News » Petition to White House Drug Czar (Predictably) Fails





More than 74,000 people signed a petition to the White House asking the administration to legalize and regulate marijuana. Predictably, it was given to Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske who, even more predictably, opted not to put himself out of a cushy government job by supporting the idea.

Anyone who expected differently is delusional, to say the least. As I’ve stated before, there is a lot of money in marijuana prohibition.

Of course, in making his statement, he (again, predictably) ignored the petition altogether. No doubt NORML’s Russ Bellville crafted his debunking of the Drug Czar’s comments well in advance and had only to cut-paste the exact wording from the White House before publishing.

One particularly maddening aspect of the Czar’s response was his insistence that there is little “science” behind marijuana as a medicinal drug. There are two reasons this old-hat response is particularly galling to medical marijuana advocates:

1) There is a TON of evidence, both scientific and not, that supports medical marijuana as medicine. Over 2,500 reputable studies published just last year on the subject, in fact. That’s only for 2010. Significant research has been ongoing since 1995. Just not much of it in the U.S. 2) Which brings us to this point: it’s almost impossible to research medical marijuana in the U.S. unless you can both convince the ONE person allowed to grow it for research to sell to you (that person is anti-MMJ) and get it legally approved (nearly all applications for pro-MMJ research are denied).

These two points are the most annoying. The War on (some) Drugs crowd loves to use these talking points to try to debunk the argument of the legalization crowd. But these “debunks” are actually just proof that the anti-drug crowd are too faithfully in love with Prohibitor the Great, God of drug prohibition (by Odin’s beard!), to listen to reality and logic.

I mean, your forehead would be less bloody were you to pound it against the wall trying to convince a Christian that a Buddhist is more Christ-like than most Christians are. It’s religion and nobody changes other people’s views on religion except con artists pimping a different religion. Logic and reality don’t enter into the equation.

If, however, you remain unconvinced that it’s impossible to change the Obama Administration’s view on Prohibitor being the supreme being of choice, perhaps you’d be interested in signing this petition:

The Actually take these petitions seriously instead of just using them as an excuse to pretend you are listening Petition.

I think it stands as much a chance as the anti-Prohibitor petitions have..

Tags: drug czar, drug war, marijuana, medical, medical marijuana, MMJ, prohibition