Search Results: drug-czar (18)

President Barack Obama made waves in an interview with the New Yorker magazine a couple weeks ago, in which he finally stated the plain and simple truth that no American president up until now has had the guts to tell, that marijuana use is no more dangerous than alcohol use. Pro-cannabis advocates took the statement as a cautious grain of optimism, while the DEA and sheriffs across the country crapped their cages.
The question though, whether or not marijuana is just as safe as alcohol, is an important one, as it casts a very real shadow of doubt over the retention of cannabis on Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act. In a House Oversight Committee hearing yesterday on Capitol Hill, the White House’s Deputy Drug Czar was grilled on this very same topic, and like the president, he finally gave in to reality.

WhiteHouse.gov
Deputy Drug Czar Michael Botticelli

Rolling Stone.

For the first time in the magazine’s history, Rolling Stone has devoted pretty much all of their print edition to cannabis this week, with a range of news and cultural pieces.
Highlighted in the magazine this week is an article by comedian Bill Maher titled “How We Won the War on Pot”, a piece on marijuana myth-busting, and a feature on Drug Policy Alliance founder Ethan Nadelmann who the magazine dubs “The Real Drug Czar”.

Reason
Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske: “Calling it medicine sends a terrible message”

Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske — required by law to lie about the medical efficacy of cannabis — has, unsurprisingly, attacked the herb again in a speech in San Francisco.

“Calling it medicine sends a terrible message” to American youth, according to the Czar, reports Chris Roberts at NBC Bay Area. Gil seems unfamiliar with or indifferent to the fact that the U.S. federal government itself has been providing free medical marijuana to a handful of patients for 30 years under the Compassionate Investigational New Drug program.
Gil could also use a refresher course on the thousands of scientific studies which show marijuana’s medical effectiveness. Oh well; I guess Science “sends a terrible message” to youth, as well.

The Raw Story
Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske is the wrong place to go for the truth about marijuana

The Obama Administration has just released a new response to three WhiteHouse.gov petitions on marijuana legalization. Perhaps significantly, for the first time Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske is now saying “it is clear that we’re in the midst of a serious national conversation about marijuana.”

“I guess it makes a difference when marijuana legalization gets more votes than your boss does in an important swing state, as happened in Colorado this last election,” Tom Angell, chairman of the Marijuana Majority, told Toke of the Town Tuesday night. “From ‘legalization is not in my vocabulary and it’s not in the president’s,’ as Gil Kerlikowske often used to say, to ‘it is clear that we’re in the midst of a serious national conversation about marijuana’ is a pretty stark shift.
“Of course, what really matters is to what extent the administration actually shifts enforcement priorities and budgets, but I sure do like hearing the U.S. drug czar acknowledge the fact that marijuana legalization is a mainstream discussion that is happening whether he likes it or not,” Angell told us.

Opposing Views
Drug Czar Gil Kerlkikowske adamantly refuses to consider rational policy alternatives that don’t involve criminal penalties, according to the Marijuana Policy Project’s Morgan Fox

Marijuana Use Rises in 2011 While Alcohol and Prescription Drug Use Decline
 
In a press conference Monday morning, representatives from the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) announced the release of the latest results of the annual National Survey on Drug Use and Health. As is their custom, the federal officials used the event — and the survey itself — as an opportunity to decry the use of marijuana in the United States and focused on perceived risk as a driving factor for increased use.
Marijuana use has slightly increased in the past year, while alcohol use has declined.

News Junkie Post
“Here, I’ll hold the plants and you hump my leg. How much is it we’re making again? Couple hundred bucks an hour?”

CAMP Cancelled After Three Decades; Replacement Program Is Smaller

The good news is that the moronic Campaign Against Marijuana Planting (CAMP), which over a period of almost three decades burned through millions of dollars of taxpayer money while terrorizing citizens across California with military-style raids, was cancelled this year due to state budget cuts. The bad news is that it’s been replaced with another, renamed program — but at least this one is scaled down, reports Dave Rice at the San Diego Reader.
The new Cannabis Eradication and Reclamation Team (CERT) will operate with only three helicopter teams instead of CAMP’s five teams. The crews, now dividing the state into three regions instead of five, are in charge of spotting illicit grow operations and then transporting gung-ho Rambo-esque teams of heavily tricked-out drug agents to remote locations, then destroying the plants offsite.

Gaia Health

Worth Repeating

By Ron Marczyk, RN
OK, somebody please talk me off the ledge on this one…
It has already started… This is what a dying war on marijuana looks like.
The U.S. government is in an untenable position; the war on marijuana has failed completely, but the U.S. government also holds the sole medical marijuana patent ever granted, which proves that cannabinoids from cannabis are powerful medicines that can save thousands of lives annually and save the government billions of dollars in health costs, treating everything from cancer to neurological diseases. 
But after 75 years of misinformation and brainwashing the U.S. population, and the world, that marijuana is an evil drug that must be eliminated, how can it now do a 180 degree turn and sell marijuana as a medicine to the same population? The coming verbal somersaults will be amazing!

The Phnom Penh Post
Former Cambodian Drug Czar Moek Dara being dragged away to prison by police. (How long until we see Gil Kerlikowske in a similar predicament?)

​Who’s gonna watch the watchers? A Cambodian court on Thursday sentenced the former director of the country’s anti-drug agency to life in prison for corruption and narcotics trafficking, according to a court official. The drug czar’s top aide was also given life in prison for good measure.

Moek Dara, who headed the National Authority for Combating Drugs, and his subordinate Chea Leng were found guilty of 32 counts of involvement in drug trafficking, prosecutor Phan Vanarath told AFP, reports Times Live.

Both were also convicted of accepting bribes from drug dealers by the court, located in the northwestern part of Cambodia in the province of Banteay Meanchey. The court is about 190 miles northwest of the nation’s capitol, Phnom Penh.
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