Skip to main content

Democratic Presidential Candidates All Support Medical Marijuana

It's about time Barack Obama took the right position on a drug policy issue. Last night he concurred with the other democratic presidential hopefuls that the federal medical marijuana raids must stop:
MANCHESTER, NEW HAMPSHIRE — In his first public statement on the subject, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama pledged to end medical marijuana raids in the 12 states that have medical marijuana laws Tuesday at a campaign event during a Nashua Pride minor league baseball game.

Obama's pledge came as a response to a question from Nashua resident and Granite Staters for Medical Marijuana volunteer Scott Turner, who asked the senator what he would do to stop the federal government from putting seriously ill people like Turner in prison in states where medical marijuana is legal.

"I would not have the Justice Department prosecuting and raiding medical marijuana users," Obama said. "It's not a good use of our resources." [MPP]
I remain unimpressed with Obama, however. He promises "change" yet openly laments the "political capital" it would cost to repair a no-brainer racial justice issue like the crack powder sentencing disparity. Arguably the worst on drug policy among the democratic contenders, Obama's stance on medical marijuana could easily be dismissed as a political rather than a compassionate stance.

Still, Obama's gutlessness would hardly alienate him from a Democratic Congress that remains enslaved by the drug war status quo. Really, if all democratic candidates agree with ending the medical marijuana raids, why the hell are democrats continually blocking the Hinchey Amendment, which does exactly that?

I just asked MPP's Aaron Houston this question, and he says it's a lot easier for the President to define DOJ's priorities than it is to get every single Democrat to sign onto something that many believe could hurt them politically. This may explain why Hinchey didn't do better this year under a democratically-controlled Congress. Since the democrats see a strong chance of reclaiming the White House, they have little incentive to take even minor political risks over an issue that could be resolved administratively in January '09.

That's a long wait for patients and providers that continue to live in fear of the DEA, but with Hinchey on pace to pass in 2027, January '09 feels like a fine time to bring this madness to an end.

Ehrlich endorsed Rudy, despite disagreement on med-pot

http://www.joinrudy2008.com/news/pr/72/index.php Lately Robert Ehrlich, former gov of Maryland, endorsed Rudy for president. In the medical marijuana circles, Mr. Ehrlich is remembered as the first Republican governor to sign a med-pot law. The bill he signed decriminalized, but did not legalize, medical use of marijuana in Maryland. He and Rudy would disagree, certainly, on the issue of med-pot.

Bush Makes Lengthy Incoherent Statement About Plan Mexico

Via DrugWarRant, President Bush was asked about Plan Mexico yesterday at a joint press conference with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Mexican President Felipe Calderon:
Q Good afternoon, President Bush and Prime Minister. And I thought that this summit would be the -- actually Plan Mexico would come out of this, the combination of three governments to combat the effects of drug trafficking. What is the obstacle? What is causing the delay? Why don't the societies of each country know what this plan is about? And can you actually confirm the support of the United States to Mexico? Apparently it will increase tenfold, and the levels will be similar to Colombia. We hear very often the United States wants to take part in this situation against drugs, this war on drugs, and we see it very clearly in Mexico. Now, what is it all about? Could you tell us?
Oh boy, a rare opportunity to hear the President talk about drug policy. You know this is going to be…vague.
PRESIDENT BUSH: Man! Hombre! (Laughter.) We discussed a common strategy to deal with a common problem, and that is narco-trafficking and violence on our border. First, let me say that in order to develop an effective common strategy there needs to be serious consultations between our respective governments. It's one thing to say, we're interested in working together; it's another thing to develop a package on both sides of the border that will be effective in dealing with the problem. That's what our people expect us to do. They expect us to see a problem and to develop an effective strategy to deal with that problem.

President Calderon and I met in Mexico, and we had a serious discussion to get this initiative on the table. This is an interim meeting, a meeting for us to make sure that the strategy that's being developed is -- will be effective. So we reviewed where we are in the process.

