Drug Czar Kerlikowske leaving ONDCP

Corrections below.
On August 2, President Obama nominated Gil Kerlikowske, the director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, to be the Customs Commissioner.

Kerlikowske has been an unimaginative drug czar, often invisible. Having come from Seattle, Washington where he had been police chief, he was shrouded with hope that he would have enlightened views about harm reduction and marijuana use and enforcement. Those hopes were soon dashed. His office has accomplished little and his public statements have been uninspiring. He demonstrated no ability to influence the federal bureaucracy, and left ONDCP irrelevant in national drug policy efforts. ONDCP's role in forums of the United Nations, such as the Commission on Narcotic Drugs, has been to stifle adoption of harm reduction, a singularly backward approach. His departure is good news for drug policy but bad news for the Department of Homeland Security and people who care about Customs enforcement.

Once again, Obama has an opportunity to reshape drug policy. Perhaps he could nominate U.S. Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA), a leader in drug policy and criminal justice policy reform in Congress; Peter Beilenson, M.D. (CEO of Evergreen Health Co-Op; former Howard County, MD health commissioner, and former health commissioner under Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke); or U.S. Rep. Jared Polis (D-CO) who also served for six years on the Colorado State Board of Education, including serving as Chairman. These men would bring a long missing sophisticated vision of drug policy to the White House.

CORRECTION!
At the Spring 2012 Meeting of the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs, Resolution 55/7 endorsing the use of Naloxone as a technique to prevent opiate overdose deaths was adopted with amazing speed.  The U.S. appeared to have dropped its long-standing opposition to harm reduction measures and explicit overdose prevention strategies. The U.S. emissaries were representatives of Kerlikowske's ONDCP.

In November 2012,  by video, Kerlikowske addressed the conference of the Harm Reduction Coalition in Portland, OR, and asked to work together.

In the past year, there has been important evidence of constructive policy change in ONDCP. I apologize for misrepresenting Kerlikowske's record.

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Perpetrator of egregious racial disparities in law enforcement touted for Obama's cabinet

There is a prima facie case that the New York City Police Department has systematically denied rights protected by the U.S. Constitution to tens of thousands of individuals that it has arrested over the past decade for misdemeanor possession of marijuana. I asked the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate the prima facie case of criminal and civil violations of these rights by the NYPD and its leadership two years ago.

This program is NOT the stop and frisk policy of the NYPD to look for illegal firearms by stopping suspects in high crime neighborhoods; this a completely different program of violating constitutional rights.

With the resignation of Janet Napolitano, the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the Commissioner of the NYPD, Raymond Kelly, is being touted as a potential nominee to be her successor. His nomination by President Obama would be an outrage.

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One year ago, Obama said he was going to look at Clarence Aaron's petition for commutation of sentence

One year ago, President Obama, responding to front page stories in The Washington Post by Dafna Linzer, said he would review the petition for commutation of sentence from Clarence Aaron. This was the petition that President George W. Bush's White House counsel was interested in granting, except that the Pardon Attorney misrepresented what was told to him by the federal judge and the U.S. Attorney.

The Pardon Attorney was subsequently condemned by the Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Justice, but still has the job!

So far, crickets! In the Obama Administration the wheels of justice grind slooooowly.

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Fast moving developments: Feds responding to Washington and Colorado: Obama, Leahy, Holder. Where's Biden?

The stasis in Washington on marijuana policy is breaking because of the Washington and Colorado votes to legalize marijuana.
President Obama will be on Barbara Walters on ABC TV on Dec. 14 answering questions. Ethan Nadelmann very astutely interprets the President's words on Huffington Post.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy (D-VT) has said he will hold hearings early next year on the federal response and on Dec. 6, 2012 wrote  this letter to Gil Kerlikowske, director of the White House Office on National Drug Control Policy to inquire about federal policy. Leahy notes that there are legislative options for Congress to resolve the apparent conflict between Washington and Colorado law and current federal law, such as legalizing possession of one ounce.
Attorney General Eric Holder said on Dec. 11 that a policy pronouncement will be announced "relatively soon" in answer to a question.

Ethan Nadelmann notes that Obama is at last taking the issue seriously after previously joking about it, when asked.
Second, Obama's comment that users are not a "top priority" for federal enforcement is not news and says nothing.
Third, and significantly, Obama said that he does not support widespread marijuana legalization "at this point." That's the language he used responding to questions about same-sex marriage, until he supported it.
Fourth, and most importantly, Obama said we "need to have a conversation," about marijuana legalization to "reconcile" federal and state law. This is not a statement that conveys an insistence on an inflexible application of federal supremacy to obstruct state law.
Of course, as Nadelmann asked, who is going to be part of this conversation? Is it simply an internal Department of Justice conversation? Will Members of Congress such as Chairman Leahy or U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette (D-CO), who introduced H.R. 6606? Will officials from Colorado and Washington and the public be included in this conversation?

