Medical Marijuana: A Science-Free Zone At The White House

In his pre-White House days:

Source: Huffington Post

President Obama came into office promising to reverse George W. Bush administration practices and elevate science over politics. He explicitly applied that principle to drug policy, an area long driven by ideology and prejudice. He quickly began to make good on the pledge by promoting three evidence-based drug policies: eliminating the ban on states using federal funding for syringe exchange programs to reduce the spread of HIV/AIDS and hepatitis; reforming the racially unjust crack-cocaine sentencing disparity that punished crack offenses more harshly than powder offenses; and vowing to end years of federal interference in the implementation of state medical marijuana laws.

But as a recent L.A. Times article makes dismayingly clear, the White House is putting the “science-free zone” sign back up.

Ending the drug war – Judge James Gray

Please scroll to 1:38

Judge Gray on the 6 groups that benefit from the war on drugs:

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Marijuana Advocates Sue Feds After DEA Rejects Weed as Medicine

This is the US government's own medical marijuana farm.

ABC News July 12, 2011

Without medical marijuana, Scott Rozman swears, he wouldn’t be alive today.

At 30, Rozman was the youngest documented case of teratoma and angiosarcoma, a rare and aggressive cancer that his doctors treated in the middle of his chest with equally aggressive rounds of chemotherapy. The chemo was so intense that he would throw up 40 to 50 times a day during treatment, unable to keep any food down. He lost 60 pounds during the first two months alone, making him potentially too weak to finish out his treatment

“The doctors thought I was a dead man,” Rozman, now 46 and a life coach in Guttenberg, N.J., said.

White House admits marijuana has ‘some’ medical value

Raw Story  Just days after the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) insisted that there is no medical value to marijuana, the White House appeared to contradict the position, saying in a report that there may actually be “some” medical value to “individual components of the cannabis plant” after all.

The statement was just a small part of the Office on National Drug Control Policy’s yearly update on the progress of the drug war and its goals moving forward. Overall, the document only serves to affirm the federal prohibition of marijuana and what it calls “‘medical’ marijuana,” which it still views as illegitimate.

But a single passage, under their “facts about marijuana,” seems to loosen a bit from the generation-old line that there is no value to cannabis whatsoever.

“While there may be medical value for some of the individual components of the cannabis plant, the fact remains that smoking marijuana is an inefficient and harmful method for delivering the constituent elements that have or may have medicinal value,” the report says.

Gary Johnson: Face reality, legalize pot – CNN

By Gary Johnson, Source: CNN

July 7, 2011 10:48 a.m. EDT

CNN Editor’s note: Gary Johnson is a candidate for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination and served as governor of New Mexico from 1994-2003.

(CNN) – In 2002, I became aware of a woman who had already served more than six years of a 25-year prison sentence. Her crime? She was addicted to codeine, and she had fraudulently written herself more than 100 prescriptions for Tylenol III.

The most retweeted question for Obama was about the legalization of marijuana – and he ignored us again.

From Raw Story

Republicans were not the only ones flooding President Barack Obama with questions during his “#AskObama” Twitter town hall; the event also generated a huge response from those opposed to the war on drugs.

Data gathered by TwitSprout showed the most retweeted question for Obama was about the legalization of marijuana.

“Would you consider legalizing marijuana to increase revenue and save tax dollars by freeing up crowded prisons, court rooms?” was retweeted 4911 times, according to the analytics service.

Top 10 reasons to legalize marijuana

 

Notes:

#6 mentions industrial Hemp, but medicinal use of cannabis goes back to at least 2737 BCE .

#7 is an enormous understatement. Cannabis has never directly killed anyone. We all know someone who has been killed by tobacco. Are the two substances even comparable?

Obama Administration Goes Back On Medical Marijuana Pledge

Deputy Atty. Gen. James M. Cole: "The Ogden Memorandum was never intended to shield such activities from federal enforcement and prosecution, even where those activities purport to comply with state law"

Photo: The Washington Examiner

By Steve Elliot, for Toke of the Town

​A troubling new memo has been released which seems to show that the Obama Administration is abandoning its policy of leaving medical marijuana enforcement to the states in states which have legalized it.

The U.S. Department of Justice remains committed to prosecuting “large-scale” cultivation, sale and distribution of marijuana, even in states which have enacted legislation permitting the use of cannabis for medical uses, according to a Justice Department memo obtained byBloomberg News.

“The Ogden Memorandum was never intended to shield such activities from federal enforcement and prosecution, even where those activities purport to comply with state law,” reads the new memo, authored by Deputy Attorney General James M. Cole.