Drug Policy at WhiteHouse.gov
President Obama’s new WhiteHouse.gov site has several drug policy related items worth noting:
* End Racial Profiling: President Obama and Vice President Biden will ban racial profiling by federal law enforcement agencies and provide federal incentives to state and local police departments to prohibit the practice.
* Reduce Crime Recidivism by Providing Ex-Offender Support: President Obama and Vice President Biden will provide job training, substance abuse and mental health counseling to ex-offenders, so that they are successfully re-integrated into society. Obama and Biden will also create a prison-to-work incentive program to improve ex-offender employment and job retention rates.
* Eliminate Sentencing Disparities: President Obama and Vice President Biden believe the disparity between sentencing crack and powder-based cocaine is wrong and should be completely eliminated.
* Expand Use of Drug Courts: President Obama and Vice President Biden will give first-time, non-violent offenders a chance to serve their sentence, where appropriate, in the type of drug rehabilitation programs that have proven to work better than a prison term in changing bad behavior.
...
The President also supports lifting the federal ban on needle exchange, which could dramatically reduce rates of infection among drug users. President Obama has also been willing to confront the stigma -- too often tied to homophobia -- that continues to surround HIV/AIDS.
Seeing racial profiling, sentencing reform and needle exchange on the White House website ain’t bad at all. If these are the issues the new administration is prepared to address immediately, that’s a respectable forward step for criminal justice reform.
Heck, its decent enough that I wonder why his transition team didn’t mash this together into a response to that tricky drug war question they so blatantly dodged over at Change.gov. Regardless, it’s interesting to consider these policy statements in light of the unresolved drug czar selection process. Any candidate who embraces this stuff would be a major improvement to be sure.
Unfortunately, the site isn’t completely devoid of tough-guy drug war talk:
Obama and Biden will demand the Afghan government do more, including cracking down on corruption and the illicit opium trade.
Thus, despite the positive steps outlined above, Obama still suffers from the notion that drug prohibition can be a stabilizing force in international politics. This will prove to be our greatest obstacle under the new administration, as we’ve heard nothing encouraging from Obama with regards to international drug policy and things are getting damn ugly out there.
digg
redditLetter to Obama
Comment posted by aahpat on Thu, 01/22/2009 - 2:48pmAfter visiting the new White House web site I have to say that it was everything that I expected from this right-wing pandering administration. Vacuous and parroting the same tired status quo crap we have heard for more than a generation.
On Tuesday I wrote a letter to our incoming president that I posted at:
http://mysite.verizon.net/aahpat/obama.htm
Your too can write to the White House. Feel free to crib any or all of the letter as you wish.
comments@whitehouse.gov
If they don't hear it from us they won't hear it.
TV SHOW TONIGHT, THURSDAY 1/22/2009
There will be a show on CNBC business news at 9pm EST tonight titled "Marijuana Inc." about America's marijuana industry.
Obama lawyerspeak
Comment posted by aahpat on Thu, 01/22/2009 - 6:40pmEnd Racial Profiling
Start busting white folks at a more equal rate to black Americans.
Reduce Crime Recidivism by Providing Ex-Offender Support
More mandatory rehab. Both in and after prison. More intense probation and parole supervision. Less actual use of probation and parole so that states don't look like they are releasing recidivists.
Eliminate Sentencing Disparities
So that they can get away with busting more white kids for cocaine powder.
Expand Use of Drug Court
Separate justice for drug convictions that is always unequal.
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This is how these issues actually translated here in Pennsylvania last year when prison costs and over-crowding became an issue in the legislature.
This is also how Obama actually referred to these issues when he spoke about them at all during the campaign.
Don't be fooled by lawyers with silver tongues.
What speaks loudest
Comment posted by aahpat on Thu, 01/22/2009 - 7:20pmon the White House site is what is NOT said.
Obama and his gang of thugs continue to talk about the disease of addiction as a crime rather than as the disease that it is.
As long as addiction is addressed, by the government, as a crime rather than as the genetic based disease that it is the mantra will be more police state and prisons as the primary cure and solution. Anarchy promoting authoritarianism will continue to rule the debate rather than public health, democratic regulatory institutions and constitutional social justice values.
Backwards
Comment posted by aahpat on Fri, 01/23/2009 - 10:11amI have to correct your correction.
I did not say that anarchy promotes authoritarianism. I said that authoritarianism promotes anarchy. Authoritarianism being the public policy and anarchy being its outcome.
Authoritarianism promotes anarchy because authoritarianism does not allow for reasoned democratic regulatory alternatives. Authoritarianism, such as prohibition, is absolutist which promotes anarchic criminal opportunity between the cracks of policy extremes.
As long as the U.S. government
Comment posted by aahpat on Thu, 01/22/2009 - 8:14pmbe it Democrat or Republican led, treats addiction as a crime rather than as a disease they are treating an unpopular genetic malady and distinction in the same way that Hitler treated unpopular genetic maladies and distinctions.
Adding More to Drug Law Reform
Comment posted by Giordano on Fri, 01/23/2009 - 12:26pmDrug courts, supporting ex-offenders, ending racial profiling, advocating clean needle exchanges, and so forth; are already in the legislative pipelines in one stage of progress or another. The stages of progress depend upon specific locations and the corresponding regional politics. Other than bestowing some official Federal blessing on these programs, much more can be done.
Radically reorganizing or abolishing the DEA, ONDCP and NIDA is necessary if we are to stop these rogue agencies from thwarting the will of the people. These and other drug warrior bureaucracies block inexpensive, effective medical treatments, and all related research and development on illicit drugs that might bypass the commercial interests of Big Pharma. The agencies not only interfere with fair and equitable justice, they thwart the democratic process designed to remedy the problems they create. The hardliners in these organizations who consistently block harm reduction drug policies are little better than serial killers. Government serial killers should at least be reassigned or shown the door, if not jailed for life.
The idea that a cabal of moralizing psychopaths can dominate entire government agencies and thereby use these entities to inflict their personal political and religious dogma onto their unwilling victims flies in the face of everything constitutional law and democratic rule stands for. A free society by definition cannot tolerate this kind of tyranny. There can be no other choice but the complete abolition of the drug warrior culture.
Giordano
ditto
Comment posted by Matt_Potter on Thu, 01/22/2009 - 1:47amI had pretty much those same thoughts, in that order. Crack sentences need to be DRASTICALLY reduced, otherwise it is a change for the worse. Drug courts I'm torn on. I don't think they're a reasonable solution by any means.
Needle exchanges are good, and I hope that he actually pushes for federal funding to needle exchange programs. If needle exchanges start popping up all over the country and producing good, tangible results in communities, will that help make the case for decrim/legalization? I'd like to think so.
Matt
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Matt Potter