Antiwar.com

But there’s one war the president may stop – in fact, his election has motivated developments toward this end at a pace not seen in decades. We’re talking about the War on Drugs, and ending it could change the lives of millions of Americans – as well as Mexicans, Colombians, and others in places that feed America’s illicit drug habits.

While it might sound a little fantastic, consider this: in the last year, the White House has ordered its Justice Department to stop prosecuting medical marijuana growers, users, and dispensaries, as long as they are operating within state law. That has led the 13 states with medical marijuana laws to push forward more assertively in establishing public dispensaries and encouraged legislation in other states to relax marijuana statutes and allow medical marijuana.

Draconian minimum sentencing for drug arrests has finally been reversed in New York, and sentencing reform has pushed ahead in other states, too. Just last week, Congress ended a restriction on a District of Columbia medical marijuana law passed by voters in 1998. Ironically, former U.S. Rep. Bob Barr (R-Ga.) helped put that restriction into place, but since then, the former federal prosecutor has reexamined his position on marijuana as a states’ rights issue and has been helping to push back against further federal intrusion.

In February, Obama appointed Gil Kerlikowske as drug czar. Ostensibly, he’s quite the antithesis of drug czars past, since he is no ideologue. In fact, he faithfully implemented decriminalization efforts as Seattle’s police chief despite his own opposition, pragmatically working with community activists to keep nonviolent drug offenders out of jail.

A really sound and concise article from Kelley B. Vlahos. Check out the rest of it here.

House and Senate negotiations for the 2010 Appropriations bill have been completed.  This is the huge federal budget bill and it just so happens that Washington DC is a federal district and its spending is controlled by Congress.

In 1998, DC passed a medical marijuana bill overwhelmingly, but Congressional drug warriors led by Rep. Bob Barr of Georgia prevented DC from spending any federal money to count the votes (that’s right, in our democracy’s capital, our leaders conspired to prevent citizens from counting votes in a legal election).  When that was deemed unconstitutional, they spent the money to count the votes, showing that 69% of DC supported medical marijuana.  So Rep. Barr created the “Barr Amendment” that prevented DC from spending any money to implement the medical marijuana program they had voted in.

Well, today’s 2010 Appropriations bill changes all that.  In addition to removing bans on abortion, domestic partnerships, and needle exchange, Congress has given the go-ahead to begin implementing DC medical marijuana!

(US Senate) Removing Special Restrictions on the District of Columbia: Eliminates a prohibition on the use of local tax funds for abortion, thereby putting the District in the same position as the 50 states. Also allows the District to implement a referendum on use of marijuana for medical purposes as has been done in other states, allows use of Federal funds for needle exchange programs except in locations considered inappropriate by District authorities, and discontinues a ban on the use of funds in the bill for domestic partnership registration and benefits.

DC’s medical marijuana bill was written with the same sort of open language as was passed in California… will we be seeing marijuana dispensaries on K Street anytime soon?

Sec. 1.  All seriously ill individuals have the right to obtain and use marijuana for medical purposes… [for any] other serious or chronic illnesses for which the recommending physician reasonably believes that marijuana has demonstrated utility.

So, no restriction to a list of cancer, AIDS, MS, etc. for medical marijuana, like every other medical marijuana state except California.  DC docs will be able to recommend for anxiety, depression, PTSD, insomnia, or any condition they think marijuana will alleviate.

Sec. 5 (a)  …In determining a quantity of marijuana that constitutes a medical supply, this act shall be interpreted to assure that any medical patient protected by the act shall have access to a sufficient quantity of marijuana to assure that they can maintain their medical supply without any interruption in their treatment or depletion of their medical supply of marijuana.

Similar to Washington State’s vague language of a “60-day supply”, which has recently been determined to be 24 ounces of usable medicine and 15 live plants.

Sec 6.  A medical patient may designate or appoint a licensed health care practitioner, parent, sibling, child, or other close relative, domestic partner, case manager/worker, or best friend to serve as a primary caregiver for the purposes of this act.  A designation under this act need not be in writing; however, any written designation or appointment shall be prima facie evidence that a person has been so designated. A patient may designate not more than four persons at any one time to serve as a primary caregiver for the purposes of this act.  For the purposes of this subsection, the term ‘best friend’ means a close friend who is feeding, nursing, bathing, or otherwise caring for the medical patient while the medical patient is in a weakened condition.

Four caregivers, all of whom are exempt from prosecution for marijuana!  Four people who need not be designated in writing!  Somehow I think anytime a medical marijuana patient in DC is confronted by police, the people in his car or home will suddenly be “best friends”.

