Scott buddy, I appreciate all the posts you make, and I can certainly appreciate and understand your frustration. I'm right there with you. Probably no single American policy fills me with as much frustration and anger as the war on drugs.

But I gotta take exception at your harsh tone towards the drug czar. This is fantastic news, and it's brave and bold thing for the drug czar to be saying so soon after his confirmation. This is probably the best news I have heard, in my lifetime, regarding the drug war.

First off, I believe you are misinterpreting Mr. Kerlikowske's message. If he is officially announcing that he wants to get away from a "war on drugs" mentality, he's is letting us know he finds this mentality harmful. When I read his comments, I took them as an explanation for the harm that the "war on drugs" mentality does. It creates a sensation of a war on a sector of out population. We don't want to be at war with the American people, therefore we will end the war on drugs. Perhaps it could have been better worded, but I think the message is overwhelmingly positive.

Think of it this way. What do you think would have happened if mr. K had said "look guys, the war on drugs is fucked up. For the last twenty years you have been victimizing and attacking the american population, and it's gotta stop.". Let me tell you BACKLASH. It probably would have done our movement more harm than good.

I just spent yesterday outlining an editorial on the war-on mentality, and why it's harmful to our society. I'm sorry I didn't get it written before his announcement, but I'll be overjoyed if it becomes obsolete. The drug war mentality has done enormous harm to our society. Not only in the immediately obvious ways: improper drug scheduling, misinformation, paranoia, propaganda, increased drug abuse, lack of treatement for addiction, etc etc, but also in the erosion of constitutional law and civil liberties, and more subtly, in the destruction of the American justice system. Not only the courts and the prisons, but especially the police force, which sees itself as a kind of soldier in the drug war. This totally fucked up attitude destroys community relations, kills people, kills trust in the police, and hampers proper law enforcement.

I know I harp on this a lot here in the comments, but I think it's vital that we create the impression of being a friendly, reasonable group of people. When someone makes a step in the right direction, let's not jump on him for not taking the whole leap. Rather, lets say "Excellent start".

So let me just say "hurrah mr. K!". Thank you for making that much needed announcement. This simple change in tone is an important and vital step to fixing our nations disastrous drug policies. Kudos.

www.glenstark.net

They are simply changing the semantics.

This is right in keeping with all of the other lies we have seen out of the Obama Administration.

- No more medical pot busts? BULLSHIT!

- Needle exchange? BULLSHIT!

- Obama's campaign expression of compassion for the injustices imposed on the poor and minorities by high incarceration rates? BULLSHIT! More Byrne Grants and more COPS program funding means more arrests.

- No more drug war? BULLSHIT! Phony lying rhetoric.

Scott.

This administration is so two faced about everything to do with the drug war.

The real positive to come of this article is the admission that the "drug war" rhetoric is now a political negative for Democrats.

For this reason I think its more important than ever to associate Obama and drug warrior Democrats with the terms 'war on drugs' and 'drug warrior'. Whenever I can I include these terms in any writing that I do about the Drug warrior Obama Administration. They are trying to run from the words while escalating the policy. That is bullshit. As long as they support the policy they should be associated with the negative connotations that they in fact support.

The war on drugs is more aggressive and more militarized than ever. To say otherwise is not simply disingenuous but a that out LIE.

The drug war has fifty thousand Mexican military troops along with thousands of American forces doing support work on this side of the border. Plus tens of thousands of federal, state and local enforcement personnel on both sides of the border. There must be nearly a hundred thousand boots on the ground along the border yet still they can't control what comes across the border. The Obama plan is to escalated and militarize this situation even more in coming years.

The drug war has tens of thousands of American troops combing the poppy fields of Afghanistan hunting the Taliban who are funded by the drug war.

The Obama administrations budget requests for more drug war funds are in the billions of dollars this year alone.

Wall Street Journal Drug War LIES

announced the Kerlikowske nomination there were columnists and blog writers who pointed out then that there was a glaring omission. Both Biden and Kerlikowske evaded using the phrases "war on drugs" and 'drug war'.

So Joe Biden sees the negative connotations in the term but he does not comprehend the inspiration of that negative connotation. Or he, and by extension Obama, simply refuses to accept that it is the policy that is wrong. All that Biden sees is that the American perspective has turned negative on the phrase. What a dip shit.

Its a 'police action'.

The Salem-News.com reported in a story New Drug Czar Calls for End of 'War on Drugs'

"Kerlikowske says the Obama administration will most likely treat drugs as a matter of public health, stepping away from the years of relying almost completely on the criminal justice system to treat the problem, incarcerating hundreds of thousands of Americans in the process."

(snip)
Kerlikowske told Gary Fields with The Wall Street Journal, "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".

Jive this with the March 15 Dallas Morning News report: It's no longer a 'war' on drugs, so to speak
WASHINGTON – Mexico is in the midst of a bloody drug war, fueled largely by America's appetite for narcotics. But this country is no longer engaged – semantically, at least – in a "war on drugs."

Vice President Joe Biden avoided the term when he introduced the new White House drug czar last week. So did the new drug czar. And President Barack Obama sidestepped the phrase even when I asked directly, at a reporters' round table, if this country is still fighting a war on drugs.
(snip)
"Traditionally, the debate is either interdiction, criminalization, longer prison sentences for not only dealing but users – that's one approach," Obama said. "The other approach would be sort of a public health, decriminalization approach. My attitude is we do have to treat this as a public health problem, and we have to have significant law enforcement."

"The approach that we do need to take," he said, is "a both/and approach, as opposed to an either/or approach."

The Obama administration is simply playing a semantics game. They recognize the negative political connotations building around the drug war. And they do not want to be associated with the negative political connotations. But the drug warrior Obama administration fully intends to continue and even escalated the drug war.

This is quickly turning into Obama's quagmire on the Rio Grande. Its not a war its a 'police action'. Doesn't this sound familiar?

It is morally and ethically depraved of the Obama Administration to see the negative connotations of the drug war clearly enough that they do not want to be associated with those negative political connotations but at the same time the administration continues working escalate and militarize that policy.

This is the kind of political duplicity and moral depravity that drove me out of the Democratic Party.

Maybe he's trying to get y'all to change your domain name! :-)

Let's see what they might suggest:

(Self-censored due to them being too biting and "antagonistic".)