The United States is committed to this joint strategy to deal with a joint problem. I would not be committed to dealing with this if I wasn't convinced that President Calderon had the will and the desire to protect his people from narco-traffickers. He has shown great leadership and great strength of character, which gives me good confidence that the plan we'll develop will be effective. And the fundamental question is, what can we do together to make sure that the common strategy works? And that's where we are in the discussions right now.

There's all kinds of speculation about the size of the package, this, that and the other. All I can tell you is the package, when it's developed, will be robust enough to achieve a common objective, which is less violence on both sides of the border, and to deal with narco-trafficking. And we both have responsibilities. And that's what the package is entailed to develop. It's to develop how do we share our joint responsibilities.

It's in our interests that this program go forward. You mentioned Plan Colombia-- this is not like Plan Colombia. This is different from Plan Colombia. This is a plan that says we've got an issue on our own border. We share a border and, therefore, it's a joint program that will mean -- that won't mean U.S. armed presence in your country. Mexico is plenty capable of handling the problem. And the question is, is there any way for us to help strengthen the effort? And so that's what we're studying.

And I can't give you a definitive moment when the plan will be ready, but we're working hard to get a plan ready. And it's a plan that, once it's proposed and out there, I strongly urge the United States Congress to support. It's in our interests, it's in the U.S. interests that we get this issue solved.
Any questions?

What does Sen. John Cornyn and Willie Nelson have in common?

Sen. John Cornyn, a Republican in the U.S. Senate who, when he was a state attorney general, gave an award to the infamous police officer who started the Tulia scandal, one of the most notorious incidence of racial injustice in the United States. Willie Nelson is a country singer who is very supportive of drug law reform. So what do these two have in common? The answer is, they are both from Texas. But I didn't discover this fact, in fact, the authoritarian, Bushie senator bragged about it after all:

What do classical pianist Van Cliburn, country great Willie Nelson and rock legend Janis Joplin have in common? They’re all from Texas.
If Senator Cornyn really has any respect of Nelson or Joplin (remember she was a heroin user), he would have advocated for the end of the drug war, and not like what he is doing now. But as a Texan Republican, a Nixonian "law and order" conservative, it takes a bit courage to have any positive word to say about Janis Joplin. Is he a closet hippie? I don't think so, but possibly his ghost-writer is.

Supporting Medical Marijuana Is Smart Politics

This exchange between Bill Richardson and Stuart Cooper of Granite Staters for Medical Marijuana shows the political wisdom of supporting compassionate policies. Richardson discusses his efforts to protect patients in New Mexico, and describes the broader drug war as a failure, then appeals to Cooper for support:

Richardson: By the way, I hope you can get me some votes. I haven't won too many votes with that one. You should see the letter I got from the Sheriff's Association, but sometimes you gotta do the right thing. It's the right thing.

Cooper: Sir, 80% of New Hampshire voters agree with you.

Richardson: Do they?

Cooper: Yes sir.

Richardson: Will you tell them?

Already on the presidential campaign trail, Richardson was nonetheless surprised to learn that his support for medical marijuana would resonate with a huge majority of voters.

That was July 16. By August 17, Richardson had sent a letter to President Bush demanding that ONDCP stop threatening his state's new medical marijuana program. He also ordered the NM Dept. of Health to move forward despite federal intimidation. All of this is displayed proudly on his presidential campaign site.

The point here isn’t that Richardson is trying to win the favor of voters. He already supported medical marijuana, but stepped up his efforts after learning that it was safe and, in fact, smart to do so. By taking this message to the other candidates, we might get more than just a promise to end the federal raids.

"Marijuana Signature Project" Not as Cool as it Sounds

Watch out folks, the Marijuana Signature Project is not a legalization initiative. It's something far more sinister.

