FOX News Discusses Drug Legalization
Those liberal hippies at FOX News are at it again. This segment featuring DPA's Ethan Nadelmann confronts drug prohibition head on.
It's a great clip with solid soundbites from Ethan and a neutral, almost vaguely sympathetic-sounding tone from the FOX correspondents (surely baked after a lunchbreak at the CNN offices). Bonus points go to ONDCP's David Murray for calling Ethan Nadelmann a "good friend," even though Murray keeps a collage of Nadelmann photos by his bedside with the words "Die Hippie" smeared across it in pig's blood.
August has been a strong month for the legalization argument. Cliff Shaffer's "Marijuana Dealers Offer Schwarzenegger One Billion Dollars" story took over the web, crashing our servers and generating national headlines. Misha Glenny's "The Lost War" from The Washington Post excited bloggers and even prompted an incredulous response from former ONDCP mouthpiece Robert Weiner. Now Ethan Nadelmann's cover story in Foreign Policy magazine is keeping the conversation going.
Earlier this week, Pete Guither and I lamented the difficulty of taking the reform argument to a mainstream audience. It's a challenge we'll continue to face, but the longer this brutal war continues without results, the better our chances get of being called on if we keep raising our hand. Our opposition is forever stuck claiming that drugs are the most destructive thing in the world, while also arguing that their brilliant drug control strategies are highly effective. It sounds sillier every time, and David Murray's recent decision to start calling himself a "scientist" is just one example of his office's deteriorating credibility. Discussion of drug legalization on FOX News is another.
David Murray
Calling Ethan a friend was the highlight of his segment. The rest was just standard distortion. His implication that Ethan felt the danger of methamphetamine was on par with Chardonnay was typical.
My late Grandfather was a well-respected Ophthalmologist. People like Murray have sullied the profession. The most respectful address he could ever hope to receive from me is "hello Mr. Murray".
Murray is so lost that he cited part of an AMA Policy Statement supporting the medical use of non-smoked cannabis at the July 12th hearing on DEA regulation of medicine.
“...AMA recommends that marijuana be retained in Schedule I of the Controlled
Substances Act...AMA believes that the NIH should use its resources and influence to
support the development of a smoke-free inhaled delivery system for marijuana or delta-
9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) to reduce the health hazards associated with the
combustion and inhalation of marijuana...”
I have to say I am glad he apparently doesn't realize how much that helps the cause.
This doesn't work...
You can't argue that a PRESCRIBED drug is EQUAL to a LEGAL drug.
Regulation LIKE alcohol is NOT what has been achieved by having medical marijuana.
Sorry.
What you have now is a specialized prohibition against a certain class of people - those without money to afford the prescriptions and lawsuits...
Prohibition for the poor, choices for the wealthy?
This completely violates the "Equal protection" clause of the 14th amendment.
This is exactly what the constitution was written to prevent against.
The drug laws are invalid - a substance cannot be schedule I if it has known medical use.
Marijuana, ecstasy, and many other schedule I substances DO have medical use.
Ecstasy even has FDA approval.
So if the drug laws are WRONG, prescription provisions for legalization are WRONG under equal protection of the law...
What's left?
Complete legalization?
What makes me angry
is those commentators talking about what the drug reformers strategy should be. Alcohol prohibition was repealed in 13 years, and to insinuate that it will require multiple lifetimes to repeal prohibition of cocaine and heroin is incredibly stupid and yet another sign of modern day media's refusal to truly investigate anymore.
"never happen"
Scott, I'm surprised you didn't mention Shep Smith's outrageous comment near the end of the piece about how legalization will never happen. That, to me, ruined an otherwise perfectly good segment and highlighted what I believe is the main reason we haven't made as much progress as we should have in recent years: the self-fulfilling prophecy that we'll never get anywhere on this issue because politicians will be punished at the polls for supporting reform. Thanks, Incarcerex (and others), for perpetuating this false and dangerous notion.
--Tom Angell (signing my comment this way because your login/ID system on this blog is still too annoying to deal with).
RE: "never happen"
Tom, I'm not surprised to hear that kind of thing from a FOX correspondent. Certainly, reformers must work to combat this myth, but so long as this perception endures, we'll have to deal with journalists and others spouting this crap.
I don't think it ruins the report at all. We're getting the right talking points out there. Inevitably, as our arguments become more familiar to the American public, the perception that this is a fringe position will diminish and the political viability of reform will continue to grow.
This year nearly a million
This year nearly a million drug arrests will be made,and another quadrllionzillion tax dollars will be spent on a FAILED drug war on controlled substances that are being controlled by our children,and the dealers they buy from,not our corrupt government who will lose the quadrilliongagillion dollers they need to suck from our pockets once again.
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