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Obama's Drug Czar to Pot Smokers: You're still a bunch of criminals.
KevinNash
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
According to this story, the drug czar thinks business as usual is just fine when it comes to the war on pot:
http://www.fresnobee.com/local/story/1553061.html
Some choice quotes from the article:
So nothing has changed? I guess for those of us who hoped Obama and his hand picked drug czar would support a sane drug policy are left with just wishful thinking.
What's it going to take to get this kind of foolishness to stop? How much more are we going to have to do? Why is it that even the most liberal of President's completely discard personal freedoms again and again upon election? All talk and then once elected, no action. When is this going to change?
http://www.fresnobee.com/local/story/1553061.html
Some choice quotes from the article:
"Legalization is not in the president's vocabulary, and it's not in mine,"
"the federal government views marijuana as a harmful and addictive drug"
"Marijuana is dangerous and has no medicinal benefit,"
So nothing has changed? I guess for those of us who hoped Obama and his hand picked drug czar would support a sane drug policy are left with just wishful thinking.
What's it going to take to get this kind of foolishness to stop? How much more are we going to have to do? Why is it that even the most liberal of President's completely discard personal freedoms again and again upon election? All talk and then once elected, no action. When is this going to change?
KevinNash on
Posts
Bold faced lies, pure and simple.
Depends on what "medical" means.
And this is no surprise. It will political suicide to do anything that might detract from the War on Drugs, yea, until the end of time, hallelujah, amen.
This is not the most liberal of Presidents, nor has he ever professed support for legalization at any point. At least since he's been on the national stage, anyway.
20 years. Give or take.
It makes expecting reasonable things to come out of his mouth kind of silly.
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The same as it's ever meant.
Yes and no.
Marijuana can be a little harmful, but the harm is minor compared to other recreational drugs.
It is addictive.
It does have medical benefits.
Anyway, the administration is just parroting the AMA stand on the issue.
I'm not asking the man to do a bong hit for the press. I'm just asking why he can't appoint a drug czar who isn't a fucking tool.
Because then he wouldn't qualify for the position of Drug Tsar?
Exactly. Let's just abolish this silly position. I eagerly await Obama's leadership on this issue.
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I don't quite understand why you are consciously ignoring the multiple times he has publicly stated that he's opposed to marijuana legalization and that he has not once in his time on the national stage purported to support such a stance. It just seems, rather odd.
No, nothing has changed. It was foolish for you to hope for Obama to support a sane drug policy as he only made remarks about doing anything remotely sane about drugs on one occasion years ago, and has shied away from those remarks again and again.
"All talk and then once elected, no action" is a nonsensical thing to say. You're trying to paint Obama has a charlatan when in reality he is just a moderate. He campaigned on being a moderate and there was no reason to expect anything from him but moderation.
I think the administration is taking baby steps. They need the support of the AMA right now to pass health care reform, I can't see them basically telling the AMA to stick their official position statement on medical marijuana up their ass until after a health care bill is passed.
It is also the position of every major medical organization in the world, including the Netherlands (where marijuana has been de facto legalized) and Canada/UK (where the legislature overrules the medical association in allowing it to be prescribed). While marijuana may have some medicinal benefits (although quite few not addressed by marinol) they are primarily end of life palliative.
The push for legalized medical marijuana is largely disingenuous. Its a poorly disguised push for legalized recreational marijuana. As legalizing - as opposed to decriminalizing - marijuana creates problems for pharmaceutical and narcotic regulation and it doesn't have the support of the medical establishment or general public its unlikely to progress any time soon.
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Equivocation of marinol with marijuana belies an ignorance of the medicinal nature of marijuana. Basically, marinol is a THC analogue, but THC is not the only medicinal substance in cannabis.
The assumption here is that recreational users are not necessarily also self-medicating. I don't think that's a safe assumption to make. In other words, you're setting up a false dichotomy.
I also don't think it's disingenuous. Don't confuse political expediency with dishonesty. Currently, the legal and regulatory framework does not recognize non-medical recreational use as legitimate. Currently, there are only two recognized uses of a drug: medicinal and abusive. I think that's wrong, and I would like to see that framework completely overhauled, but I can understand the desire to try to legalize a drug within the current regulatory framework rather than try to challenge the framework itself.
What about caffeine?
Also, couldn't we bill pot as a viable treatment for pot addiction?
What about it?
Technically, the DEA and FDA could at any time decide that caffeine should be illegal (without a prescription, since there are legitimate medical uses) without an act of Congress and there would be nothing you could do about it.
That they've chosen not to do so doesn't mean they recognize recreational drug use as legitimate in any institutional capacity. They simply don't exercise their power over it.
The easiest analogy is like a cop that doesn't give a shit about speeding. Just because he's not busting you for speeding doesn't mean the law recognizes a legal right or privilege to speed.
No, it is not chemically addictive. It's only addictive in the sense that anything can become an addiction.
You do not want to attempt to throw down with Feral on this subject. Dude doesn't need to show yet another internet medical expert the error of his ways and - in the end - you'll still be wrong.
"Chemically addictive" is a meaningless phrase. I've had this discussion many, many times on these boards.
There are a large number of narcotics users that are self-medicating. I don't see how the improper use of narcotics in an imprecise and nonspecific manner to alleviate symptoms poorly understood by the patient is that relevant. Often these acts of self-medication are not beneficial and can be as detrimental as drinking to gross intoxication would be.
