President Obama’s hand-picked ‘drug czar’, former police chief of Seattle Gil Kerlikowske, denounced legalization of cannabis for personal consumption by American adults at a National Press Club event.

Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowski speaks to the National Press Club on US drug policy

Kerlikowski characterized the legalization of drugs in his discussion of cannabis legalization in Washington and Colorado as an “extreme position”, and went further to state bluntly that the Obama administration opposes “drug legalization.”

“The Justice Department’s responsibility to enforce the Controlled Substances Act remains unchanged,” Kerlikowske reminded reporters in prepared remarks.  He added, in what can only be interpreted as a warning to the citizens of states that have legalized cannabis through local democratic processes, “Neither a state nor the executive branch can nullify a statute passed by Congress.”

Kerlikowske then attempted to append a ‘public safety’ rational to his articulated support for a federalized law enforcement crack down on states that have voted to allow adults to use cannabis recreationally by admonishing, “Nor should we lose sight of the fundamental fact that using marijuana has public health consequences, and the most responsible public policy is one that restricts its availability and discourages its use.”

Kerlikowske flanked by health professionals specializing in treating drug addiction, said that the Obama administration’s approach to drug policy was not to wage a “war on drugs” nor was it to “legalize drugs”, rather, Kerlikowske said, the Obama administration favors focusing on reducing “drug use and its consequences” primarily drug addiction.  Kerlikowske said that the key component of the Obama administration’s approach to drug control is to focus on the “disease of addiction.”

Kerlikowske also compared what he termed “substance use disorder” with “progressive diseases”  stating that intervention by health professionals who have access to addiction treatment programs sponsored by the government is a “key aspect” of Obama’s approach to drug policy.  Kerlikowske did not comment on the irony that medical professionals across America prescribe the medicine of cannabis to treat many progressive diseases, including Parkinson’s Disease and Multiple Sclerosis.

Kerlikowske’s position that the federal government should take legal action because of the public dangers threatened by the addictive properties of cannabis are not shared by former US Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders who told CNN in 2010, “Marijuana is not addictive, not physically addictive anyway,” when she called for federal legalization of cannabis.  While the level of addiction that cannabis users experience is debatable, no health researcher or public health authority has stated that cannabis is more addictive than the legal consumer products alcohol and tobacco.

cross posted at mLaw

As American adults take action on their awareness that cannabis, though demonized by propaganda from industrialists with a financial stake in preserving prohibition and politicians who have depended upon using scare tactics to forward their political careers, is substantially safer than America’s most used drugs (tobacco and alcohol), policy creators are expressing concern that today’s youth simply will no longer be cowed into submission by the reiteration of factually biased and medically disproven scare tactics.

America’s youth, just like adults in the US, are fully aware that what they have been told by parties that desire to maintain the prohibition of cannabis over the course of 75 years amounts to factually inaccurate, unsubstantiated propaganda.

The wielders of this three-quarters-of-a-century old propaganda are now coming to the realization that the youth in America can actually educate themselves on the issue of ending cannabis prohibition, can effectively and honestly assess the differences between the prohibited substance cannabis and alcohol, tobacco and other drugs that are widely prescribed by physicians in the US, and have determined that the vast majority of what they have been told by police authorities, political leaders, their churches and schools, is not simply wrong, but is intentionally misrepresentational and supports agendas beyond the oft repeated mantra of prohibitionists; “it’s all about the safety of the children.”

In recent public statements, President Obama’s ‘drug czar’ expressed alarm that teen use of cannabis has gradually increased at the same time teen use of alcohol and tobacco have gradually declined. A recent study from the National Institutes of Health found that teen use of cannabis has grown over the past years, but use of alcohol, tobacco and other drugs, both prescription and illicit, has declined. In the case of alcohol usage by American teens, use has declined to its lowest point since the federal government began tracking alcohol use by minors forty years ago.

Some have analyzed this change as being a positive expression of today’s youth’s ability to decide for themselves whether to use legal drugs that are promoted constantly in American media and culture or to use cannabis, a substance that has been demonized for 75 years by American media and culture. The study results can perhaps signify that America’s youth are aware of the very real dangers of tobacco addiction and alcohol abuse, and are choosing marijuana, a drug that they know presents less risk. Choosing a less harmful drug over more harmful drug could and should be met by our leaders as a very positive sign that indicates a thoughtful choice made by weighing the facts.

The leaders of America’s drug war, when faced with these statistics have instead concluded that the study rather shows that today’s youth are falling under a type of mystical spell that is causing them to “forget” all the propaganda now that adults in this country have demanded that recreational cannabis use be legal.

In recent statements, Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the federal agency that performed the survey, opined that teens’ new attitudes about the dangers of tobacco and alcohol compared to cannabis reflect that our young people’s thoughtful choice is rather a reaction to the fact that recreational use of cannabis is no longer prohibited in Washington and Colorado and that “the deterrent” of illegality “is no longer present.”

Volkow’s belief that young people cannot assess the relative dangers between the legal and constantly promoted drugs alcohol and tobacco and the illegal but much less harmful cannabis is an indication that the enforcers have come to believe their own propaganda. The theorem being promoted by Volkow can be framed thusly; “If it is illegal, it must be wrong, bad and immoral.” The thought process that Americans both young and old may be currently operating under may rather be; “The illegality of cannabis was unnecessary and wrong, and predicated upon bigoted stereotypes dreamed up by industrialists who sought prohibition and, carried forth for seven decades by supine and captured politicians and police authorities for reasons that had nothing to do with public safety.”

If it’s true that this mindset is behind the increase in cannabis use by teens in America that the study identified, then America’s propagandists are themselves coming to new understandings. One is that propaganda no longer will suffice to brow beat thinking people into subordinating their experiences, and, perhaps more frightening to these custodians of culture, that many Americans now understand that they were lied to by their government to support the private wealth of business owners for seventy five years.

Being aware of the nearly century long history of lying and propagandizing may inculcate an awareness in our youth that they should aggressively question some of our nation’s other ‘preordained’ policy assumptions. I ask young Americans to do the research and find out if it is true when our leaders tell us that “we have to kill children in the Middle East to protect our “special relationships” with outlaw regimes”, that “torture is an effective method to gain intelligence”, or that “big banks can never be held to account for the crimes that they commit”. The list of queries is long indeed.

If government officials like Volkow say to you that these preconceptions are unchallengeable and have a quality of ‘religious truth’ to them, you can simply advise that, “torture is illegal by international standards”, that “occupying sovereign countries for 60 years is illegal by international standards”, and that “fraud is a criminal violation throughout the world”. Maybe if the prohibitionists hear that these things are illegal, they will be “deterred” from supporting these anti-human policy pogroms.

cross posted at the marijuana legalization awareness wiki Read the rest of this entry →