Days before President Bush left office in January, his administration fired a parting shot at Professor Lyle Craker’s eight-year quest to cultivate marijuana for medical research by abruptly denying him a federal license despite a nearly two-year old Drug Enforcement Administration law judge’s recommendation that he receive one.

But the new administration led by President Obama, who has publicly backed the use of marijuana for medical purposes to stave off pain, might reverse the decision and keep Craker’s license application from going up in smoke.

A source familiar with the case said the White House will likely demand that the decision be reviewed.

“Basically they want to do an autopsy of what occurred and have it go through a proper review,” the source said.

Craker, who is based at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, is cautiously optimistic Obama will do to the denial of the marijuana license what he has done to other Bush administration decisions on such hot-button cultural issues as embryonic stem-cell research and the abortion “gag rule” affecting overseas family planning groups.

via – National Journal “Obama Administration Likely To Review UMass Scientist’s Bid To Grow Marijuana“

This would be outstanding news and, in my opinion, an even better indicator than the cessation of the medical marijuana dispensary raids in CA and CO that the Obama administration is seriously putting science back in our government.

Last month, 16 House members wrote Attorney General Holder asking him to amend or withdraw the DEA’s final order on Craker’s application so the president’s new head of DEA could review the application. They wrote that the administrative law judge’s decision “left no doubt” that Craker is qualified to cultivate marijuana for research purposes.

The members, led by Rep. John Olver, D-Mass., said they were concerned the Bush administration’s ruling violated the “spirit” of a Jan. 20 memorandum from White House Chief of Staff Emanuel that essentially froze all “11th hour” final orders. The memo distributed shortly after the inauguration asked agency officials to reconsider final rules and regulations that have been published in the Federal Register, but have yet to take effect.

I normally do not include this much text from another site [don't sweat it, MrSpof, this is good stuff! --"R"R] but this was also an eye opener. I knew the Obama administration was going through all of former President Bush’s executive orders/rullings with a fine tooth comb but this is the first time I’ve heard of this ruling in particular being mentioned.

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The libertarian magazine Reason will be featuring an excellent piece on drug paraphernalia laws in its February issue.  I had never stopped to consider it, but laws against drug paraphernalia are like laws against pornography.

A few weeks before Barack Obama was elected president, Mary Beth Buchanan, the U.S.  attorney for western Pennsylvania, filed criminal charges against the makers of the Whizzinator, a fake penis used to deliver clean urine for drug tests.  …

It was fitting that one of Buchanan’s last prosecutions before the election involved drug paraphernalia disguised as a penis.  Taking up causes championed by the Bush administration in response to the demands of social conservatives, she has shown a conspicuous enthusiasm for attacking both paraphernalia and pornography, areas that were of little interest to the Clinton administration and are not likely to be high priorities under President Obama.  …

It’s no coincidence that Buchanan and her former bosses, John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales, are known for worrying about pornography as well as drug devices.  At bottom, both kinds of prosecutions aim to punish offensive speech.  Just as pornography implicitly endorses recreational sex, drug paraphernalia implicitly endorses recreational drug use.  Both are an affront to the moral values of the officials who choose to crack down on them. 

Like obscenity prosecutions, paraphernalia cases often target people for conduct they believed was legal.  The law in both areas is fuzzy, and drug paraphernalia, like obscenity, tends to be judged by the “I know it when I see it” method.  When they go beyond gut reactions, police and prosecutors often focus on the expression of opinions about drug use or the drug laws: A pipe is more likely to be deemed illegal, for example, if it is sold next to High Times or a “Legalize It” T-shirt.  It makes a kind of perverse sense that antiprohibitionist speech can earn you a conviction on paraphernalia charges, since it was the message sent by drug paraphernalia that led governments to ban it in the first place. 

via NORML.ORG US: Bongs Away!.

It is a long read, but very worthwhile.

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Download the NORML Daily Audio Stash for 2009-01-19

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Today’s Stash celebrates the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, the end of the Bush Administration, and the inauguration of Barack Hussein Obama.  Despite some misgivings over Change.gov and cabinet appointments, I am so excited to see the new day dawning in America.  Yes, there are dark clouds hovering over us and worse storms ahead, but I can’t help but see the silver lining – that we just can no longer afford to arrest and lock up taxpayers for their cannabis use anymore, and we can no longer overlook an untaxed ecofriendly fuel-producing billion dollar crop anymore.  As Obama has said, this wasn’t about him, it was about us.  As Change.gov and Change.org have shown, we are ready to talk about legalization of marijuana!

It’s as if enough people who think the war on drugs is stupid have realized that enough people think the war on drugs is stupid.  We’ve realized that it’s OK to ask “Why are we arresting potheads?” and “How come we don’t just sell and tax pot?” without everyone thinking we, too, are potheads and even if we are, realizing that nobody gives a damn if you are so long as you do your job, pay your taxes, and be civilized.  Enough people have either smoked it, do smoke it, or know someone who smokes it to know the government is peddling nothing but lies to prop up a failed bureaucracy.  People know that one slacker stoner, but they also know ten more who are just regular working folks who toke.  People also know alcoholics and know they’d rather hang out with the slacker stoner, given a choice, and figure if we can tolerate alcohol, we can tolerate weed.

My guest today is Tom Daubert from Montana Patients and Families United (check ‘em out at http://mtpfu.org*) who is here to warn Big Sky listeners and rally Montanans to contact their state legislator to protest Senate Bill 212, which would strip medical marijuana patient protections for life if convicted of new cannabis DUI standards so strict no patient could ever pass.  In short: choose your drivers license or your marijuana license.

