Despite the president’s dismissal, legalization advocates said they saw a flood of public response in the hours and days after his remarks.

“It’s a bittersweet thing when the president dabbles in your subject matter,” said Allen F. St. Pierre, executive director for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML).

“In [Obama’s] mind marijuana legalization is not a serious concern and he’s got to confront it, so at least he did, and at least the audience chuckled,” he said. “I’ve been here long enough that, had [President George H.W. Bush] been in that same situation, in a hand-picked audience, they would have hissed in 1991. So this is all moving largely in a very positive direction.”

St. Pierre, who has been an outspoken advocate of marijuana for 18 years, said the baby boomer generation is largely responsible for the shift in discussions on marijuana laws.

“That generation is coming to age now,” he said. “They run our institutions, they run our media, academics, businesses and, frankly, our politics. So as that baby boom generation takes over, their proclivities toward reforming laws are much greater than the prior generation.”

While passage of a federal law legalizing marijuana may be years off, momentum toward decriminalizing the drug — relaxing criminal penalties for violators — is generally viewed by advocates as a positive sign.

via The Hill’s Congress Blog

Remember, folks, it took from 1906 to 1937 to get marijuana criminalized (31 years) and it’s been 72 years of prohibition since then, with the last 37 being referred to as a “war”.  There are very few living Americans who can even remember what it’s like for marijuana to not be illegal.  We’re asking thousands of bureaucrats and politicians to admit to not only being wrong but openly lying over the past three generations.  We’re asking millions of cops and parents to disregard all those sincerely-held beliefs about gateways and addiction and crime and violence.

Legalization will never happen so long as we wait for them to realize how beneficial it would be someday.  It will only happen when we force them to admit how harmful prohibition is now.

President Barack Obama campaigned on a platform of ‘change.’ Two months into his Presidency, it is clear that this ‘change’ pertains to the way Washington governs U.S. marijuana policy.

Yesterday, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder reaffirmed that he will not authorize federal justice resources to target or prosecute medical cannabis users or providers that are compliant with state law. Holder’s statements clarify remarks he made last month when he said that the Justice Department would uphold President Obama’s campaign pledge not to use the power of the federal government to circumvent state medical marijuana laws.

The Attorney General’s position stands in marked contrast to that of prior administrations. During George W. Bush’s eight years in office, federal law enforcement charged numerous state-sanctioned medical cannabis providers with federal law violations – many of whom are now serving sentences of five to ten years in prison. More commonly, U.S. Drug Enforcement Agents performed so-called “smash grabs” on state-authorized dispensaries, a tactic whereby federal agents would seize cash and but never press criminal charges. This latter policy was similar to the approach endorsed by the Clinton administration, which ordered the U.S. Justice Department to seek to civil injunctions against dozens of cannabis cooperatives in an effort to seize their assets and permanently close their doors.

But not everyone is pleased with the administration’s new ‘hands-off’ approach. Iowa Senator and longtime marijuana law reform opponent Charles Grassley immediately criticized Holder’s announcement, stating, “The first rule of medicine, first do no harm, is being violated by the attorney general by his decision.”

Grassley’s ideological opposition, though predictable, is offensive to those who support both science and the right of self-determination.

Contrary to the GOP Senator’s assertion, cannabis possesses an impeccable safety record. Marijuana’s active components, known as cannabinoids, are virtually non-toxic to cells and major organs, and are incapable of causing a lethal overdose. In 2008 investigators at McGill University in Montreal reviewed over 30 years of data on marijuana and “did not find a higher incidence rate of serious adverse events associated with medical cannabis use” compared to those who never used the drug. Even aspirin can’t make such a claim.

Further, Grassley’s arrogant allegations are an affront to the 72 million Americans who reside in the thirteen states where the use of medical cannabis is legal. They are equally objectionable to the 80 percent of voters nationwide who support the physician-supervised use of therapeutic cannabis.

Funny, last time I checked Chuck Grassley represented the state of Iowa and only the state of Iowa, which is not one of the states that have legalized the possession and use of medical cannabis under state law. Perhaps in the future Senator Grassley should stick to commenting specifically on those policies that directly impact the voters who he is elected to represent. When it comes to the laws that govern the lives and health of everyone else, the good Senator ought to simply mind his own business.

via The Hill Blog» Blog Archive » Administration’s New Policy on Medical Marijuana Is The Right One.

As of this posting, Paul’s once again proven to be the master traffic driver for The Hill’s blog; there are already 181 comments posted on this entry.  For comparison’s sake, that is 181 comments more than every other post on the front page of The Hill Blog” combined.

Our Deputy Director, Paul Armentano, has another piece posted on the influential Capitol Hill blog, “The Hill”, read by the Beltway-insiders.  His posts on marijuana legalization are consistently the most-commented-on posts on that blog.  Surf on over and leave your own comment for our elected officials to read.

