A Conversation With Barack Obama : Rolling Stone ROLLING STONE: The War on Drugs has cost taxpayers $500 billion since 1973. Nearly 500,000 people are behind bars on drug charges today, yet drugs are as available as ever. Do you plan to continue the War on Drugs, or will you make some significant change in course?
OBAMA: Anybody who sees the devastating impact of the drug trade in the inner cities, or the methamphetamine trade in rural communities, knows that this is a huge problem. I believe in shifting the paradigm, shifting the model, so that we focus more on a public-health approach. I can say this as an ex-smoker: We’ve made enormous progress in making smoking socially unacceptable. You think about auto safety and the huge success we’ve had in getting people to fasten their seat belts.
The point is that if we’re putting more money into education, into treatment, into prevention and reducing the demand side, then the ways that we operate on the criminal side can shift. I would start with nonviolent, first-time drug offenders. The notion that we are imposing felonies on them or sending them to prison, where they are getting advanced degrees in criminality, instead of thinking about ways like drug courts that can get them back on track in their lives — it’s expensive, it’s counterproductive, and it doesn’t make sense.
The Swamp: Jim Webb’s fighting political manifesto
In his new book, Virginia Sen. Jim Webb describes an America that lacks a coherent national security strategy while bogged down in a war that should never have been fought.
It is a country, he says, where the economic disparities between rich and poor have reached frightening levels.
And it is a nation, he says, that is waging an ineffective battle against crime by locking up more than 2 million residents– or 25 percent of the world’s reported prisoners.
It also serves as a political manifesto of sorts for Webb, who has been touted as a potential running mate for either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton in November.
On crime policy, Webb calls for rethinking a strategy focused on incarceration that he says is costly and ineffective.
“Either we are home to the most evil population on earth, or we are locking up a lot of people who really don’t need to be in jail, for actions that other countries seem to handle in more constructive ways,” he wrote.
“The time has come to stop locking up people for mere possession and use of marijuana. It makes far more sense to take the money that would be saved by such a policy and use it for enforcement of gang-related activities.”
Can you imagine? A president in Barack Obama who says he “inhaled frequently - that was the point” alongside a vice president in Jim Webb who says it’s time to “stop locking up people for mere possession and use of marijuana”!
I try not to get my hopes up. President Carter said we should decriminalize marijuana back in 1978, but then a cocaine scandal involving one of his staff sunk that initiative. President Clinton became the first president from the cannabis-friendly baby boom generation, admitted to trying marijuana… and then presided over the rise in annual marijuana arrests from around 300,000 to around 700,000.
Yet this time I feel like we are on the verge of some serious change in federal cannabis policy. Obama says he will not let the DEA raid medical marijuana states. In 2004 he said we need to decriminalize marijuana, though he’s backed off of those statements during this campaign. But during a time when our economy is busted and we’re fighting two wars in the Middle East, I’m hopeful that the lure of tax revenue from cannabis and expenditure reductions in the drug war will overcome the fear of change and the scaremongering about the “demon reefers”.
Then there’s John McCain, who has literally turned his back on medical marijuana patients on the campaign trail. He talks a lot about reducing the size of government and eliminating wasteful spending. Typical conservative points, but how come that never applies to the failed War on (Certain American Citizens Using Non-Pharmaceutical, Non-Alcoholic, Tobacco-Free) Drugs?
[The latest upgrade to WordPress 2.5.1 has wiped out my style sheets. So that’s why the Stash site looks funny today. I’m working hard on getting it fixed, please be patient.]
This is in response to yesterday’s story on Barack Obama, campaigning in Oregon, stating he would base medical marijuana policy on “sound science” and end the DEA raids in medical marijuana states.
“Barack Obama’s pledge to stop Executive agencies from implementing laws passed by Congress raises serious doubts about his understanding of what the job of the President of the United States actually is. His refusal to enforce the law reveals that Barack Obama doesn’t have the experience necessary to do the job of President, or that he fundamentally lacks the judgment to carry out the most basic functions of the Executive Branch. What other laws would Barack Obama direct federal agents not to enforce?”
