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Announcement: The 2009 International Drug Policy Reform Conference, Albuquerque, New Mexico, November 12-14
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Marijuana: Massachusetts Legalization Bill Gets Hearing
1000 Feet from Everywhere
Drug Czar's Office Re-evaluating Marijuana Policy: "We're trying to base stuff on the facts"
Doug Richardson, a spokesman for the White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy, said the office is in the process of re-evaluating its policies on marijuana and other drugs.
Richardson said the office under Obama was pursuing a "more comprehensive" approach than the previous administration, with emphasis on prevention and treatment as well as law enforcement.
"We're trying to base stuff on the facts, the evidence and the science," he said, "not some particular prejudice somebody brings to the table." [AP]
Yeah, yeah, I know, it's all a bunch of feel-good political pandering that means little if anything in terms of actual meaningful policy change. But think about the fact that the drug czar's office is now constantly and rather blatantly pandering to people who don't like the drug war. That's the target audience for this kind of language and it's awfully refreshing to finally find them on the defensive.
Really, all this talk about basing everything on science from now on is a rather huge rebuke of the people who ran the office during the Bush Administration. The current ONDCP is going around basically suggesting that our drug policy wasn't based on facts before. To even suggest such a thing raises rather fundamental questions surrounding the legitimacy of every drug war strategy that was employed prior to 2009. Surely, that's not what they mean, but I'd love to hear a reporter follow up on this and ask for examples of non-science-based drug policy for the sake of comparison.
No matter how you interpret it, this sort of rhetoric from the drug czar's office is yet another powerful testament to the progress of our movement. We've made the issue so controversial that the new drug warriors are afraid to be associated with the old ones.
Hearings on Massachusetts "Tax and Regulate" Bill in Boston Next Week
Washington Post Punches Marijuana Prohibition in the Teeth
Cartels Face an Economic Battle
U.S. Marijuana Growers Cutting Into Profits of Mexican Traffickers
ARCATA, Calif. -- Stiff competition from thousands of mom-and-pop marijuana farmers in the United States threatens the bottom line for powerful Mexican drug organizations in a way that decades of arrests and seizures have not, according to law enforcement officials and pot growers in the United States and Mexico.Â
Medical marijuana laws have legitimized enough of the marijuana economy to begin vividly illustrating the long-term impact of regulated distribution. The hypothesis has been proven: people don't buy from drug cartels if they donât have to.
This simple and obvious fact demolishes any attempt to argue that legalization won't work. It's already working. Just watch.
Irony Alert: Drug Czar Complains About Media Bias
From an October 3rd address at the 2009 International Association of Chiefs of Police Annual Conference:
But I must underscore how important your help on this issue is â on the streets, within the criminal justice system, and in the court of public opinion. Recently, Peter Moskos and Stanford Franklin, members of a group called "Law Enforcement Against Prohibition," published an op-ed in the Washington Post calling for the legalization of drugs. They claimed that legalization would increase officer safety. Â
Â
Chief Laine, as President of IACP, responded with a letter to the editor. The Washington Post did not print it. This letter, which I am holding in my hand, should have been printed. As Russ appropriately put it, "The simple truth is that legalizing narcotics will not make life better for our citizens, ease the level of crime and violence in our communities or reduce the threat faced by law enforcement officers. To suggest otherwise ignores reality."
Wait, did Kerlikowske just name-drop LEAP at a major law-enforcement conference? Really? Might as well tell us their url while you're at it, boss. Thanks. I'm surprised, honestly, because mentioning LEAP to a big group of potential future LEAP members strikes me as kind of a bad idea.
I can't think of a better measure of progress in the drug war debate than to find the drug czar uttering the words "Law Enforcement Against Prohibition" at a police chief's conference and insinuating that The Washington Post is treating drug warriors unfairly. That's just beautiful.
As the media's longtime love affair with drug war propaganda appears on the verge of collapse, you can't blame the once-proud drug war cheerleaders for lamenting the unfamiliar territory they now find themselves in. But I hope the drug czar and his friends realize that there's a lot more to this story than the fact that LEAP has a fantastic media department. The inescapable reality here is that the drug war's apologists have been spouting the exact same nonsense for several decades now and the returns are diminishing. On the rare occasion that they think of anything new to say, it's a lie.
Meanwhile, the movement for reform is bringing new arguments to the table on a daily basis and it's not just that we're clever, but rather that the drug war itself actually causes new and worse problems constantly. We'll never run out of material. The urgency of our cause becomes more apparent and our credibility continues to grow because the problems we describe are plainly visible to the naked eye. Our job is merely to lay the blame for something everyone already agrees is a disaster.
It took the drug czar's office many years of profound dishonesty to destroy its reputation with the mainstream press, so if Gil Kerlikowske doesnât like the way his side is being treated in the press, maybe he should be blaming John Walters and not The Washington Post.
Marijuana is Mainstream
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