Is it at all surprising to see that the Obama team has decided to hide their collective heads in the sand when it comes to the issue of reevaluating America’s ineffective and antiquated marijuana policies? Not at all. But by doing so, the President-Elect and Congress are missing the bigger picture.

The overwhelming popularity of the marijuana reform issue — as manifested on Change.gov, Change.org (which is conducting its own online poll of the top issues facing America; the legalization of marijuana tops the list), and even here on the Hill (where my most recent blog posts have each garnered several hundreds of readers’ comments, almost all of them supportive) — illustrate two important points.

One: there is a significant, vocal, and identifiable segment of our society that wants to see an end to America’s archaic and overly punitive marijuana laws. Two: the American public is ready and willing to engage in a serious and objective political debate regarding the merits of legalizing the use of cannabis by adults.

via The Hill Blog» Blog Archive » Marijuana Law Reform No Longer a Political Liability, It’s a Political Opportunity.

The popularity of the topic was also picked up on the FOX “News” Channel:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Paul Armentano’s essay,  We’ve Cut Cigarette Smoking By Half and We Didnt Have To Arrest 20 Million Americans To Do It, is now online on The Hill’s Congress Blog, which is read daily by many influential policy makers in Washington, DC.  Let’s freep* that blog, Stashers, and add your comments to the post, so they will know that there is a lot of interest in the cannabis reform issue.

* Freep: to collectively swarm an online poll or blog, in the manner of the denizens of the Free Republic blog, known as “freepers”.

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.

The Hill Blog» Blog Archive » Marijuana Decriminalization Bill Ignores the Facts
A few weeks ago, Congressman Barney Frank and Ron Paul introduced H.R. 5843, an ill-considered piece of legislation aimed at legalizing marijuana, a topic more often heard in college dorms at 2 o’clock in the morning than in the hallowed halls of our Congress. Indeed, at a press conference announcing the effort to legalize pot, Congressman Frank cracked jokes about how this law could create a “marijuana futures market” and acknowledged that the chance of the bill passing were not “high.”

See, even talking about marijuana policy is such a frivolous, unmitigated waste of time that only stoner college kids talk about it.  Nobody would seriously reconsider a policy that costs us $7.5 billion annually, increases the availablilty and potency of marijuana while lowering the price and leading to the highest rates of marijuana use in the world.  Nothing to see here, move along, let’s not talk about it.

The money that so-called “recreational” users spend on pot has negative consequences that can touch the lives of people around the world. When Americans spend money on illegal drugs, they are providing financial support to groups that use violence and terror as a way of doing business. Drug-fueled violence in Mexico over the last two years has cost at least four thousand lives by most estimates, financed by recreational users with disposable income in this country.

Gee, if only Americans could grow, buy, and sell their own marijuana domestically, no Mexicans would have to die.  How many Mexicans died last year as a result of illegal alcohol trafficking again?  Oh, right, zero, because we can brew it, buy it, and sell it here.  In fact, we even employ some Mexicans if drinkers of Dos Equis and Corona are counted, right?

Some pro-drug interest groups have argued that keeping marijuana illegal itself does damage, since people run the risk of arrest if they break the law. But in fact, marijuana offenders represent only a very tiny fraction of state prison inmates in the United States.

Huh?  We tell you people being arrested is a problem, you tell us few people are in prison? That’s like saying “Some pro-plastic surgery groups argue that liposuction is relatively safe, but, in fact, many people have died from undergoing bariatric surgery” — the first part has nothing to do with the second part!

How do state prison statistics (misleading as they are, since most marijuana offenders are incarcerated in federal prison, county jail,or local jail) change the fact that over 730,000 people were arrested for mere possession in 2006?  How does that change the damage from those arrests – loss of licenses, employment difficulties, loss of student aid, loss of federal housing and benefits, inability to gain security clearances, time on probation, time in a local jail, and a criminal record?

When you read the papers from the Drug Czar, sometimes it’s hard to tell which side is on the mind-altering substance.

It has brought the drug warriors out, too.  Reluctantly, I suppose, since they are generally told not to engage in drug war debates (because it’s hard to win an argument against facts, logic, and reason with only scaremongering and lies).  Here it is, with the comment I have posted in response interspersed within the text:

The Hill Blog» Blog Archive » Congress Must Reject Marijuana Decriminalization Bill
Congressman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) recently introduced H.R. 5843, “The Act to Remove Most Federal Penalties for Possession of Marijuana For Personal Use” in Congress. Should this bill come to the floor for a vote, Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America (CADCA) urges Congress to vote no. Legislation such as this is not the solution to reducing drug abuse or its concomitant crime and ignores the fact that responsible drug policy should be driven by research based prevention, treatment, and recovery. Not only would H.R. 5843 remove all criminal penalties for anyone, regardless of age, who possesses up to 100 grams of marijuana, but it also removes any criminal penalties associated with the “not-for-profit transfer” of up to one ounce of marijuana and only allows a civil penalty of no more than $100 to be imposed for the public use of marijuana. This legislation severely undermines the prevention efforts of the many community anti-drug coalitions throughout the country and their message that marijuana is not a benign drug.

