Is it Change yet?
This does seem like the time to pick on Obama. The media is full of stories about unfulfilled promises and bungled initiatives. Our foreign policy today is hardly different from Bush’s - we’re still in Iraq and now we’re also in Afghanistan and there’s trouble on the horizon in Yemen. Guantanamo is still open. Our Anti-terrorism policy, according to the New York Times Magazine story a couple of weeks back, is still run largely by Bush appointees and the policy hasn’t changed. The Patriot Act is still here. The health care effort was bungled and now its passage is doubtful. He’s angered the Right and he’s angered the Left just as much. So what about us drug policy reformers?
Typically after a Presidential election US Attorneys appointed under the outgoing administration submit letters of resignation and the new administration replaces many of them with new ones. Well, in the spirit of change Mr. Obama did not accept the resignations of the US Attorneys and appoint his own people. The result? We still have Bush appointees overseeing prosecutions in all of the federal districts. No change in the Justice Department.
With 14 states now having passed medical marijuana laws there has been a demand for some scientific research , done here in the US, into the medical uses of marijuana. Currently the drug is Schedule One - (no medical use, high potential for abuse) and cannot be possessed even for research except for a highly controlled crop of poor quality pot grown in a government-run facility in Mississippi. The only agency with access to that marijuana is The National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA) and Shirley Simson, a NIDA spokeswoman told the New York Times recently: “As the National Institute on Drug Abuse, our focus is primarily on the negative consequences of marijuana use. We generally do not fund research focused on the potential beneficial medical effects of marijuana.”
The DEA’s own administrative law judge ruled that NIDA’s monopolization of marijuana research is not in the public interest and ordered the government cannabis be made available to legitimate medical researchers, not just NIDA.
Former DEA Deputy Administrator Michele Leonhart chose to ignore the DEA’s own administrative law judge’s ruling.
So who did Obama pick last week to be the new head of the DEA? Bush-era appointee Michele Leonhart. No change at the DEA.
Before his election, when he was seen by many as the bringer of serious drug policy reform Obama told the Washington Post “Promoting science isn’t just about providing resources - it’s also about protecting free and open inquiry. It’s about letting scientists like those who are here today do their jobs, free from manipulation or coercion, and listening to what they tell us,, even when it’s inconvenient - especially when it’s inconvenient.”
Back in May of last year, after some awful comments by the Presidents new Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowski and his laughing at and dismissing the number one most popular question to come to his own website (Remember that?) I wrote on this blog that “For drug policy reform advocates it looks like the honeymoon with Obama is quickly coming to a close.” Now I think we can safely say the honeymoon is over.
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