Clinton, Bush And Obama Drug Czars Come Out Against California's Marijuana Legalizati

Clinton, Bush And Obama Drug Czars Come Out Against California's Marijuana Legalization Measure
HuffingtonPost / Nick Wing / 08,25,2010


Six directors of the Office of National Drug Control Policy over the previous 3 administrations penned a cooperative op-ed Wednesday in opposition to California's Proposition 19 ballot proposal to legalize marijuana.

The editorial, written by Gil Kerlikowske, John Walters, Barry McCaffrey, Lee Brown, Bob Martinez and William Bennett -- that's every United States "drug czar," including the current one -- was published in the Los Angeles Times Wednesday, and argues primarily that social costs incurred by legalizing marijuana would outweigh the potential revenue streams gained by taxing drug sales.

First and foremost, the high-profile anti-drug group contends, a potential marijuana legalization will lead to an upswing in use, particularly among minors:
Proponents of marijuana legalization often point to Amsterdam's "coffee shop" marijuana sales, rarely mentioning that the Dutch have dramatically reduced what at one time were thousands of shops to only a few hundred -- after being inundated with "drug tourists," drug-related organized crime involvement and public nuisance problems. During the period of marijuana commercialization and expansion, there was a tripling of lifetime use rates and a more than doubling of past-month use among 18- to 20-year-olds, according to independent research.

This issue, they say, could also manifest itself dangerously by putting an increased number of high people on the roads.

While some argue that legalization could save money spent on law enforcement, the drug czars don't buy this claim, saying instead that such a measure would instead create a complex and confusing set of priorities to police:
Law enforcement officers do not currently focus much effort on arresting adults whose only crime is possessing small amounts of marijuana. This proposition would burden them with new and complicated enforcement duties. The proposition would require officers to enforce laws against "ingesting or smoking marijuana while minors are present." Would this apply in a private home? And is a minor "present" if they are 15 feet away, or 20? Perhaps California law enforcement officers will be required to carry tape measures next to their handcuffs.

Perhaps most interestingly, the narco-foes allege that the potential revenue that could be gained by taxing marijuana sales is overstated due to the fact that cannabis plants can be easily cultivated at home.

Regarding the supposed economic benefits of taxing marijuana, some comparison with two drugs that are already regulated and taxed -- alcohol and tobacco -- is worth considering. People don't typically grow their own tobacco or distill their own spirits, so consumers accept high taxes on them as retail products. Marijuana, though, is easy and cheap to cultivate, indoors or out, and Proposition 19 would allow individuals to grow as much as 25 square feet of marijuana for "personal consumption."


My response at Huffington Post:

When you consider that every one of the drug czars has depended on marijuana for justification for over one half of the trillion dollars they have wasted on the war on drugs,what other response could they have? That and they are mandated to do anything necessary to keep any schedule 1 drug from being legalized in any form by congress.

Schedule 1 drugs have no medical benefits. Never mind that 14 states and our nations capitol have medical marijuana laws,with hundreds of doctors writing recommendations for thousands of patients. Never mind all the studies which have shown that marijuana has many medical benefits,many of them paid for by the ONDCP and ignored when medical attributes and possible medical applications were reported by researchers,even though their studies were initiated looking for harm in marijuana,not medical efficacy.
Never mind that these people lose billions in funding when marijuana is removed from their control.

If the ONDCP and the DEA were working in the private sector where accomplishments are required,they would be job hunting.

I heard America ranks the lowest in education but the highest in drug use? It's nice to be number one, but there is a solution. All we need to do is prohibit education. If it's as successful as the prohibition of marijuana,everyone will be doctors,lawyers and rocket scientist.

 

And please don't mention all of these bureaucracies and the thousands of federal employees that get their paychecks or part of them from prohibition,,,,,,,,,,,,
ONDCP budget summary
Federal Drug Control Spending by Agency
FY 2008 –FY 2010 (Budget Authority in Millions)

Request
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxFY 2008 / Final / FY 2009 / Enacted FY 2010
Department of Defense 1,242.7 / 1,425.9 / 1,383.6

Department of Education 429.8 / 431.7 / 238.6

Department of Health and Human Services
Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Services 170.0 / 220.0 / 240.0
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration 2,445.8 / 2,494.1 / 2,538.9
National Institutes of Health - National Institute on Drug Abuse 1,006.0 /1,032.8 /1,045.4
Indian Health Service 87.5 / 93.6 / 98.8
Total HHS 3,709.3 / 3,840.4 / 3,923.1

Department of Homeland Security
Customs and Border Protection 1,544.7 / 2,101.0 / 2,103.5
Immigration and Customs Enforcement 397.9 / 427.7 / 455.6
United States Coast Guard 989.5 / 1,202.4 / 1,253.5
Office of Counternarcotics Enforcement 2.7 / 3.7 / 3.9
Total DHS 2,934.8 / 3,734.8 / 3,816.5