Judging by public opinion, which overwhelmingly supports medical marijuana, trying to bash Senator Obama for his pledge to end DEA raids seems to me a political loser. While today’s Republican party may officially denounce medical marijuana, classic conservatives have always favored regulation of cannabis and many feel that a federal government that interferes in a doctor-patient relationship has overstepped its bounds. Fifteen Republicans voted for Hinchey-Rohrabacher in its last offering and Republican Ron Paul is sponsoring the latest incarnation of the bill to end DEA raids in medical marijuana states.
Senator Barack Obama is campaigning here in my home state of Oregon. Our primary is May 20th and he is expected to win handily and capture the majority of the pledged delegates to the Democratic National Convention in Denver. Our local weekly paper caught up with him to ask some “Oregon specific” questions, like timber, liquified natural gas plants, and, of course, medical marijuana:
“I would because I think our federal agents have better things to do, like catching criminals and preventing terrorism. The way I want to approach the issue of medical marijuana is to base it on science. And if there is sound science that supports the use of medical marijuana and if it is controlled and prescribed in a way that other medicine is prescribed, then it’s something we should consider.”
Next president might be gentler on pot clubs
Ever since California voters became the first in the nation to legalize medical marijuana in 1996, the state has faced unyielding opposition from the federal government, which insists it has the power to prohibit a drug it considers useless and dangerous.
That could all change with the next presidential election.
As the candidates prepare for a May 20 primary in Oregon, one of 12 states with a California-style law, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois has become an increasingly firm advocate of ending federal intervention and letting states make their own rules when it comes to medical marijuana.
His Democratic rival, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, is less explicit, recently softening a pledge she made early in the campaign to halt federal raids in states with medical marijuana laws. But she has expressed none of the hostility that marked the response of her husband’s administration to California’s initiative, Proposition 215.
Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the Republican nominee-in-waiting, has gone back and forth on the issue - promising a medical marijuana patient at one campaign stop that seriously ill patients would never face arrest under a McCain administration, but ultimately endorsing the Bush administration’s policy of federal raids and prosecutions.
Senator Obama seems to understand that there is legitimate medical use for marijuana, comparing doctor-prescribed morphine to doctor-recommended marijuana. Senator Clinton seems to have waffled a bit, saying first that the DEA raids in medical marijuana states should end, but later saying instead that DEA raids shouldn’t be a “high priority”, which leaves the possibility open that the DEA raids would be a priority to some lesser extent. She also seems unaware of marijuana’s proven medicinal benefits, calling for more research despite the dozens of studies that have confirmed marijuana as medicine. And Senator McCain has flip-flopped numerous times on this issue, telling one patient he’d never be arrested for using medical marijuana, but then stating that he would not end DEA raids in medical marijuana states.
Friday is Cannabis Community day on the Stash, and coming up after the news, we’re speaking with our regular guest Steve Bloom, the webmaster at CelebStoner.com. We’ll be discussing the Democratic presidential candidate’s latest stands on medical marijuana, some crazy opinions offered lately by Snoop Dogg about Barack Obama, a CelebStoner Harold & Kumar contest, and Steve’s tour dates to promote his new book, Pot Culture, The A-Z Guide to Stoner Language & Life.
Next, Cannabis Karri brings back one of her favorites, the jazz group The Tallbrothers, with their song “You Get Me Too High”. These hep cats from British Columbia will get you the right kind of mellow for your weekend.
We wrap things up today with director/producer Craig Nisker and writer/actor Chris Iverson who are here to promote their new film, The Green Goddess, based on the true exploits of Iverson and friends growing six football fields’ worth of marijuana in Switzerland in the 1990s.
Finally, don’t forget that every Saturday we’re now posting the NORML Weekend Music Stash, where you can get all of the last ten songs from our daily musical breaks in one podcast, suitable for your weekend party pleasure. If you have a band that would like to be featured on our podcast, please send us an email at stash ‘at’ norml.org.
So sit back and relax with your favorite strain and enjoy your NORML Daily Audio Stash…
Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama recently toured Oregon with his campaign. In the southwestern Oregon town of Medford, he sat down with the Medford Mail-Tribune for an interview. (Cue video to 5:00 for the question of Oregon’s medical marijuana initiative.)
“When it comes to medical marijuana, I have more of a practical view than anything else,” the Senator explained. “My attitude is that if it’s an issue of doctors prescribing medical marijuana as a treatment for glaucoma or as a cancer treatment, I think that should be appropriate because there really is no difference between that and a doctor prescribing morphine or anything else. I think there are legitimate concerns in not wanting to allow people to grow their own or start setting up mom and pop shops because at that point it becomes fairly difficult to regulate.”