Sec. 7  Residents of the District of Columbia may organize and operate not-for-profit corporations for the purpose of cultivating, purchasing, and distributing marijuana exclusively for the medical use of medical patients…. The Director of DCRA shall issues such corporations exemptions from the sales tax, use tax, income tax, and other taxes of the District of Columbia in the same manner as other nonprofit corporations.

So not only will there be dispensaries on K Street, they will be tax-free dispensaries! Imagine Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa or Rep. Mark Souder of Indiana forced to walk down the streets with legal marijuana users buying legal marijuana in legal dispensaries!  How will they continue to sell the scary threat of California pot shops when they’re forced to see how banal the shops are in practice?  And if we see, as I expect, DC violent crime stats to fall following implementation, their demonization of medical marijuana will sound even sillier to their constituents.

In other good news for our side, the drug czar’s ad budget was slashed by over a third:

National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign: $45 million, $25 million below 2009 and the budget request, for a national ad campaign providing anti-drug messages  directed at youth. Reductions were made in this program because of evaluations questioning its effectiveness. Part of the savings was redirected to other ONDCP drug-abuse-reduction programs.

The “questioning its effectiveness” refers to congressional studies that showed that kids exposed to the ads were more likely to try drugs!

Update: I’ve modified the headline from “Congress lifts…” to better reflect the story — “R”R

A House appropriations subcommittee has lifted a long-standing budget rider banning the District government from spending any money to decriminalize marijuana.

The Financial Services panel, which has oversight of D.C., has removed from the 2010 budget 11-year-old language outlawing the District’s use of federal or local funds to legalize marijuana or reduce penalties for its possession or distribution.

Rep. Jose Serrano, the subcommittee chairman, said … the budget bill “allows the District to conduct and implement a referendum on use of marijuana for medical purposes as has been done in various states.”

The District voted on medical marijuana once before, in 1998, but the votes were declared invalid. Former Rep. Bob Barr raced to have his anti-legalization language added to the budget two weeks before the initiative vote was held. When the ballots were unofficially tallied nearly a year after they were cast, it was learned that 69 percent of voters backed legalization.

It has always struck me as ironic that in the Land of the Free, our capitol was built by slaves, and that in a country born from a revolution because of “taxation without representation”, the citizens in the capital are taxed but get no vote in the House or Senate.  Add to that irony that the people in the seat of democracy were unable to exercise self rule on the matter of marijuana because the Congress wouldn’t allow them to count their votes.

Also ironic: that former Rep. Bob Barr, who introduced these democracy-killing amendments against marijuana, is now a paid lobbyist for the Marijuana Policy Project.  The author of these anti-marijuana bills came around faster than the Congress has!

(Mother Jones) AMONG OUR LEADERS in Washington, who’s been the biggest liar? There are all too many contenders, yet one is so floridly surreal that he deserves special attention. Nope, it’s not Dick Cheney or Alberto Gonzales or John Yoo. It’s a trusted authority figure who’s lied for 11 years now, no matter which party held sway. (Nope, it’s not Alan Greenspan.) This liar didn’t end-run Congress, or bully it, or have its surreptitious blessing at the time only to face its indignation later. No, this liar was ordered by Congress to lie—as a prerequisite for holding the job.

Give up? It’s the head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), a.k.a. the drug czar, who in 1998 was mandated by Congress to oppose legislation that would legalize, decriminalize, or medicalize marijuana, or redirect anti-trafficking funding into treatment. And the drug czar has also—here’s where the lying comes in—been prohibited from funding research that might give credence to any of the above. These provisions were crafted by Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and Bob Barr (R-Ga.) and pushed for by then-czar Barry McCaffrey, best remembered for being somewhat comically obsessed with the evils of medical marijuana. A few Dems complained that the bill, which set “hard targets” of an 80 percent drop in the availability of drugs, a 60 percent decrease in street purity, and a 50 percent reduction in drug-related crime and ER visits, all by 2004—whoops!—was “simplistic” and “designed to achieve political advantage.” Though the vote count was not recorded for history, it got enough bipartisan support to be signed into law by Bill “Didn’t Inhale” Clinton.

But then, the drug war has never been about facts—about, dare we say, soberly weighing which policies might alleviate suffering, save taxpayers money, rob the cartels of revenue. Instead, we’ve been stuck in a cycle of prohibition, failure, and counterfactual claims of success. (To wit: Since 1998, the ONDCP has spent $1.4 billion on youth anti-pot ads. It also spent $43 million to study their effectiveness. When the study found that kids who’ve seen the ads are more likely to smoke pot, the ONDCP buried the evidence, choosing to spend hundreds of millions more on the counterproductive ads.)

