Obama

By. Ethan Nadelmann, Drug Policy Alliance

 

For those of us who fought long and hard to reform the notorious 100-to-one crack/powder cocaine disparity in federal law, the Fair Sentencing Act, signed by President Obama on August 3, is at once a historic victory and a major disappointment. It's both too little, too late and a big step forward.

 

The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, which punished the sale of five grams of crack cocaine the same as 500 grams of powder cocaine, reflected the bipartisan drug war hysteria of the day and was approved with virtually no consideration of scientific evidence or the fiscal and human consequences. The argument for reform has always been twofold: sending someone to federal prison for five years for selling the equivalent of a few sugar packets of cocaine is unreasonably harsh, and it disproportionately affects minorities (almost 80 percent of those sentenced are African-Americans, even though most users and sellers of crack are not black). Read more »

By. Steve Elliot, Toke of the Town

 

What do you get when you put six Drug Czars together? Same old bullshit, except more of it.

 

It was probably inevitable, but that doesn't make it any less deplorable. Obama Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske has joined forces with five past directors of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, including czars who served under Presidents George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George H.W. Bush, against California's marijuana legalization voter initiative, Proposition 19.

 

You would think that six so-called "drug experts" working together could come up with better-reasoned arguments against Prop 19 than these tired old talking points by tired old bureaucrats.

 

Not that anybody's surprised that Kerlikowske, and by extension, the Obama Administration, opposes pot legalization. Gil's already helpfully let us know that legalization isn't in his vocabulary. Read more »

By. Mike Meno, MPP

 

One month after MPP and an ideologically diverse coalition of drug policy reformers and advocacy groups called on President Obama to withdraw Michele Leonhart as his nominee for DEA administrator, a spokesperson for the White House has declared that the president is confident that the Bush holdover is the “right” choice for the job. Mike Riggs has the story in The Daily Caller:

 

Obama is confident that Leonhart is the right choice, the White House staffer said, and that as of Friday the president wasn’t considering anyone else for the position. In other words, the response from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. to a chorus of concerns boils down to: Leonhart or bust. Read more »

By. Jacob Sullum, Reason.com

 

Yesterday half a dozen drug policy reform groups asked President Obama to withdraw his nomination of Michele Leonhart to head the DEA, citing her continued enthusiasm for raids on medical marijuana suppliers as the agency's acting administrator. "Under Leonhart’s leadership," says the joint statement by the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, California NORML, the Marijuana Policy Project, the Drug Policy Alliance, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, and Students for Sensible Drug Policy, "the DEA has staged medical marijuana raids in apparent disregard of Attorney General Eric Holder's directive to respect state medical marijuana laws." As an example, the statement cites a recent raid on Mendocino County, California, grower Joy Greenfield, who "paid more than $1,000 for a permit to cultivate 99 plants in a collective garden that had been inspected and approved by the local sheriff." When told that Greenfield had approval from local law enforcement, the DEA agent in charge of the raid reportedly replied, "I don't care what the sheriff says." NORML et al. argue that "the DEA's conduct is inconsistent with an October 2009 Department of Justice memo directing officials not to arrest individuals 'whose actions are in clear and unambiguous compliance with existing state laws providing for the medical use of marijuana.'" Read more »

by Mike Meno, MPP

 

Today, a coalition of organizations supportive of medical marijuana patients and providers — including MPP, Drug Policy Alliance (DPA), NORML, California NORML, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), and Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP) – is calling on President Obama to withdraw his nomination of Michele Leonhart to serve as administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

 

The following is a from press release just sent out on behalf of the coalition:

 

Ms. Leonhart, who is currently the DEA’s acting-administrator, has not demonstrated that she is capable of leading the agency in a thoughtful manner at a time when 14 states have enacted medical marijuana laws and science is increasingly confirming the therapeutic benefits of the substance. Read more »

By. Sasha Abramsky, Guardian.co.uk

 

The Obama administration recently formalised a dramatic rhetorical shift in the nation's approach to drug control.

 

For 40 years, the country has been officially at war against narcotics. The "war on drugs", a term conjured up by Richard Nixon in 1971 and used more frequently during the dark days of Watergate, when the president and his team were looking for any and all ways to distract an angry electorate from the administration's crookedness, has cost America hundreds of billions of dollars and generated remarkably scanty returns. It has led to unprecedented expansions in prisoner populations at a state and federal level; the building of hundreds of new prisons to house these additional inmates – at a staggering cost to state budgets; has impacted American foreign policy around the globe; and has wreaked havoc on already dilapidated communities and their residents. What it hasn't done is end the American appetite for illegal drugs or destroy the supply chains that feed this demand. Read more »

By Susan Greene, Denver Post

 

Jake Gailey got his tax refund last week, then headed straight for the mall.

 

His first stop at Town Center at Aurora on Saturday was a hat shop where he dropped $27 on a Broncos cap.

 

He and his girlfriend planned to continue shopping, but there was a glitch. A man in a suit and earpiece stopped the couple in the middle of the mall and told Gailey to wait right there.

 

"I've got him," the man signaled into his walkie-talkie, as if in some sort of dragnet.

 

Several security guards, mall employees and Aurora police officers hurried to surround Gailey. There was a problem, they said, with what he was wearing.

 

Gailey is a 28-year-old carpenter who likes to express himself with T-shirts. He was wearing his new favorite Saturday version — a short- sleever with a "Yes We Cannabis" decal resembling Barack Obama's campaign logo, but with a pot leaf.

 

The posse gave him three choices. He could take off the shirt, wear it inside out or leave the shopping center. After all, they told him, it was family night. Read more »

By. Associated Press

 

The Obama administration wants to shift U.S. aid in Mexico away from high-priced helicopters and airplanes and toward reforming Mexico’s corrupt law enforcement, courts and politicians.

 

Marking a dramatic change from past years, most of the $310 million that the Obama administration seeks for Mexico in its 2011 budget request is aimed at judicial reforms and good governance programs in Mexico.

 

"We are moving away from big ticket equipment" and toward programs that support "Mexican capacity to sustain adherence to the rule of law and respect for human rights," said Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Roberta Jacobsen in testimony prepared for a congressional subcommittee hearing on Thursday.

 

"The starkest shift is in how funding will be spent," said Shannon O’Neil of the Council of Foreign Relations, also in prepared testimony provided to The Associated Press ahead of Thursday’s hearings. Read more »

By: Gene Healy

 

In his high school yearbook photo, President Barack Obama sports a white leisure suit and a Travolta-esque collar whose wingspan could put a bystander’s eye out. Hey, it was 1979.

 

Maybe that explains the rest of young Barry's yearbook page, with its "still life" featuring a pack of rolling papers and a shout-out to the "Choom gang." ("Chooming" is Hawaiian slang for smoking pot.)

 

Far be it from me to condemn our president for harmless (and amusing) youthful indiscretions. As his predecessor put it, "When I was young and irresponsible, I was young and irresponsible."

 

But Obama's older now, and he's responsible for administering our nation's drug policy. Surely he can't feel comfortable locking up thousands of Americans for the sort of behavior that gave him a chuckle three decades ago. Read more »

By. Russ Bellville, Huffington Post

 

From the Obama Administration's recently released National Drug Control Strategy (hat tip to NORML reader Glen):

Here are the states President Obama would like the others to emulate: