On Tuesday, I had a chance to question the drug czar about his enthusiasm for drug treatment at an event in D.C. Mike Riggs at Reason has good coverage of the exchange.

The other good question came from Scott Morgan, of StopTheDrugWar.org, who asked if Kerlikowske supported compulsory treatment of casual drug users, and if arresting marijuana users and forcing them into treatment was an effective policy. This time, Kerlikowske played dumb:

"Again, that’s a bit of a myth. If someone’s arrested for a small amount of marijuana, and the determination is made they have to go into treatment, treatment beds and space are a valuable commodity. I think professionals can clearly assess when someone is in need of treatment. Compulsory treatment is not something I’m as familiar with in great detail at the local level."

It's an incredible thing to say, so utterly divorced from reality and plainly absurd to anyone remotely aware of how our marijuana policies and criminal justice system operate. It's hardly a secret that when the cops catch you with pot, they bust you and haul your ass into court where you're ordered to attend classes about how you shouldn’t smoke pot.

Our courts are open to the public and you can just walk in and watch this happen to a dozen people in one afternoon. It's worth doing if you haven't before.

The drug czar says that addiction is a medical condition, but it's certainly the only medical condition with which you get diagnosed not by a doctor but by a judge in criminal court based solely on the fact that a cop found marijuana in your pocket one single time. 

I don't think we've posted this anywhere yet, and I don't want our negligence to be the reason anyone misses what might be the coolest thing I've seen this year, so better a little late than never:

 

I can't help but gush, because I don't know how Kimmel could have executed this any better. Other than the (unfortunately) obligatory munchie joke, this was perfect. Pointing out that marijuana policy is something "real people care about" and vote for is the message the President needs to hear. Bonus points for making almost everyone in the room admit to having done it. Bravo.

As the media turns up the heat on Obama's medical marijuana crackdown, one of the excuses he's giving is that they're just going after businesses that are violating state laws. In the President's own words:

The only tension that's come up – and this gets hyped up a lot – is a murky area where you have large-scale, commercial operations that may supply medical marijuana users, but in some cases may also be supplying recreational users. [Rolling Stone]

And again from someone at the Dept. of Justice

After Kimmel's speech, a Holder deputy told HuffPost that there was no coordinated war on medical marijuana, but that some individual clinics were breaking both state and federal laws. [Huffington Post]

Andrew Sullivan also gives a nod to this notion:

To be fair to Obama, he specifically said the policy was against those abusing the medical marijuana law to sell illegally. And some blame can be attached to the disorderly way in which medical marijuana laws have been enforced.

This excuse fails on about five different levels. The escalating assault on medical marijuana that's been ramped up over the past year is far from focused on forcing out bad businesses. If it were that simple, there wouldn’t be much to argue about. States could simply clarify their policies where necessary, medical marijuana providers could maintain scrupulous compliance, and only the crooks and bums in the industry would have anything to worry about, right? Wrong.

The truth is that the feds are doing the exact opposite of respecting state laws; they're trying to destroy them. Federal prosecutors have repeatedly threatened to arrest state employees for merely administering their own medical marijuana programs. They did so in a cynical effort to prevent lawmakers in multiple states from creating the sort of tight regulations that would prevent abuse and legitimize the industry.

Obviously, you can't claim to be merely upholding local laws while simultaneously threatening the very people who make and enforce them. This has been widely reported, and it even resulted in a push-back from the governors of medical marijuana states who've become frustrated with the mixed signals they've gotten from the Obama Administration. Think about how crazy it is that these states were following Obama's lead by clarifying their laws, and then the DOJ just comes along and threatens to arrest their staffers. It's an incredible mess, and it happened because Obama and Holder completely confused absolutely everyone about how this issue would be handled.