I’m not familiar with all the details of the initiative that was passed [in Oregon] and what safeguards there were in place, but I think the basic concept that using medical marijuana in the same way, with the same controls as other drugs prescribed by doctors, I think that’s entirely appropriate. I would not punish doctors if it’s prescribed in a way that is appropriate. That may require some changes in federal law.”
I will tell you that - I want to be honest with you - whether I want to use a whole lot of political capital on that [laughs] when we’re trying to get health care passed or end the war in Iraq is, yeah, the likelihood of that being real high on my list is not likely.
“What I’m not going to be doing is using Justice Department resources to try to circumvent state laws on this issue simply because I want folks to be investigating violent crimes and potential terrorism. We’ve got a lot of things for our law enforcement officers to deal with.”
Senator Obama, people in twelve medical marijuana states are already “growing their own”. At a time when you are trying to “get health care passed”, doesn’t it make sense to allow people to grow their own medicine as a method of reducing overall health care costs? The only concern anyone has about patients growing medicine is whether that medicine gets diverted to the black market, a condition you as president could alleviate by adding your support to Rep. Barney Franks’ bills to decriminalize personal marijuana possession at the federal level.
On my nationally-syndicated radio show this morning I had a caller from Las Vegas. I had been discussing the fallout from Senator Obama’s pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and how his comments, while controversial, aren’t necessarily surprising. I was referencing Wright’s sermon where he speaks of three strikes laws, drugs in the inner cities, and more young black men in prison than in college and asks, “God bless America? No, God damn America…”
My caller took great offense to that and ranted about how Obama belonged to this “racist church” for twenty years, and I let him ramble a bit before I asked him about the truth of the disproportionate impact of the drug war on racial minorities. He then called Wright’s claim about the CIA inventing crack to take down the inner city “bogus” and told me I was believing lies… and that’s where I let him have it. I try not to be one of those talk radio hosts who shouts over his callers, but whenever I think of poor Gary Webb’s “suicide” after he exposed the connection between the CIA turning a blind eye to and at times assisting the trafficking of cocaine to the inner cities in order to fund black budget illegal wars in Central America, I get a bit upset. Especially when I’ve seen the interviews with the former CIA officers who acknowledged they did just that (well, they didn’t “invent” crack; that’s just CIA-funneled-supply meeting street-level-demand in the form of a few entrepreneurs with some rudimentary chemistry skills).
If you’d like to hear the show, it will be posted Sunday night to my website, RadicalRuss.net; just click on the speaker in the yellow box. The caller in question hits at about the 42:00 mark.
riday is Cannabis Community day on the Stash, and coming up after the news, we’re speaking with Steve Bloom, our regular Friday guest who brings us the latest on celebrity and cannabis from CelebStoner.com. Steve tells us about some controversy over the new album from the Black Crowes, a look ahead to Willie Nelson’s 75th birthday, and the unveiling of CelebStoner.com’s “Stoners for Obama” campaign.
Cannabis Karri brings us got some music from P.A.I.N. (the Propaganda and Information Network) and their song called “Grow More Weed”.
Then we wrap thing up with a replay of our conversation with Dan Viets, a Missouri attorney specializing in civil rights and the Drug War, as we examine the new record prison population in the Land of the Free.
So sit back and relax with your favorite strain and enjoy your Daily Audio Stash…
(HuffingtonPost) Hillary Clinton has come out against making retroactive the small change in sentencing guidelines that allows some people convicted under the overly harsh crack laws to have their sentences reviewed by a judge, and if they are found eligible, given early release. Most blacks affected will still serve more than a decade in prison for a nonviolent crime for which whites often escape incarceration entirely– but nevermind.
Hillary has bought into fears that this means a sudden massive release of an army of Willie Hortons. But over 90% of crack prisoners sentenced under these laws have no record of violent crime– and 94% were not classified as “kingpins” or even mid-level drug dealers. Further, the judge reviewing the sentences provides a safety net to ensure that those who are a risk to the public are not released early.
Obama, meanwhile, supports making the sentencing change retroactive. Even though politically, given his admission about his own drug use, he has far more to lose than she does by doing the right thing.