Yes, decriminalization would severely undermine the efforts to paint marijuana as a dangerous drug… by removing the prohibition-related dangers from marijuana.

Proponents of decriminalization and legalization purport that marijuana is a harmless, non-addictive drug. They also imply that marijuana use begins in adulthood rather than in adolescence. These arguments ignore the facts that marijuana has been classified by the Drug Enforcement Administration as an addictive, Schedule I drug; is the most widely abused illicit drug in the nation among both youth and adults; and that treatment rates for marijuana addiction have skyrocketed in recent years. In fact, results from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s (SAMHSA) most recent National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) revealed that the mean age at first use for marijuana initiates is 17.4, and 63.3% of all marijuana initiates between 2002 and 2006 began prior to age 18. Also, according to the 2007 Monitoring the Future results, 41.8% of high school seniors have tried marijuana, with 18.8% of them reporting that they have used marijuana in the last 30 days. It is important to note that while these trends are disturbing, this national data set masks the fact that many communities throughout the country are seeing a much, much lower age of initiation for marijuana use – often times as young as 12 and 13. Further, the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University found that rates of clinical diagnoses of marijuana abuse and/or dependence for minors has increased by a staggering 492.1 percent between 1992 (when marijuana use was at its lowest point) and 2006. Concurrently, there was a 53.7 percent decrease in rates of clinical diagnoses for all other substances combined, including alcohol, illicit, controlled prescription and over-the-counter drugs and inhalants.

Treatment rates have skyrocketed because the number of “drug courts” that sentence cannabis offenders to treatment have skyrocketed. 1/3rd of the people admitted to marijuana treatment haven’t even used marijuana in over thirty days (how’s that for addictive?) Almost 60% of the people in treatment are there from criminal justice referrals; only 15% seek treatment for marijuana on their own (compared to 21% for meth and 28% for alcoohol).

Furthermore, while 41.8% of American teens have tried pot, only 19.8% of Dutch teens have, where it is tolerated and sold in coffee shops to eager tourists and locals — talk about your “wrong message”; why are half the percentage of Dutch kids using pot compared to the American kids who are getting the “right message”?

Using marijuana at a young age can have deleterious effects on youth. In fact, according to Nora Volkow, Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), drug addiction is a pediatric/adolescent onset disease and prevention of first use is critical. In other words, the younger the age a person first uses drugs, the higher their chance of adult drug dependency and addiction. The 2002 NSDUH substantiated this fact as it reported that youth who first smoke marijuana under the age of 14 are more than five times as likely to abuse drugs as adults.

Yes, marijuana use by young teens is bad. That’s why I’d prefer they’d be ID’ed at a liquor store to get pot. Weed dealers don’t ask for kids’ ID. Cigarette smoking is bad for kids, too, and we got those rates to decline not by making smokes illegal, but through advertising bans, public health education, anti-smoking campaigns, and social pressure.

Marijuana use among youth also contributes to poor performance in school as indicated by the 2002 NSDUH which reported youth with an average grade of D or below were more than four times as likely to have used marijuana in the past year than youth with an average grade of A. Additionally, according to the NIDA study entitled “Marijuana Abuse: Age of Initiation, Pleasure of Response Foreshadow Young Adult Outcomes,” youth who initiate marijuana use by age 13 usually do not go to college, while those who have abstained from marijuana use, on average, complete almost three years of college. Even if they decrease their usage later in life, those who begin using marijuana by age 13 are more likely to report lower income and lower level of schooling by age 29.

Lots of marijuana using kids can’t go to college because the government takes away their student loans and grants if they are busted for marijuana. And, as usual, CADCA plays the correlation/causation fallacy. Bad grades aren’t caused by weed. Bad grades and weed smoking are caused by many factors, like income, parental involvement, schools, teachers, illnesses, learning disablilities, etc. (Carl Sagan smoked weed; I think his grades were OK.)

A clear link between violence and marijuana use among adolescents also has been established, and exists not only for the perpetrators of violence, but also for those who are victims of violence. For example, in its 2006 National Summary of its Questionnaire Report for Grades 6-12, Pride Surveys reported that of those students who reported carrying a gun to school, 63.9% reported also using marijuana; of those students who reported hurting others with a weapon at school, 68.4% had used marijuana; and of those students who reported being hurt by a weapon at school, 60.3% reported using marijuana.

Hmm, do you suppose that when you’re carrying a contraband plant worth more per ounce than palladium, you might face the possibility of robbery and violence, and you might protect yourself with a gun? Have you ever felt the need to carry a gun while bringing home a 12-pack from the grocery store? No, because it is legal.