Then my full reading (with music and everything!) of my Cannabis Civil Rights essay posted below, if I may indulge, and in doing so, thank George Rohrbacher for inspiring me…

*That URL always cracks me up because the show Meet the Press is often abbreviated “MTP” on progressive lefty blogs I inhabit.

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WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Bush administration struck a parting shot to legitimate science today as the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) refused to end the unique government monopoly over the supply of marijuana available for Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved research. DEA’s final ruling rejected the formal recommendation of DEA Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) Mary Ellen Bittner, issued nearly two years ago following extensive legal hearings.

The DEA ruling constitutes a formal rejection of University of Massachusetts at Amherst Professor Lyle Craker’s petition, filed initially June 24, 2001, to cultivate research-grade marijuana for use by scientists in FDA-approved studies aimed at developing the drug as a legal, prescription medication.

Professor Craker’s petition was rejected despite the opinion of DEA ALJ Bittner that granting Craker a license to grow marijuana “would be in the public interest.” Judge Bittner issued a comprehensive, 88-page nonbinding recommendation to DEA Deputy Administrator Michele Leonhartt on February 12, 2007, following nine days of hearings, testimony and evidence presented by the ACLU and others on both sides of the issue.

DEA failed to take action on Judge Bittner’s recommendation until now, continuing the strategy of delay and pattern of unresponsiveness that has characterized the process since Professor Craker first filed his initial petition seven-and-a-half years ago.

Judge Bittner’s recommendation was based largely on the fact that marijuana is the only Schedule I drug that the DEA prohibits from being produced by private laboratories for scientific research, which has resulted in a unique government monopoly that fundamentally obstructs appropriate research and regulatory channels. Other controlled substances, including LSD, MDMA, heroin and cocaine, are available to researchers from DEA-licensed private laboratories.

In contrast, the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) remains scientists’ sole source of marijuana, despite the agency’s repeated refusal to make marijuana available for privately-funded, FDA-approved studies that seek to develop smoked or vaporized marijuana into a legal, prescription medicine.

Forty-five members of the U.S. House of Representatives, Massachusetts Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and Edward Kennedy (D-MA), and a broad range of scientific, medical and public health organizations have written in support of Professor Craker, including the Lymphoma Foundation of America, the National Association for Public Health Policy, the Multiple Sclerosis Foundation, as well as several state medical and nurses’ associations.

Despite contradictory federal policy, 13 states have enacted legislation protecting patients who use medical marijuana with a physician’s recommendation from prosecution under state law, and national polls consistently find that roughly 75 percent of Americans support the use of medical marijuana.

Shorter:

US: We’d like to use marijuana as a medicine.

THEM: Marijuana is a dangerous drug.  You cannot use it.

US: But our experiences show it is a medicine!

THEM: For something to be a “medicine”, it has to be scientifically studied and proven.

US: OK, then we’d like to scientifically study marijuana.

THEM: No, you can’t have any to study.

US: Why not?

THEM: Because marijuana is a dangerous drug.

Judge Bittner’s final recommendation in support of Professor Craker’s petition is available at: www.aclu.org/drugpolicy/medmarijuana/28341lgl20070212.html

The DEA’s rejection of Professor Craker’s petition is available at: www.aclu.org/drugpolicy/medmarijuana/38298lgl20090112.html

Complete background on the case, including client profiles, hearing transcripts, a full selection of legal documents, media reports, and letters of support from lawmakers and scientists can be found at: www.aclu.org/drugpolicy/medicalmarijuanafeature/index.html and www.maps.org/mmj/DEAlawsuit.html

An interview with Prof. Craker can be found at http://www.marijuanaconversation.org/interviews/

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The latest study by Jon Gettman at DrugScience.org documents what we all know: adult marijuana prohibition does not work – even when measured by the prohibitionist’s own standards.  In 2002, the Bush Administration laid out their two-year goal, a 10% reduction in illegal drug use, and a five-year goal, a 25% reduction in illegal drug use.  Gettman lays out the case for their failure using their own statistics.

The Bulletin of Cannabis Reform
1. Failure to Reduce Marijuana Use

The Bush Administration has failed to reduce or control marijuana use in the United States. Marginal changes in marijuana and other drug use have been distorted to support inflated claims of progress in reducing marijuana and other drug use. Marijuana use is fundamentally the same as when the Bush Administration took office, and illicit drug use overall has increased.

• In 2007 there were 14.5 million current users of marijuana in the United States, compared with 14.6 million in 2002. From 2002 to 2007 annual use of marijuana declined slightly from 25.9 to 25.1 million. The number of Americans who have used marijuana at some point in their lives actually increased, from 95 million in 2002 to over 100 million in 2007.

• Teenage marijuana use remains a serious problem in the United States. One in nine (12%) 14- and 15-year-olds and one in four (23.7%) 16- and 17-year-olds used marijuana in 2007.

• There were 35.7 million annual illicit drug users in the United States in 2007, 14.4% of the population. Individuals who only use marijuana account for 41% of all annual illicit drug users. While 10.5 million people used marijuana and at least one other illegal drug (29% of all illicit drug users), there were 10.6 million people (30%) who used illegal drugs but did not use marijuana.

• There were 472,000 12- and 13-year-olds and 627,000 14- and 15-year-olds who did not use marijuana in 2006 but still used illegal drugs. Nearly half of these individuals used inhalants and illegally obtained pain relief drugs.

Read the rest of this entry by clicking here

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