boost to the economy?”

Similarly, under the topic “Financial Stability,” most asked question is: “Would you support the bill currently going through the California legislature to legalize and tax marijuana, boosting the economy and reducing drug cartel related violence?”

Marijuana-related questions also top the “Green Jobs and Energy” category, and are among the top vote-getters on the site overall.

That’s right, the questions pertaining to marijuana law reform were already the top vote-getters before NORML ever put pen to paper!

Further, NORML at no time engaged in any sort of “coordinated campaign” (to quote Fox) to “rack up votes” (to quote the Obama administration). NORML did not list-serv news of the White House poll to our tens of thousands of e-zine subscribers, nor did we publicize the poll to the hundreds of thousands of people that have joined us on Facebook and Myspace. And to the best of my knowledge, no other marijuana law reform group did so either.

In short, there was no orchestrated “campaign” and there is no grand conspiracy. The simple explanation for the White House poll results is this: Marijuana law reform is immensely popular with the public. That’s why we win initiatives — time and time again. And that’s why when the public is asked whether they support ending prohibition they say ‘yes’ — in overwhelming numbers!

As my colleague Scott Morgan writes at stopthedrugwar.org: “This is a movement, and it isn’t going away. Our issue is bigger than the organizations backing it.” He’s right.

Americans are demanding a serious and objective political debate regarding the merits of legalizing marijuana. They have come to this conclusion on their own — simply by witnessing the failure of the drug war all around them.

President Obama, the time for adolescent jokes and giggles is over. Fox News, the time for insults has long passed. The public is serious; why aren’t you?

Finally, Some ‘Change’ We Can Believe In!

Not all federal politicians believe that marijuana law reform is a laughing matter.

Senators Jim Webb (D-VA) and Arlen Specter (R-PA), along with fifteen co-sponsors, have introduced legislation in Congress to critically evaluate America’s drugs and prisons policies.

Senate Bill 714, the National Criminal Justice Commission Act of 2009 seeks to establish a blue-ribbon commission to “undertake a comprehensive review of the criminal justice system; make findings related to current Federal and State criminal justice policies and practices; and make reform recommendations for the President, Congress, and State governments to improve public safety, cost-effectiveness, overall prison administration, and fairness in the implementation of the Nation’s criminal justice system.”

Specifically, the Commission will examine “current drug policy and its impact on incarceration, crime and violence, sentencing, and reentry programs, [including] an analysis of the general availability of drugs in our society, the impact and effectiveness of current policies on reducing that availability and on the incidence of crime, and in the case of criminal offenders, the availability of drug treatment programs before, during, and after incarceration.”

Writing this past weekend in Parade Magazine, Sen. Webb stated:

America’s criminal justice system has deteriorated to the point that it is a national disgrace. … The United States has by far the world’s highest incarceration rate. With 5% of the world’s population, our country now houses nearly 25% of the world’s reported prisoners.

… Drug offenders, most of them passive users or minor dealers, are swamping our prisons. … Justice statistics also show that 47.5% of all the drug arrests in our country in 2007 were for marijuana offenses. Additionally, nearly 60% of the people in state prisons serving time for a drug offense had no history of violence or of any significant selling activity. … African-Americans — who make up about 12% of the total U.S. population population — accounted for 37% of those arrested on drug charges, 59% of those convicted, and 74% of all drug offenders sentenced to prison.

… It is incumbent on our national leadership to find a way to fix our prison system. I believe that American ingenuity can discover better ways to deal with the problems of drugs and nonviolent criminal behavior while still minimizing violent crime and large-scale gang activity. And we all deserve to live in a country made better by such changes.”

Senator Webb’s analysis is accurate and his advocacy is politically courageous. It’s been many years since any federally appointed commission has taken an objective look at American criminal justice policies, and it’s been nearly 40 years since federal lawmakers have undertaken a critical examination of US marijuana policy.

Webb’s stance is all the more admirable as it comes just days after President Barack Obama and White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs found themselves unable to even utter the word ‘marijuana’ without laughing, no less engage in a critical assessment of America’s failed pot policies.

Writing in Salon.com, best-selling author and commentator Glen Greenwald assesses the situation and nails it:

For a Senator like Webb to spend his time trumpeting the evils of excessive prison rates, racial disparities in sentencing, the unjust effects of the Drug War, and disgustingly harsh conditions inside prisons is precisely the opposite of what every single political consultant would recommend that he do.

There’s just no plausible explanation for Webb’s actions other than the fact that he’s engaged in the noblest and rarest of conduct: advocating a position and pursuing an outcome because he actually believes in it and believes that, with reasoned argument, he can convince his fellow citizens to see the validity of his cause.

And he is doing this despite the fact that it potentially poses substantial risks to his political self-interest and offers almost no prospect for political reward. Webb is far from perfect … but, in this instance, not only his conduct but also his motives are highly commendable.

At long last, some ‘change’ in Washington, DC that we can believe in!

White House Press Secretary Tries To Defend Obama’s Opposition To Taxing And Regulating Pot — He Can’t!

UPDATE!!! UPDATE!!! UPDATE!!!

The HuffingtonPost.com, one of the most visited political websites in the world, has just posted a version of my commentary online here. Please post your feedback to the Post, and make it clear that marijuana law reform must be part of the ‘progressive’ agenda.

If you thought President Barack Obama’s mocking response to the question of whether “taxing and regulating cannabis would raise revenue and reduce prohibition-associated violence” couldn’t be any worse, just listen to White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs stumble below.

Kudos to the reporters who held the White House’s feet to the fire on this one. First, Gibbs is asked: “When the President said he doesn’t think that legalizing marijuana would give the economy a boost was he giving a political answer or an economic answer? Does he have numbers to back (his position) up?”

The pained expression on Gibbs’ face says it all as he mumbles that, in fact, he is aware of no economic analyses — as in zip, nada — that support the President’s dismissive position. Naturally, we have numerous credible economic reports proving just the opposite. Perhaps Mr. Gibbs would like to review them here, here, here, and here.

Minutes later, the White House Press Secretary appears even more desperate for a place to hide when a second reporter asked Gibbs to articulate the reasons why the President refuses to consider the issue. Gibbs’ response is priceless.

“Uh, he, he does not think that, uh, uh, that that is uh, uh, [pause] he opposes it, he doesn’t think that that’s the, the right plan for America.”

And there you have it. Wow. Such a vapid response wouldn’t cut it if Gibbs was a third-grader standing in front of his classroom, no less the Press Secretary to the White House!

Keep in mind, both Obama and his press secretary knew in advance that they were going to publicly respond the question of taxing and regulating cannabis. They had at least 24 hours to prepare an articulate, rational, and substantive response. And yet the best response they could come up with was snickers and “uh.”

Are the final days of marijuana prohibition upon us? It sure looks that way from here. But why not write the President and ask him yourself.