Making matters worse, multiple federal agencies have carried out a dizzying array of attacks against medical marijuana from every other conceivable angle:

• U.S. Attorneys in California recently revived the Bush era tactic of threatening to seize property from landlords who rent to medical marijuana facilities.
• After 9 years of failing to respond, the DEA recently denied a petition to reschedule marijuana, ignoring a vast body of scientific evidence proving the drug's medical efficacy.
• Federal threats have caused numerous banks to close the accounts of businesses that provide medical marijuana to qualified patients.
• The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms issued a surprising statement that medical marijuana patients may not purchase firearms.
• The IRS is shaking down medical marijuana providers for millions of dollars based on an obscure tax provision aimed at drug traffickers.
• A federal prosecutor even threatened to target newspapers that run ads for medical marijuana services.
• And, of course, the DEA continues to raid tax-paying businesses that are legal under state law.

For Obama to now claim that all they're doing is targeting illegally operated dispensaries is flagrantly and transparently untrue. There really is a far-reaching federal assault on medical marijuana being carried out at the national level. Obama's refusal to acknowledge or explain it is unacceptable.

Follow Scott Morgan on Twitter: www.twitter.com/drugblogger

Via NORML, check out this new data from an Angus Reid Public Opinion poll.

Majorities of respondents in the three countries (Britain 56%, Canada 68%, United States 74%) welcome the concept of using alternative penalties—such as fines, probation or community service—rather than prison for non-violent offenders. At least seven-in-ten Britons (70%), Americans (74%) and Canadians (78%) believe personal marijuana use should be dealt with through alternative penalties.

…And yet I keep hearing people justifying Obama's medical marijuana crackdown on the grounds that voters will be impressed by his toughness. How much more evidence do we need that huge majorities support less punitive marijuana policies? It's time to bury the antiquated, idiotic myth that the public supports tough drug laws. It's false and it's been false for a very long time.

Follow Scott Morgan on Twitter: www.twitter.com/drugblogger

Finally, finally, finally, someone in the press has managed to corner the President on the question of why the war on medical marijuana is getting worse under his watch. Here you go folks, the answer we've been waiting for…

Let me ask you about the War on Drugs. You vowed in 2008, when you were running for election, that you would not "use Justice Department resources to try and circumvent state laws about medical marijuana." Yet we just ran a story that shows your administration is launching more raids on medical pot than the Bush administration did. What's up with that?

Here's what's up: What I specifically said was that we were not going to prioritize prosecutions of persons who are using medical marijuana. I never made a commitment that somehow we were going to give carte blanche to large-scale producers and operators of marijuana – and the reason is, because it's against federal law. I can't nullify congressional law. I can't ask the Justice Department to say, "Ignore completely a federal law that's on the books." What I can say is, "Use your prosecutorial discretion and properly prioritize your resources to go after things that are really doing folks damage." As a consequence, there haven't been prosecutions of users of marijuana for medical purposes. [Rolling Stone]

I don't know how one could fairly characterize this as anything other than complete nonsense. Obama wants credit for stopping the arrests of medical marijuana users, which is just ridiculous on its face. It's not like the federal government was bringing misdemeanor possession cases against sick grandmas until Obama came along. That was never the issue and he knows it.

This is a debate about whether the federal government should be stomping on state-regulated medical marijuana programs, thwarting the will of voters, prosecuting responsible providers, and depriving patients of access to their medicine. The President said, "I will not be using justice department resources to try to circumvent state laws on this issue," and that statement was made in response to repeated questions about whether the Obama Administration would continue the deeply unpopular dispensary raids that began under Bush. Nobody thought he talking about something else.

Obama deliberately led everyone to believe that his DOJ would stop targeting facilities that operated legally under state law. That's why everyone is pissed off that the raids haven't stopped. If I misinterpreted his words, then so did most of the marijuana reform movement, the entire American press, and several state legislatures. When the Obama Administration's pledge to respect state laws was making front-page headlines, they sure as hell didn't speak up to clarify that they'd meant no such thing.

Adding insult to injury, Obama then digs in deeper by randomly suggesting that the businesses they're raiding might actually be violating state laws after all:

The only tension that's come up – and this gets hyped up a lot – is a murky area where you have large-scale, commercial operations that may supply medical marijuana users, but in some cases may also be supplying recreational users. In that situation, we put the Justice Department in a very difficult place if we're telling them, "This is supposed to be against the law, but we want you to turn the other way." That's not something we're going to do.