And its the stated motivations that are disingenuous. Relatively few people care whether marijuana can be legitimately prescribed for the relatively narrow set of ailments and symptoms there are fairly tentative scientific links to at the current date. Yet this is the tact taken in order to allow this medical usage. That's the dishonesty that annoys me.
My position is very similar to the President's in that while I don't believe it should be a priority, I also don't think the narrow medical advantage provided by legalizing marijuana over the recommendation of the medical community and FDA regulatory agencies would outweigh the (not overly large) health problems due to the expected increase in use and the damage it would do to the role of law/science in government where a drug can be given a pass on a politicians say-so instead of scientific facts. Given the previous administrations abuses regarding religion and contraception for instance, this is not a road I think the US needs to go down when most of the advantages can be gained by deprioritizing pot arrests/prosecutions.
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Recognized by whom?
The AMA does not recognize any medicinal substance in cannabis.
Yet there are studies that show that other cannabinoids (and non-cannabinoid botanical substances) in marijuana have therapeutic properties. Here's one, for example.
You need to define what you mean by "recognize" in this context.
You don't think it's relevant that there are populations of people out there who are suffering from various ailments and saying, "The best thing that works for me is pot?" Would you look a cancer or multiple sclerosis or migraine victim in the face and say, "Sorry, your concerns are irrelevant?"
"Relatively few people" - 45% of people pollled is "relatively few?"
"Relatively narrow set of ailments" - Marijuana has been seriously and successfully studied for therapeutic effects in cancer, glaucoma, multiple sclerosis, migraines, AIDS, anxiety, epilepsy, chronic pain, and insomnia. And those are just the ones that come immediately to memory, I'm sure I could find more if I dug for about 5 minutes.
The damage has been done already. The motivations behind the banning of marijuana, cocaine, heroin, and LSD were entirely political. "Scientific facts" do not justify the scheduling criteria in the controlled substances act.
edit; scratch the AMA even though data published by them support my opinions on it go figure huh?
The FDA and DEA do not thus it is illegal.
Also as far as the Physically vs Psychologically addictive. Absolutely anything is psychologically addictive because any thing you do conscious or subconscious changes your brain chemistry. The point you make by calling pot addictive is moot because you can call everything but it's very damaging to the reputation of pot because when the layman hears addiction he assumes heroin and the choosing of your words should not be based on semantic jargon but on what the intent you want to convey is.
Also pot is a plant that's evolved in tandem with the human culture so integral has it been throughout history. The few harmful bits in it are at such a minor concentration that nothing bad could come out of smoking it or ingesting it in plausible (re:possible) quantities. The studies which found it was a carcinogen involved giving animals near lethal amounts of THC (by itself) for months on end. Further the studies themselves admit that after a couple of weeks any trace of the THC in the system was gone leaving no observable long term effects.
Over 50% of Americans support full legalization in recent polling.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/06/majority-of-americans-wan_n_198196.html
Over 70% support decriminalizing for medicinal use.
http://medicalmarijuana.procon.org/viewadditionalresource.asp?resourceID=000193
Coming out in favor of medicinal marijuana or at the very least saying "let the states decide" is not political suicide.
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Their official position is along the lines of:
1) Wow, there's a lot of evidence out there.
2) We still need more anyway.
3) We don't like it when people smoke. Can we start looking into alternate delivery methods?
I understand the motivation behind (3): they have spent the last few decades treating tobacco smoking like the devil, I understand why they don't want to back a different kind of smoking.
The incongruity between (1) and (2) is rather puzzling to me, but I suspect it's mostly a matter of CYA.
Hence the Catch-22.
The AMA says "we won't support medical marijuana until there's more research."
The DEA says "we won't let you grow marijuana for research purposes because it's illegal."
You say that as if politics and reality have anything more than a passing familiarity with each other.
I suspect that it's going to have to be a conservative to finally legalize pot.
A liberal would just be seen as supporting stoned hippies. A bona fide conservative could spin it on a platform of less government interference in peoples' private lives.
I look forward to your vote in 2012.
You're a single issue voter, and that singular issue is marijuana?
Well, he could pressure somebody to write up a document advocating that caffeine should be banned because it's more addictive than pot, let somebody leak it, and then publicly denounce it.
It's not marijuana.
Besides that, 37 percent are against it. Depending who those people are, it could cause some problems in states that Obama might not win next time.
538 has an article on it:
Most polls still show a majority against legalization: http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/02/americans-growing-kinder-to-bud.html
If there were a conservative candidate who supported legalization of pot and also didn't threaten to undermine the other issues I'm passionate about (health care, gay rights, education funding, economic regulation, not getting involved in a land war in Asia) I'd consider jumping the aisle.
The chances of that happening are roughly equivalent to me getting a pet unicorn for Christmas.
Yeah I hate the associations that aren't reviewed. Anslinger's own research project to prove to congress pot was bad proved the opposite.
And *cough* *cough* RON PAUL.
Ironically I think a conservative will be the first to fundamentally change how health care works in this country as well.
When a democrat does it the GOP votes in lockstep "no" and the moderate/conservative democrats run away from it because it's too "socialist".
If a conservative did it (UHC through mandated insurance and/or MSA's and/or tax credits etc..) it would be far more palatable to both the GOP and certainly tolerable to dems since they couldn't possibly vote against a bill that resulted in more coverage.