Kerlikowske Finds Ideology

7/24/09, 12:34 am EST
This is a major disappointment:

Obama’s drug czar, Gil Kerlikowske hit the road this week to rail against the perils of pot:

“Marijuana is dangerous and has no medicinal benefit,” he said at an appearance in Fresno, California.

This is a striking departure from what Kerlikowske told me in an interview in May.

Because of the restrictive terms the Vice President’s office imposed on our interview, I’m not at liberty to quote the drug czar directly.

But when I asked Kerlikowske for an example of how he hoped to bring sound science back to Office of National Drug Control Policy, he told me that science would answer whether smoked marijuana has any medical benefit.

That’s a question that science answers, he told me, not ideology.

From this week’s comments, it appears it took just two more months on the job for Kerlikowske’s openness to scientific uncertainty to snap shut in a fit of ideological conviction.

Tim Dickinson