Like Stasher Jillian wrote: “the ONDCP is required by law to forever oppose legalization, and when they do our legislators say ‘look, the ONDCP opposes legalization so it must be a bad thing’, so they continue to vote against it.”  Yup, when it comes to legalizing marijuana, our three branches of government are quick to point fingers.  The Judicial branch, when we take medical marijuana to the Supreme Court, points to the Legislative and says, “Congress has the power to change it”.  When we look to the Congress, they point to the Executive and say, “The ONDCP, NIDA, and FDA all say medical marijuana is bad, so we can’t change it.”  When we appeal to the President and the Drug Czar, they point to the Judicial and say “The Supreme Court ruled we can control marijuana,” and they point to the Legislative and say, “and Congress has mandated that we do so.”

Regarding medical marijuana, there is no other policy (save perhaps foreign policy toward Israel) where the American people have have such overwhelming support for one side, regardless of party affiliation, and the leaders in Washington have the complete opposite stance, again, regardless of party affiliation.  And you know – you just know – that if any Congressman’s spouse was stricken with cancer, that regardless of whether they serve in a medical marijuana state or have ever voted against medical marijuana, one of their aides would magically find a joint or two to get the spouse through chemo.

Because it doesn’t matter if 70% of the American people support medical marijuana.  100% of Merck, Pfizer, Bristol-Myers-Squibb, Eli Lilly, GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, and others don’t.

On Thursday, January 22, CNBC will be presenting a program called Marijuana Inc., which goes into depth about the big business of marijuana. But besides the illegal uses of marijuana, there are many medical uses. For example, the Journal of Neuroscience reported that the active ingredient in marijuana can be used in the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease. Researchers found that cannabinoids can help prevent mental deterioration through the reductions of Alzheimer’s related inflammation.

Even members of the government are starting to change their tune on the drug. Bob Barr, a former Republican congressman from Georgia, who had historically opposed medical marijuana use, has done a complete turnaround and now supports the adult use of medical marijuana. He is now a lobbyist for the Marijuana Policy Project.

So are there any public companies that can benefit from the marijuana sector? There seems to be a grass roots effort to get this budding industry growing, or maybe it is just a pipe dream.

via It’s Not Just About Getting High – Seven Marijuana Stocks — Seeking Alpha.

TheHill.com – Former anti-marijuana lobbyist switches sides
The last time the House debated medical marijuana, David Krahl trod the halls of Capitol Hill lobbying against the legislation as deputy director of the Drug Free America Foundation.

Now, he’s ready to lobby for allowing medicinal use of marijuana, and do anything he can to support it.

So far, no one has asked him for help, but in a recent letter to medical marijuana bill sponsor Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-N.Y.), he proclaimed that he’d reversed his position on whether cannabis can be a medicine.

“Being away from the Drug Free America Foundation allowed me an opportunity to take a fresh look at the issue,” Krahl said. “I don’t have skin in the game anymore.”

He had joined the foundation in July 2006. At the time, the foundation’s executive director, Calvina Fay, noted his 25 years of experience in criminal justice and human services and said, “His anti-drug philosophies, along with his experience, will be a great fit.”

Foundation officials were caught off guard by Krahl’s reversal, saying they hadn’t heard of the letter until a reporter called about it. But they said they’re happy that lawmakers still aren’t trying to legalize marijuana for medicinal purposes.

“I don’t believe one person changing their position gives any credibility to the other side on this,” said foundation spokesman John Pastuovic.

Yet when they find former marijuana users who had a problem with harder drugs, the drug warriors won’t hesitate to use ex-potheads’ change of position to lend credibility to their “gateway theory”.

Earlier this year former Georgia Rep. Bob Barr, the author of the Barr Amendment that squashed DC’s overwhelming vote in favor of medical marijuana, has switched positions and now lobbies for Marijuana Policy Project.  Then there are the thousands of members of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition who want sensible marijuana regulation.

Lots of former prohibitionists have switched over to our side.  I can’t think of any of us who have switched over to support arresting people for marijuana.

Bob Barr: I Was Wrong About The War On Drugs — It’s A Failure – Politics on The Huffington Post
I’ll admit it, just five years ago I was “Public Enemy Number 1″ in the eyes of the Libertarian Party. In my 2002 congressional race for Georgia’s Seventh District, the Libertarian Party ran scathing attack ads against my stand on Medical Marijuana.