ONDCP's latest blog post, delightfully titled "Relying on Science to Craft Drug Policy," boasts of using our tax dollars to a finance a series of science experiments aimed at figuring out where marijuana is grown:
The drug control policy office is betting on stable isotopes to identify unique markers in marijuana, distinguishing it not just by geography but also by its cultivation method — for example, indoor versus outdoor.

"It’s an epidemiological and forensic public health investigation," said David Murray, chief scientist at the agency and director of its Counterdrug Technology Assessment Center. [NYTimes]
It is just hilarious that ONDCP is spending government funds to find out information that pot growers would gladly share if it wouldn't get them arrested. Dr. Murray, I know people that could tell you for free if your marijuana was grown indoors or out.

For an added touch of cuteness, here's the scientist behind the project feigning agnosticism about the marijuana debate:
Dr. West said his involvement in the project was not tied to any particular policy judgment. "I strongly believe that part of the picture in any policy development has to be the best possible science, and in cases where my work can contribute to that, I think that’s great," he wrote in an e-mail message.
Dr. West, you gullible dork, the point isn't to determine what our marijuana policy should be. They're trying to identify cultivation hotspots and send heavily armed narc-soldiers in there to slash and burn everything. If you're not trying to advance any "particular policy judgment," get the hell away from David Murray and stop collecting research grants from ONDCP.

Honestly, I'm hugely in favor of the feds wasting drug war dollars to discover that marijuana is grown basically anywhere you could think of. This ain't exactly drilling for oil. People grow pot wherever there aren’t a lot of drug cops around and make adjustments as necessary. It shouldn't take a laboratory in Salt Lake City to tell you this.

It is typical drug war hypocrisy that ONDCP sits around conducting forensic research, while they can't find so much as a gram to enable meaningful research into the drug's hotly contested medical applications.

Why Isn't the Drug War a Mainstream Political Issue?

Pete Guither has a typically observant post noting the lack of serious drug policy discussion among top-tier political bloggers:
Obviously, to drug policy reformers, the war on drugs is one of the critical issues of our time -- it affects everything, from criminal justice and fundamental Constitutional rights to education to foreign policy to poverty and the inner cities, and on and on.

So it can be baffling to note the degree to which serious discussions about the drug war tend to be missing from the major political blogs on the right and the left.
Worse yet, the reluctance of established political blogs to enter the drug policy debate is dwarfed by the longstanding refusal of mainstream journalists and politicians to do so. Drug reporting in the mainstream press is an ongoing abomination, with exceptions so rare that they provoke widespread fascination when they occur.

Why then is America's political culture so desperate to avoid discussing this issue? Pete argues correctly that both parties have been so consistently bad on drug policy that neither side has moral standing to condemn the other. He's talking about bloggers, but this idea has broad implications. So long as both parties remain essentially comfortable wasting billions in tax dollars on a failed drug control strategy, there is no incentive to exhaust political capital challenging the status quo.

D.C. radio personality Kojo Nnamdi offered a complementary theory this morning on NPR, which I find equally helpful. Referencing the same excellent Washington Post story mentioned in Pete's post, Nnamdi suggested that politicians realize something is wrong, but are unsure what else to propose. There's a lot to this when you consider how ignorant most politicians are about the finer points of the war on drugs. As obvious as it is to many of us that progress can't occur until the drug war ends, this conversation is dark territory for a politician with aggressive enemies and a flimsy grip on the subject matter. Nor are they eager to familiarize themselves with an issue that lacks apparent traction and is perceived (often erroneously, but still) as politically suicidal.

Reformers struggle to explain how we'll overcome these obstacles, and I'm skeptical of anyone who thinks they've figured it out. Our watershed moment will arrive, I believe, through events beyond our control. Recent discussion of the drug war's role in financing terror provides just one example of how new priorities can raise doubts about the old ones.

The future will bring many unexpected changes, but it will never redeem drug prohibition and its infinitely corrupting, ruinous legacy. I don't know what it will take to finally put this horrible war on trial, but I'm certain we'll find out.

Subscribe to