Deputy Drug Czar: "I hate this job"
The New York Times has a rather strange visit with Deputy Drug Czar Tom McClellan in which he says he only took the job because his son had recently died from a drug overdose and now admits that he hates working there:
In a recent interview in his office here — still sparsely decorated except for a photocopied picture of his family, including his surviving son and two young grandsons (or "grand felons," as he called them) — Dr. McLellan put his feet up on the coffee table and declared, "I hate this job."
"This is a job that needs scientific background," he went on. "But if you come to it with the kind of desires to turn everything into a scientific experiment, you will have your poor little heart broken."
I don't understand. Did Tom McClellan think they cared about science at the Office of National Drug Control Policy? Maybe if someone had shown him Stoners in the Mist, he could have figured out what he was getting himself into before it was too late.
Regardless, it's just weird to find the new deputy drug czar already hating on his own job in The New York Times. It strikes me as yet another indication of what a sickly and irrelevant institution the ONDCP has become. Sometimes, I feel like it's just a matter of time before the whole thing collapses in a poignant public spectacle:
Dr. McClellan might be our best candidate yet for bringing that beautiful sight to life.
Don’t Get Burned Out, Get Even…
It’s easy to sympathize with Deputy McClellan. Crummy jobs can ruin a person’s health. They can even lead to PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder). I would prevail upon Dr. McClellan to make every effort to survive his new job for at least the next six months.
If McClellan can pull it off, he can dig deep into the bizarre phenomenon known as the ONDCP. He's in an excellent position to make critical observations, and to go on to write a bestselling book exposing the twisted f*#kups working at the ONDCP, along with the sick world of the prohibition business in all its perversity.
I would buy the book
Giordano
Perhaps
Perhaps if his son had been arrested, possibly murdered on sight by the police, or at the very least body slammed to the ground, cuffed, arrested, prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, served many years in prison (with all the associated shower / gang rape / shanking fun), given a permanent criminal record for the rest of his life, and limited rights (voting, gun posession, public office) it would have been better for him than just a simple overdose and death?
You see, these are the choices that drug users face when trying to get clean. Since our policy around drugs is that these people are dirty criminals and should be considered armed and dangerous, nobody seeks treatment for drug addiction. If you have seen any videos of raids where the police kick down doors at 2:00 AM and just start shooting because they suspect there might be a drug user in the house, it really opens your eyes to the insanity of the drug war.
In Portugal, where all drugs were completely legalized 5 years ago, they saw their treatments rates shoot through the roof. More people were seeking treatment for serious addictions. This is a GOOD THING They saw drug related crime DROP. They saw the incidence of drug use by teens DROP. Why? Because when it is legal, it loses it glamour for youngsters. They saw the rates of HIV transmission by needle users DROP. Why? Because there is no shame in going and getting clean needles.
Wake up people. The drug war is lost. a TRILLION DOLLARS spent. Tens of millions of lives RUINED. We lost. We lost because when you declare war on a word (War on drugs, war on poverty, war on crime, war on terror, etc) You have already lost because there is no way to win a war against a word.
It is time for a new policy. It is time for a treatment based approach versus a 1930's style punishment based approach, and it is time for cannabis to be completely legalized.
It is time for common sense to prevail.
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