Today, I am their presidential nominee and will represent libertarians at the top of the ticket on November 4th.

Huh?

That’s right, Bob Barr, formerly the War on Drugs loving, Wiccan mocking, Clinton impeaching Republican is the presidential nominee for the Libertarian Party.

… For years, I served as a federal prosecutor and member of the House of Representatives defending the federal pursuit of the drug prohibition.

Today, I can reflect on my efforts and see no progress in stopping the widespread use of drugs. I’ll even argue that America’s drug problem is larger today than it was when Richard Nixon first coined the phrase, “War on Drugs,” in 1972.

America’s drug problem is only compounded by the vast amounts of money directed at this ongoing battle. In 2005, more than $12 billion dollars was spent on federal drug enforcement efforts while another $30 billion was spent to incarcerate non-violent drug offenders.

The result of spending all of those taxpayer’s dollars? We now have a huge incarceration tab for non-violent drug offenders and, at most, a 30% interception rate of hard drugs. We are also now plagued with the meth labs that are popping up like poisonous mushrooms across the country.

While it is clear the War on Drugs has been a failure, it is not enough to simply acknowledge that reality. We need to look for solutions that deal with the drug problem without costly and intrusive government agencies, and instead allow for private industry and organizations to put forward solutions that address the real problems.

Now if we can only get Bob Barr and Ralph Nader on the stage alongside Barack Obama and John McCain in a televised debate… imagine, the candidate of the left and of the right being pummeled on the drug war from even farther left and farther right.

OK, I’m a dreamer.  Obama and McCain will be the only two we really hear from.  But I wouldn’t count out Barr just yet.  John McCain was only getting 70%+ of the vote when he was running in primaries as the de facto nominee – there are a lot of Republicans who will vote Libertarian this year (Tom Delay’s wife being one).  And who knows how many disaffected Hillary Clinton supporters will turn to Ralph Nader?

Whatever gets people talking about the War on Drugs being the problem more so than the actual drugs, I’m all for it.

Marijuana project parties with Barr – - Breaking News, Political News & National Security News – The Washington Times
DENVER — Bob Barr has been to the Dark Side, and they do indeed have cookies.

The Libertarian National Convention kicked off yesterday with a tea-and-cookies reception hosted by the Marijuana Policy Project featuring none other than Mr. Barr, the party’s leading candidate for its presidential nomination.

Such a scene would have been unthinkable a few years ago when Mr. Barr’s name was synonymous with the war on drugs. In 1998, he authored the Barr Amendment, which prohibited the District of Columbia from voting to permit medical-marijuana use and became a lightning rod for drug-legalization advocates.

But times have changed. After leaving the Republican Party in 2006, Mr. Barr denounced the federal drug war and became a lobbyist for his former nemeses at the Marijuana Policy Project.

One of his top priorities during the last congressional session was the repeal of his own amendment, which has remained part of the congressional appropriations bill for the District of Columbia even though Mr. Barr left office in 2002.

Mr. Barr addressed his position on the drug legalization yesterday in an online conversation with the Rocky Mountain News.

“Regarding the drug war, I’ve been there, done that, and know firsthand our current strategy is not working,” said Mr. Barr.

“Continuing to have the federal government run roughshod over the states, even if the citizens of a state decide they wish to legalize medicinal marijuana, for example, is wrong,” he said. “As president, I would completely reorient federal law enforcement priorities, that currently are skewed far too much against marijuana possession, and would consider all — and I do mean all — options.”

The Libertarian Party platform calls for the repeal of drug laws and the pardoning of nonviolent drug offenders.

“The suffering that drug misuse has brought about is deplorable; however, drug prohibition causes more harm than drugs themselves,” the platform reads. “The so-called ‘War on Drugs’ is in reality a war against the American people, our Constitution and the Bill of Rights. It is a grave threat to individual liberty, to domestic order and to peace in the world.”

I’ve spoken with former Rep. Barr on the drug war issue.  He told me what changed his mind on the drug war issue was 9/11.  He felt that after 9/11, the government had gone too far in usurping civil liberties, and that caused him to rethink the usurpation of civil liberties in the drug war as well.

It’s something I often bring up when people tell me they can’t believe how our government is spying on its people, holding them without legitimate charges, seizing their property, violating their rights, all in the name of the war on terror.  I reply, “you haven’t been following the War on (Certain American Citizens Using Non-Pharmaceutical, Non-Alcoholic, Tobacco-Free) Drugs then, have you?”