Department of the Interior
Bureau of Indian Affairs 6.3 / 6.3 / 8.3

Department of Justice
Bureau of Prisons 67.2 / 79.2 / 80.8
Drug Enforcement Administration 2,126.7 / 2,183.5 / 2,266.5
Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force Program 497.2 / 515.0 / 537.5
Office of Justice Programs 229.3 / 235.5 / 278.0
National Drug Intelligence Center 0.0 / 0.0 / 44.0
Total Justice 2,921. / 1 3,013.2 / 3,206.8

Office of National Drug Control Policy
Counterdrug Technology Assessment Center 1.0 / 3.0 / 1.0
High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas 230.0 / 234.0 / 220.0
Other Federal Drug Control Programs 164.3 / 174.7 / 174.0
Salaries and Expenses 26.4 / 27.2 / 27.6
Total ONDCP 421.7 / 438.9 / 422.6
Small Business Administration 1.0 / 1.0 / 1.0

Department of State
Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs 791.5 / 1,095.5 / 1,190.5
United States Agency for International Development 334.2 / 357.5 / 365.1
Total State 1,125.7 / 1,453.0 / 1,555.6

Department of Transportation
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration 2.7 / 2.7 / 2.7

Department of the Treasury
Internal Revenue Service 57.3 / 59.2 / 60.3

Department of Veterans Affairs
Veterans Health Administration 423.3 / 437.5 / 450.0

 

CA Prop 19: Drug Czars' Latest Anti-Marijuana Propaganda is Easily Refuted
FDL / Jon Walker / 08,25,2010


Gil Kerlikowske, the current director of the Office of the National Drug Control Policy, i.e. the “Drug Czar,” along with several former Drug Czars, is out with a new op-ed in the Los Angeles Times. This latest bit of professional propaganda argues against the passage of California's Proposition 19, which would legalize, tax and regulate marijuana.

As expected, the Drug Czars seem to have no other choice than to resort to absolutely ridiculous arguments against the ballot measure. From the op-ed:

Law enforcement officers do not currently focus much effort on arresting adults whose only crime is possessing small amounts of marijuana.

This is such twisted logic that I feel I have disappeared down the rabbit hole. Part of their actual argument for maintaining our current marijuana policy is that cops have basically given up trying to enforce our current marijuana prohibition laws. In effect, they are fully acknowledging that our current policy prohibition against marijuana is an abject enforcement failure. Yet, somehow, they manage to twist this failure into an argument against changing the current policy:

This proposition would burden them with new and complicated enforcement duties. The proposition would require officers to enforce laws against “ingesting or smoking marijuana while minors are present.” Would this apply in a private home? And is a minor “present” if they are 15 feet away, or 20? Perhaps California law enforcement officers will be required to carry tape measures next to their handcuffs.

Now this is truly crazy. They are saying that because enforcing marijuana prohibition has proven to be such an impossible task that officers have given up, asking them to enforce sensible legal marijuana regulation would be an equally impossible new enforcement “burden.”

In fact, the vast majority of our laws are regulations. You are allowed to park ten feet from a fire hydrant, but not two feet from a fire hydrant. I personally don't think our law enforcement officers are brain dead simpletons. They will be able to use their judgment to enforce basic regulations on marijuana use like they do for almost every other part of their jobs, including many regulations on where you are permitted to drink alcohol.

Their argument that a tax on legal marijuana would raise almost no money is just plain silly.

Regarding the supposed economic benefits of taxing marijuana, some comparison with two drugs that are already regulated and taxed - alcohol and tobacco - is worth considering. People don't typically grow their own tobacco or distill their own spirits, so consumers accept high taxes on them as retail products. Marijuana, though, is easy and cheap to cultivate, indoors or out, and Proposition 19 would allow individuals to grow as much as 25 square feet of marijuana for “personal consumption.”

Why would people volunteer to pay high taxes on marijuana if it were legalized? The answer is that many would not, and the underground market, adapting to undercut any new taxes, would barely diminish at all.

I guess the Drug Czars have never heard of convenience before. Most people don't actually like dealing with criminals or drug dealers. They would rather buy their vodka or marijuana from the liquor store down the street than spend their time tracking down some shady criminal smuggler to save a few bucks on taxes. The end of alcohol prohibition is in fact the perfect test case for this insane theory that legalization would result in almost no decrease of the black market. The reality was an almost immediate destruction of the black market for alcohol. Do you or any of your friends or family currently get liquor on the black market? I doubt it.

To deal with the other huge logical fallacy in this paragraph, it is important to note that tobacco, like marijuana, also is just a plant. It is as easy to cultivate as marijuana and it is currently legal to grow on your own property with no 25-square-foot restriction. Yet, as they admit, very few people grow their own tobacco. As an active home brewer, I can assure you that producing beer at home is both easy and cheap, yet home brewers produce an almost immeasurably tiny percentage of the total beer in this country. While it is both easy and cheap to avoid the tax on tobacco and alcohol by producing your own, very few Americans actually do.

This is what makes the fight to end our war on marijuana so difficult. The other side is not interested in an honest policy debate. Instead of honest argument, they rely on half-truths, distortions, twisted logic, ridiculous statements and naked propaganda. Sadly, America, this op-ed from Kerlikowske and friends is your wasted tax dollars at work