Obama

The White House drug czar keeps saying that legalization is not in the president's vocabulary. In order for Pres. Obama to make an informed decision about marijuana policy, he'll need to know that word.

Please use the form below to send Pres. Obama the definition of the word legalize. You can also customize the text below the definition to tell the president why you support ending marijuana prohibition.

Click here to send a message to US President Obama

By Mike Lillis

President Obama disappointed a lot of health care advocates earlier this year when, contrary to campaign vows, he declined to include in his budget the elimination of a decades-old ban on federal funding for needle exchange programs, which have been shown to prevent blood-borne illnesses like HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis C.

Enter the House Democrats.

A House Appropriations subcommittee today approved a massive $161 billion funding bill for the labor, health and education departments, including language to pluck the needle-funding ban that Obama didn’t.

Reuters has the money quotes that are indicative of the partisan debate that’s sure to loom, first from Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey (D-Wis.): Read more »

ROME -- The Obama administration's special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan told allies on Saturday that the United States was shifting its drug policy in Afghanistan away from eradicating opium poppy fields and toward interdicting drug supplies and cultivating alternative crops.

"The Western policies against the opium crop, the poppy crop, have been a failure," the representative, Richard C. Holbrooke, told reporters on the margins of the Group of 8 conference in the northern Italian city of Trieste, Reuters reported. "They did not result in any damage to the Taliban, but they put farmers out of work and they alienated people and drove people into the arms of the Taliban." Read more »

The Pentagon and Homeland Security Department are drawing up plans to send National Guard troops to the Mexico border to fight the drug war.

The Boston Globe reported on Saturday that the Obama administration has proposed a $350 million initiative to "expand the US military's role in the war on drugs".

The Obama Admin says it needs the money to make sure the president has "additional flexibility to respond to the drug-related violence", but critics are skeptical:

The initiative, which was tucked into a supplemental budget request sent to Congress this month, has raised concerns over what some US officials perceive as an effort by the Pentagon to increase its counternarcotics profile through a large pot of money that comes with few visible requirements. Read more »

April 21, 2009
No More Ambiguity

By FRED GARDNER

Flags flying, soldiers dying
all the politicians lying
–business as usual

It's official –under Barack Obama, the Department of Justice will not restrain federal prosecutors targeting medical marijuana providers. Any lingering hopes that the new Administration would implement change in this area were blasted April 17 when U.S. Attorney Thomas O'Brien forwarded to District Judge George Wu a letter from DOJ clarifying ObamAdmin policy.

The clarification had been requested by Judge Wu. On March 23, responding to widespread media reports of a "policy change" under Obama, Wu had postponed the sentencing of Charles Lynch, 46, a Morro Bay dispensary operator, until the U.S. Attorney could provide a written statement elucidating the present policy.

The definitive letter, signed by H. Marshall Jarrrett, director of the office that oversees all U.S. Attorneys, is addressed to O'Brien. Read more »

The Hill
By Jordy Yager
04/21/09 05:22 PM [ET]

For marijuana lobbyists, the grass is looking greener in Washington.

Talk of legalizing pot has flooded the public spotlight since the beginning of the year. Former presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) and Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Calif.) have made public comments in support of legalizing the drug, and President Obama fielded a marijuana-related question at his first virtual presidential town hall meeting in March. In the past six weeks, more than half of the dozen congressional hearings on the U.S.-Mexico border violence have entertained the idea of legalizing it.

“We are seeing a massive explosion of interest in this issue, very rapidly, across many different fronts,” said Aaron Houston, the director of government relations for the Marijuana Policy Project.

As Houston and other lobbyists find a stronger focus on the issue, 12-hour workdays are no longer the exception. Read more »

Agence France-Presse

Mexican lawmakers and experts on Monday began a first debate on the legalization of marijuana as part of a possible strategy to tackle the country's powerful drug cartels.

The five-day forum takes place with the death toll from the country's drug violence at around 7,000 people killed since the start of last year in mounting attacks amid a military crackdown on the cartels launched by President Felipe Calderon.

Discussions will focus on the possible impact of cannabis legalization on drug violence and public health and drug consumption, the opposition Social Democratic Party, which supports decriminalization, said in a statement.

The debate starts two months before legislative elections and three days ahead of a visit to Mexico by U.S. President Barack Obama, in which Mexico's drug cartels are likely to be top of the agenda. Read more »

The Lancet
Volume 373, Issue 9671
11 April 2009-17 April 2009, Pages 1237-1238
Kelly Morris

US drug policy is shifting. Since Barack Obama's inauguration as US president, he has expressed support for repealing the ban on federal funding for needle exchanges, an end to the disparity of sentencing for crack and powder cocaine, and an expansion of drug courts for non-violent offenders. Pre-election, Obama said that federal funds should not be used to circumvent state laws on medical marijuana facilities. When the Drug Enforcement Agency continued to raid such facilities, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that Obama's position is now policy, and vowed to end raids. Read more »

by David Edwards and Joe Byrne, Raw Story

Mexican Ambassador Arturo Sarukhan joined CBS' Bob Schieffer on Face the Nation today to talk about the violence on Mexico's border resulting from the drug trade. Among other things, the senior diplomat told Schieffer that the U.S. should take the debate over marijuana legalization seriously.

"Those that suggest that some of these measures need to be looked at understand the dynamics of the drug trade; you have to bring demand down and one way to do it is to move in that direction [towards legalization]...There are many others who believe that doing this will just fan the flames," Sarukhan told Schieffer. Read more »

April 10, 2009

The Chicago Tribune

PHILADELPHIA -- In another clear break from past policy, President Obama announced Friday that he intended to nominate as the nation's No. 2 drug czar a scientist often considered the No. 1 researcher on addiction and treatment.

A. Thomas McLellan, a University of Pennsylvania psychologist, will be charged with reducing demand for drugs, a part of the foreign-supply-and-domestic-demand equation that many policy experts say has been underemphasized for years.

"We're blown away. He understands," said Stephen J. Pasierb, president and chief executive of the Partnership for a Drug-Free America, that addiction "is a parent, a family, a child issue."

If confirmed by the Senate, McLellan will be deputy director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, which advises the president and coordinates anti-drug efforts. Obama last month nominated Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske to head the office. Read more »