| Photo: Injustice In Seattle |
| Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske requested — and got — a meeting with the editorial board of the Seattle Times after the newspaper endorsed marijuana legalization |
Immediately after the Seattle Times ran an editorial last week supporting marijuana legalization, the newspaper got a telephone call from Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske in Washington, D.C., Seattle alternative weekly The Stranger reports.
Kerlikowske, who heads up the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), wanted to fly to Seattle to “talk personally” to the paper’s full editorial board, reports Dominic Holden at The Stranger.
Holden called the meeting “an apparent attempt by the federal government to pressure the state’s largest newspaper to oppose marijuana legalization.”
The White House called “right after our editorial ran, so I drew the obvious conclusion — he didn’t like our editorial,” said Bruce Ramsey, the Seattle Times editorial writer who penned the unbylined piece.
“Marijuana should be legalized, regulated, and taxed,” the Times wrote on February 18. “The push to repeal federal prohibition should come from the states, and it should begin with the state of Washington.”
“It is time for the next step,” the paper editorialized.
Kerlikowske, appointed to head the ONDCP by President Obama, left his former job as Seattle chief of police to accept the position.
The call from the White House apparently didn’t cool the Times‘ ardor for legalization. The paper ran another pro-pot editorial online Thursday.
The meeting between the Drug Czar and the Seattle Times‘ editorial board is scheduled for next Friday, March 4.