Research also illustrates that the decline in the use of any illegal drug is directly related to its perception of harm or risk by the user. Decriminalizing marijuana sends the wrong message to America’s youth, and will de-stigmatize a drug that clearly has the potential to be both dangerous and addictive. While it is true that alcohol and tobacco addiction rates are higher than that of marijuana, this is the case in large part because they are legal substances and the stigma associated with them has been removed. Doing the same for marijuana will only ensure that addiction rates continue to rise.

While the twelve states that decriminalized marijuana, starting with Oregon in 1973, saw a sleight rise in the rates of teen drug use, the rates rose higher in the states that didn’t decriminalize.  Numerous studies have concluded that decriminalization does not lead to an overall rise in use (other factors led to the ’70s rise, like the fact that it was the ’70s and marijuana use went up everywhere).  Furthermore, addiction and hospitalization due to alcohol declined following the repeal of Prohibition.

This is evidenced by the fact that those states which have implemented “medical” marijuana ballot initiatives have some of the highest addiction rates in the country. In those states where marijuana has been equated with medicine, the perception of harm relating to that drug has been drastically reduced and social norms to reinforce “no use” messages, have been undermined. In fact, according to the State Estimates of Substance Use from the 2004–2005 National Surveys on Drug Use and Health, released by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration in February of 2005, most of the states in which marijuana ballot initiatives have been passed were clustered at, or near the bottom of the list, in terms of the perception of great risk associated with smoking marijuana once a month.

In the twelve medical marijuana states, teen use of marijuana has declined since the passages of those laws. Do teens see “medical marijuana” as less harmful than “demon reefers”? Sure, and they should. When we tell kids Schedule I marijuana, heroin, ecstasy, peyote, mushrooms, quaaludes, GHB, LSD, and PCP are all equally harmful, and kid sees friend who smokes weed not turn into a heroin-like junkie, it undermines the perception of danger of the drugs that are really dangerous.

Responsible drug policy must focus on effective research based efforts to both prevent and treat drug use. If passed, H.R. 5843 would normalize the use of a Schedule I addictive drug by removing all criminal penalties associated with possession of up to 100 grams and would reduce the perception of harm associated with marijuana use thereby increasing the number of new initiates and enabling existing addictive behaviors to continue. This is not the message we should send to America’s youth. Congress should vote no on “The Act to Remove Most Federal Penalties for Possession of Marijuana For Personal Use.”

I completely agree with the statement: “Responsible drug policy must focus on effective research based efforts to both prevent and treat drug use.” Unfortunately, the War on Marijuana ignores all of the research, from the 1894 India Hemp Drugs Report to the 1942 LaGuardia Commission report, to Nixon’s 1971 Shaffer Commission report, to the 1999 Institutes of Medicine report, and so many reports of the Canadian, British, and Australian governments that have recommended decriminalization, repudiated the so-called “gateway” theory, and demonstrated marijuana’s medical efficacy.

I dream of the day we base our marijuana policy on research, instead of the hangover from Harry J. Anslinger’s “reefer madness” of the 1930’s and the ongoing continuing culture war against the 1960’s.

The Hill Blog» Blog Archive » Criminalization of Marijuana Must End
Each year in this country we arrest more and more of our citizens on cannabis charges. In 2006, the last year for which the data is available, we arrested 830,000 Americans on cannabis charges, and 88% of those arrests were for personal possession and use, not trafficking. They were otherwise law-abiding citizens who consume cannabis.

Since 1965, a total of nearly 20 million Americans – predominantly young people under the age of 30 — have been arrested on cannabis charges; more than 11 million cannabis arrests just since 1990. Thousands have been disenfranchised, tens of thousands have been unnecessarily sent to “drug treatment,” hundreds of thousands have lost their eligibility for student aid, and perhaps an entire generation (or two) has been alienated to believe that the police are an instrument of their oppression rather than their protection.

Currently 47% of all drug arrests in the country are for cannabis, and another cannabis consumer is arrested every 38 seconds. Police arrest more people on cannabis charges each year than the total number of arrestees for all violent crimes combined, including murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault.

Of course, not everyone busted for possessing small amounts of pot receives jail time — most do not. But that doesn’t mean that they don’t suffer significant hardships stemming from their arrest. Seldom emphasized penalties associated with a minor cannabis conviction include probation and mandatory drug testing, loss of employment, loss of child custody, removal from subsidized housing, asset forfeiture, loss of federal student aid, loss of voting privileges, loss of adoption rights, and the loss of certain federal welfare benefits such as food stamps. In many states, convicted cannabis offenders are automatically stripped of their driving privileges, even if the offense is not driving related. Thousands of Americans suffer such sanctions every day.