Top Obama Flip-Flops - washingtonpost.com Decriminalization of marijuana: While running for the U.S. Senate in January 2004, Obama told Illinois college students that he supported eliminating criminal penalties for marijuana use. In the Oct. 30, 2007, presidential debate, he joined other Democratic candidates in opposing the decriminalization of marijuana.
I think it’s interesting that the Post is criticizing a “flip-flop” for becoming more punitive toward cannabis smokers. It’s the kind of “flip-flop” that people who wouldn’t support the senator would want to see, isn’t it? Wouldn’t decrim be something the political establishment would want him to “flip-flop” on?
Whatever brings the subject up in conversation, I suppose…
With Illinois Senator Barack Obama racking up big wins in the Democratic primaries and caucuses lately, there has been more scrutiny about his views on marijuana reform. In 2004, he had stated that he supported the decriminalization of marijuana. He has backed off of that position recently (as detailed on the Stash last week and at Drug War Chronicle and CelebStoner.com), but I see that as just political posturing. Given that he’s admitted his past use of marijuana and cocaine in his youth, perhaps Obama knows that he needs to protect himself from what could be a political liability — appearing to be “soft on drugs”.
Yet I think the success of the Obama campaign, in light of his honesty about marijuana use, shows that our society may finally be ready to enact meaningful reform of marijuana laws. You need only think back to Bill Clinton’s “I didn’t inhale” from the 1990s and Judge Ginsberg’s doomed Supreme Court nomination from the 1980s to see the progress being made. Now you can be a serious candidate for political office even if you are one of the 90 million or so that have tried marijuana! And you don’t even have to elaborately parse your marijuana experiences into a nonsensical rationalization (”I didn’t inhale”? Please. He was a sax-playing longhaired college kid studying abroad in the late 1960s!), you can be honest even if you “inhaled frequently”.
I’d prefer that Obama could stand by his 2004 call for decrim, but with the pressing issues of this election like the Iraq occupation and our floundering economy, I can understand how he wouldn’t want to be distracted and vulnerable to attacks on drug policy, which, while important to us, isn’t an issue that he’d want sidetracking his campaign.
Just the fact that he can be honest about his marijuana use is a positive step. To have a president who was honest about marijuana and can understand what marijuana and the people who use it are really like will certainly be an improvement over the current administration.
Plus, I don’t think an Obama Administration would surprise us like the Clinton Administration did by ratcheting up the War on Marijuana and setting records for annual marijuana arrests. It seemed like Bill Clinton’s administration tried to counter a “soft on drugs” image by locking people up. Clinton put himself in that corner by sheepishly deflecting questions about his use, implying that marijuana use was something to be ashamed of, something to deny. Obama’s openness leads me to believe that he wouldn’t feel the same pressure to be “tough on drugs”. Also, I think his background as an African-American man may make him more sensitive to the injustices of the War on Marijuana.
Only time will tell, and he hasn’t gotten the nomination yet. But I am hopeful about finally seeing some meaningful change in marijuana policy at the federal level.
Join NORML In Berkeley For Our 2008 National Conference Register Today To Take Advantage Of Discounted Rates; Congress Fails To Adopt Appropriations Bill - No Opportunity to Vote on Hinchey-Rohrabacher Amendment; California: Medical Pot Statute Does Not Conflict With Federal Anti-Drug Laws; San Diego Supervisors To Appeal Ruling; interview with SSDP's Kris Krane
Members Of Congress Demand An End To Federal Pot Possession Arrests; National MS Society Makes Recommendations Regarding Therapeutic Use Of Cannabis; The Tragic Death Of Rachel Hoffman -- And The Tragedy That Is Pot Prohibition; Interview with Rep. Barney Frank.
Pot Compound Enhances Efficacy Of Anti-Cancer Agents, Study Says; California: Nonviolent Offender Rehabilitation Act Qualifies For November Ballot; New Orleans: District Attorney Charging Minor Pot Offenders With Felonies; Kelly Maddy on Joplin MO Decrim Effort.
John Wesley Hall, president-elect of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, describes the case precendent in roadside traffic stops and search and seizure.
Seattle, Washington attorney Doug Hiatt explains the latest medical use issues in Washington State, including denial of transplant organs for medmj patients.
