Remember, the man is legally required to say these things…

The federal government is not going to pull back on its efforts to curtail marijuana farming operations, Gil Kerlikowske, director of the White House’s Office of National Drug Control Policy, said Wednesday in Fresno.

The nation’s drug czar, who viewed a foothill marijuana farm on U.S. Forest Service land with state and local officials earlier Wednesday, said the federal government will not support legalizing marijuana.

“Legalization is not in the president’s vocabulary, and it’s not in mine,” he said.

Dictionaries for Drug Czar Kerlikowske - click here to donate online to NORML and we'll remind Director Kerlikowske and President Obama that "legalization" needs to be in their vocabularies.

Kerlikowske said he can understand why legislators are talking about taxing marijuana cultivation to help cash-strapped government agencies in California. But the federal government views marijuana as a harmful and addictive drug, he said.

“Marijuana is dangerous and has no medicinal benefit,” Kerlikowske said in downtown Fresno while discussing Operation SOS — Save Our Sierra — a multiagency effort to eradicate marijuana in eastern Fresno County.

Officials say the marijuana-eradication operation will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, but the exact amount won’t be known until agencies can add up staffing, vehicle and other costs.

Stashers RevRayGreen (right) holding tin of federal medical marijuana delivered monthly to George McMahon (left)

It is amazing to make the statement that marijuana has no medicinal value in the state that has hundreds of thousands medical users and thousands of doctors recommending it for medical use for thirteen years.  Even more amazing when you know the federal government Kerlikowske works for has patents on the medical use of cannabinoids and continues to deliver tins of marijuana joints for medical purposes to four Americans.

Mr. Drug Czar, your pants are on fire!

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(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.

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From the ever-knowledgable Wikipedia (emphasis mine):

By law, the drug czar must oppose any attempt to legalize the use (in any form) of illicit drugs. According to the “Office of National Drug Control Policy Reauthorization Act of 1998″ the director of the ONDCP

(12) shall ensure that no Federal funds appropriated to the Office of National Drug Control Policy shall be expended for any study or contract relating to the legalization (for a medical use or any other use) of a substance listed in schedule I of section 202 of the Controlled Substances Act (21 U.S.C. 812) and take such actions as necessary to oppose any attempt to legalize the use of a substance (in any form) that– 1. is listed in schedule I of section 202 of the Controlled Substances Act (21 U.S.C. 812); and 2. has not been approved for use for medical purposes by the Food and Drug Administration;

This also explains why the attempts to get the Drug Czar to comply with the Data Quality Act, the law that requires government not to lie about scientific data, may be pointless:

Application of Anti-Lobbying Laws to the Office of National Drug Control Policy’s Open Letter to State Level Prosecutors, B-301022, March 10, 2004

Finally, apart from considerations of whether any particular law has been violated, you have asked whether the Deputy Director’s letter disseminated misleading information in connection with statements relating to the debate over legalization of marijuana. Clearly, the Deputy Director’s statements reflect one perspective regarding marijuana – a perspective that is disputed by others with different viewpoints. However, ONDCP is specifically charged with the responsibility for “taking such actions as necessary to oppose any attempt to legalize the use” of certain controlled substances such as marijuana – a responsibility which logically could include the making of advocacy statements in opposition to legalization efforts. The Deputy Director’s statements about marijuana are thus within the statutory role assigned to ONDCP. Given this role, we do not see a need to examine the accuracy of the Deputy Director’s individual statements in detail.

He’s required by law to lie, so why bother checking whether his statements are lies?

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• Mother Jones explains how the Drug Czar is mandates to lie about marijuana (0)

Stasher Jillian has been posting this idea in the Fresh Stash and I’ve seen others elsewhere mention it, too.  Remember this statement from our Drug Czar that “legalization” is not in the president’s vocabulary, nor in his own?

I had written, “Somebody get Barack and Gil a dictionary!” as a joke, but Jillian took it seriously.  She says you can get little pocket dictionaries at the Dollar Store.  So let’s have at it…

Dictionaries for Drug Czar Kerlikowske - click here to donate online to NORML and we'll remind Director Kerlikowske and President Obama that "legalization" needs to be in their vocabularies.

Dictionaries for Drug Czar Kerlikowske Campaign

1. Go to your local discount store and buy a cheap pocket dictionary.
2. Find legalization inside and mark it with a yellow highlighter and a Post-It® or paper-clip on that page
3. Mail that dictionary to the Drug Czar at the address below.

Cheaper Option:

1. Buy a postcard.
2. On the postcard write: “Director Kerlikowske, here is a new word for your vocabulary:  le·gal·i·za·tion (noun): the act of authorizing something previously illegal.”
3. Mail that postcard to the Drug Czar at the address below.

Cheap and simple no-mail option:

1. Click that graphic up above to donate online to NORML.
2. Fill in the boldfaced fields.
3. Click the “Comments (Add any group affiliation here)”.
4. Enter “Dictionary for the Drug Czar” in that line.