For the millionth time, if they're breaking state laws, then they can be prosecuted by the state. None of this amounts to any remote justification for federal intervention, but moreover, we know this is garbage anyway because they've targeted numerous businesses that were considered models of effective local regulation. The President is implying that these people deserved what they got, which is outrageous.

Think about this: federal prosecutors have even threatened to charge state employees simply for working to ensure legal compliance by licensed medical marijuana businesses. Obama claims to be concerned about illegal recreational sales, while his agents have been actively threatening to arrest the very people whose job it is to prevent that sort of thing. It's nuts. Everything he's saying is horribly disingenuous at best, and anyone who's followed the issue at all ought to see right through it.

Obama's comments today are a fresh story and I don’t know yet how others will react, but as far as I'm concerned, this matter is very far from resolved. The President's answers should give rise to more questions, not less. As long as the war on medical marijuana in America continues, those responsible should be able and willing to defend their actions. If Obama can't give us a straight answer, or even acknowledge the promises he broke before our eyes, then it's our job to keep making noise until he does.

Follow Scott Morgan on Twitter: www.twitter.com/drugblogger

"Driving while black" continues to be an issue in Connecticut, and now, the state Senate has voted to beef up the state's 12-year-old racial profiling law, which police departments have been ignoring. Chronicle story here.

Pulitzer-winning author Leonard Pitts, Jr., has a piece in the Miami Herald, "If Not Drug Legalization, What, Mr. President?"

If President Obama had a son, he would look like Trayvon Martin. So the president famously said.

And the president’s son would thereby find himself at significantly greater risk of running afoul of the so-called “War on Drugs” than, say, a son of George W. Bush. Depending on what state he lived in, a Trayvon Obama might be 57 times more likely than a Trayvon Bush to be imprisoned on drug charges.

And not because blacks are committing most of the drug crime, which they're not, as Pitts demonstrates.

Nice way to start the weekend.

There is a Bay Area 4/20 demonstration against the Obama administration's war on medical marijuana. It's starting a short time from now at the federal building in Oakland, followed by a march at noon Pacific time to Oaksterdam and Obama campaign headquarters, which is around the corner from Oaksterdam University. There is a film festival and benefit party for California NORML and OU starting at 3:00pm, and another event in the area tomorrow.

Phil is attending and will be posting a Chronicle report this afternoon -- check back. Visit http://www.canorml.org for sign up for their updates. Following is the CANORML announcement:

Fri 4/20 - OAKSTERDAM PROTEST (11:30 - 1:30)
and FILM FESTIVAL (3PM - 8PM)

JOIN US at 11 AM, at the Federal Building in Oakland (1301 Clay St.) to protest the federal attack on Oaksterdam and medical cannabis. At 12 PM we will be marching up to Oaksterdam to make our views known to the President's campaign. Participants are invited to drop by the Oaksterdam Student Union 1915 Broadway for refreshments after 1 PM.

FILM FESTIVAL & 4/20 CELEBRATION - 3 PM - 8 PM at Oaksterdam (1600 Broadway) $10 for benefit of Cal NORML & Oaksterdam U. Featuring: "A NORML Life" (3PM); "California 90420" (4:30 PM) and special premier presentation: "The Green Goddess" (6PM) with in-person Q& A by producer Chris Iverson. Facebook event page

Sat 4/21 DEEP GREEN FESTIVAL at Craneway Conference Center, Richmond - noon -midnite
Festive Earth Day celebration of the 7 dimensions of cannabis. Look for the CalNORML table!

I put together a YouTube version of last week's AlterNet piece. Enjoy.

I have a piece at Huffington Post today reminding everyone that Obama isn't making any friends with his escalating war on medical marijuana. It amazes me that it's still necessary to point out that republicans don't support this madness either. Anyone who wants to excuse the Obama Administration's horrible handling of this issue will have to do better than claiming that voters want to see stuff like this. The hell they do. Anyway, check it out. 

The activist-media badasses at AlterNet let me do a big front page story today on how to avoid a pot bust. You might have seen it already, cause this thing got a good amount of traffic, but if you missed it and you aren't yet sick of my know-your-rights lectures, then check it the heck out. And while you're at it, send the link to that friend of yours who's always pushing their luck.