Obama Appoints Temporary Drug Czar
Amidst the inauguration fanfare, we failed to notice that Obama immediately appointed ONDCP’s general counsel Ed Jurith to serve as acting director, i.e. drug czar. You can read Jurith’s bio here and my thoughts on him here.
This is interesting because it’s a definite improvement over Bush’s last minute appointment of Patrick Ward, another ONDCP insider, to run the office upon John Walters’s departure. Jurith is hardly a friend of reform on any issue I’m aware of, but his background is in law, while Ward has been directly and heavily involved in interdiction programs.
With Jurith being the preferable choice, I’m wondering if Obama actually did this for the right reasons as he looks for a permanent candidate to fill the position. That’s impossible to say, but it’s a small step in the right direction. Let’s hope for a bigger one soon.
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redditJurith -- Quotes from the Czar
Comment posted by aahpat on Wed, 01/28/2009 - 5:35pmA White House press release:
Wednesday, July 25, 2001
Edward H. Jurith, Acting Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP)
"The 2000 DAWN report shows the undeniable health consequences of substance abuse. Drugs often touted as harmless, such as marijuana and Ecstasy, are obviously dangerous and addictive, and the numbers prove it," Jurith said."
Who decided the class of any certain drug?
Comment posted by mlang52 on Wed, 01/28/2009 - 10:58pmThe information in that last post derives me nuts! If the drugs they actually put in class 1 were of no medical use, then the law looks OK. But who the heck determined which drugs were CLASS 1??? "Heroin" is actually a form of morphine and cannabinoids (Marinol,etc) are now legal for medical use. I think Marinol is class 3!! The entire law is hypocritical or, more likely, just an error from being ignorant!! The people who made the decisions for classification, must have not known anything about the true classifications of those drugs. Funny thing is amphetamines and cocaine are where they should be, not in class 1! And, although I know little about Ecstasy, it has been suggested that there is a use for it in the treatment of psychosocial disorders like agoraphobia. Cops (LE) should not be making those decisions in classification. And, they shouldn't be using doctors to advise them, who act more like cops, than they do "healers" or "health providers"!
And the FDA has done real good at protecting the public. Although, I think, they are not opposed to medical MJ!? They just don't know how to put in the system.
As general Council for the ONDCP
Comment posted by aahpat on Wed, 01/28/2009 - 2:52pmfor decades, Jurith has led the legal battle in the courts against drug policy reform.
As a lawyer for the Democrats in congress in the 1980's he helped to orchestrate some of the worst legislation this nation has ever been oppressed with.
Sure, a lawyer is more intelligent that a cop but that only makes lawyers even more insidiously dangerous.
Most recently, Jurith was appointed on Jan. 20 and the medical pot raid in California happened on Jan. 22.
My Aid & comfort blog entry on the appointment: Obama's acting Drug Czar
ADDENDUM:
If the medical cannabis raid in California was executed on the 22nd by holdovers from the Bush administration it was holdover Jurith, who was promoted by Obama to Drug Czar from general council of the ONDCP, who supervised that raid.