MAIL YOUR DICTIONARIES AND POST CARDS TO:

Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP)
Executive Office of the President (EOP)
Attn: Director Gil Kerlikowske
Washington, DC 20503

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The remarks from our Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy on the release of the UN 2009 World Drug Report, which endorsed drug decriminalization in a reversal of previous policy. Guess which 17-letter D-word never gets mentioned once in our “drug czar’s” 781-word statement?

Statement of R. Gil Kerlikowske
Director, National Drug Control Policy
Remarks at Release of the 2009 World Drug Report
June 24, 2009

It is a great pleasure for me to be here with UNODC Executive Director Antonio Costa for the release of the 2009 World Drug Report. I am also pleased that we can be joined today by Michele Leonhart, Acting Administrator of DEA, and William McGlynn, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL). Congratulations to Antonio and his team in Vienna for putting together this very comprehensive document. As the report shows, every nation is affected by the drug problem.

As we approach June 26th, International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Drug Trafficking, it is a good time to reflect on what we can do better. In the United States, we are moving away from divisive “drug war” rhetoric and focusing on employing all the tools at our disposal to get help to those who need it. We recognize that addiction is a disease and are seeking public health solutions. My top priority is to intensify efforts to reduce the demand for drugs which fuels crime and violence around the world.

Read the rest of this entry by clicking here

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I like the guy already.

(Wall Street Journal) WASHINGTON — The Obama administration’s new drug czar says he wants to banish the idea that the U.S. is fighting “a war on drugs,” a move that would underscore a shift favoring treatment over incarceration in trying to reduce illicit drug use.

In his first interview since being confirmed to head the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, Gil Kerlikowske said Wednesday the bellicose analogy was a barrier to dealing with the nation’s drug issues.

“Regardless of how you try to explain to people it’s a ‘war on drugs’ or a ‘war on a product,’ people see a war as a war on them,” he said. “We’re not at war with people in this country.”

Mr. Kerlikowske’s comments are a signal that the Obama administration is set to follow a more moderate — and likely more controversial — stance on the nation’s drug problems. Prior administrations talked about pushing treatment and reducing demand while continuing to focus primarily on a tough criminal-justice approach.

The Obama administration is likely to deal with drugs as a matter of public health rather than criminal justice alone, with treatment’s role growing relative to incarceration, Mr. Kerlikowske said.

It’s a step in the right direction, but it still begins with the flawed premise that use of marijuana by Americans is something the government needs to reduce.  It’s still the “all use is abuse” model that says if we catch and adult with pot, there needs to be some sanction.  I’m happy they wish to change that sanction from a prison cell to an unnecessary forced treatment bed, but all that accomplishes is a redirection of the drug war money from the prison/industrial complex to the drug testing/rehab industries.

Sen. Tom Coburn, the lone senator to vote against Mr. Kerlikowske, was concerned about the permissive attitude toward marijuana enforcement, a spokesman for the conservative Oklahoma Republican said.

Mr. Kerlikowske said the issue was one of limited police resources, adding that he doesn’t support efforts to legalize drugs. He also said he supports needle-exchange programs, calling them “part of a complete public-health model for dealing with addiction.”

James Pasco, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police, the nation’s largest law-enforcement labor organization, said that while he holds Mr. Kerlikowske in high regard, police officers are wary.

“While I don’t necessarily disagree with Gil’s focus on treatment and demand reduction, I don’t want to see it at the expense of law enforcement. People need to understand that when they violate the law there are consequences.”*

They just can’t get past the moral imperative to punish potheads, can they?  The way prohibitionists see it, they said don’t do it, so you just shouldn’t do it.  There is no questioning of why we shouldn’t do it, no examination of the consequences of doing it versus the consequences of getting caught, and no consideration that doing it may actually be beneficial for some.

Imagine if the government came out and said it was taking steps to reduce drinking by adults – not drunk driving or binge drinking by college kids or alcoholism, but just overall alcohol consumption in this country.  Imagine if anyone found to be intoxicated on alcohol outside their home was considered to be an “addict” and was forced into “treatment” by a court at their own expense.  Imagine entire advertising campaigns showing the reality of people drinking – fights, puking, regrettable one-night stands – with an “Alcohol – Just Say No” theme.

But no, despite over 100,000 deaths per year, thousands of drunk driving incidents, and countless rude and disgusting encounters with drunk people, day after day I see commercials of exceptionally healthy attractive non-drunk people reminding me to “drink responsibly”.  It is assumed that most people are adults who can responsibly handle a drink or two and the few who can’t hold their liquor are just the unavoidable cost of living in a free society.

Why does this “responsible use” model not apply to the mildly psychotropic non-toxic herb that never kills and its largely non-violent responsible adult users?  For marijuana, why must we favor “treatment over incarceration” instead of legalization over incarceration?

Read the rest of this entry by clicking here

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