Is the policy that Eric Holder may be announcing going to pre-empt the conversation, or will it be stalled until there is a conversation?

And what is the role of Vice President Joe Biden? He has had oversight of the crime and drugs portfolio inside the White House. Former ONDCP staffer Kevin Sabet told Rolling Stone,

"The vice president has a special interest in this issue...As long as he is vice president, we're very far off from legalization being a reality."

Taking Dr. Sabet seriously, a petition campaign on the White House petition site targeting Vice President Biden has been launched. As of this writing it had over 8,600 signatures -- 25,000 are needed to trigger a reply.

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New York Times: Life Sentences for federal drug offenses

The New York Times has a front page story on 12/12/12 about the tragedy of life sentences in federal prison for minor drug offenders. The stories of four other minor drug offenders are also capsulized.
You can call the White House at 202-456-1111 and ask President Obama to commute these sentences this holiday season.

The U.S. has 41,000 prisoners serving life sentences; the United Kingdom has 41.

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Kumar's Plan to kick it in Charlotte

Barry,
Thinking about your call the other night. Yes, we've got to get this right.
If you really have the fire for America that Clinton says you have, then show everybody else that fire. Let's fire one up and get down and party with young America and show off you and the future everybody is talking about.

The Bank of America Stadium is free. Let's have a free concert Saturday night. (Definitely not exclusive to delegates and credentialed guests, but for them drinks are on the house!)

Invite the dopest young Americans -- everybody from software wranglers, game champions, skateboard gymnasts, athletes of every kind, writers, singers, poets, guitarists, keyboardists, drummers, lot of drummers, scientists, Burners, actors and actresses, models, deal makers, great students of all kinds! (writers -- give me some better lines) Play up the wonderfulness of youth and the future we want to give them!

Stage a big free alternative rally rockin' rave for Obama in the the Bank of America Stadium on Saturday.

HERE'S THE SECRET SAUCE:

Issue an Executive Order guaranteeing that no one will be arrested bringing pot, shrooms, XTC or Acid into the stadium, but if anyone is deliberately passing out bad stuff they will go to jail!!

No ticket required! Then give a triumphant speech to the most wildly cheering young people!

Have them all posting photos of you and them on Facebook partyyyying on!

Dude, isn't this savage!
Just get the details right like enough porta-potties, water, and shade. Yes allows tents and canopies on the field.

Encourage make up. Big Prizes to the best Obama tattoos.

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Obama White House looking at Clarence Aaron commutation petition (updated Jul 19, 10:51 am EDST)

Dafna Linzer writes in The Washington Post (online July 18 and on p.A3 in July 19 print edition), and ProPublica, that the Obama White House is reviewing Clarence Aaron's petition for a commutation of sentence.

Clarence Aaron was a college football player whose childhood friends recruited to arrange to buy cocaine for their Mobile, Alabama crack ring. Aaron played a minor role, did not plead guilty, and at trial the jury hung. The government tried him a second time and he was convicted. The quantity that the government witnesses said was involved triggered, under the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines, three concurrent life sentences! Parole was abolished in federal criminal cases after Nov. 1, 1987.

In 1999, film-maker Ofra Bikel, working with PBS FRONTLINE, told the story of how mandatory minimum sentences encourage defendants to inform on their friends or family to avoid long prison terms. The program, "Snitch," aired in January 1999. Bikel was able to get into federal prison to interview Clarence Aaron. Her documentary included the moving anguish of his parents and how one of Clarence's cousins testified against him. The brilliant climax of the documentary was the interview of Willie Jordan, one of the jurors at Aaron's trial.

Did they get the sentence they deserved?

Well, you know, I meant to look in the paper later to see what kind of sentence they served and somehow or other I missed it. And I never did know what kind of sentence they got.

What did you think they should get?

... Well, I wouldn't have thought of a large number of years, no. Just probably a short sentence. Now what a short sentence is I don't know, three to five years, maybe something like that ... .

Clarence Aaron got life.

Life?

Three life concurrent sentences.

Three concurrent life sentences. There's no hope of parole?

No.

Well, that's more than I thought it would be. Well, see, I had no idea. ... I'm surprised at that, I really am, that [he got] that harsh a sentence.

Does it sadden you?

Yeah, it does, somewhat, it sure does. It sure does. We weren't told anything about [sentencing] guidelines. And, of course, the judge, I guess, did the sentencing.

Jurors are not supposed to know about sentences; they are just supposed to determine guilt or innocence.

That's right. ...

Do you think the verdict might have come out different if you had known the sentences the defendants were facing?

It might have been a little tougher, but the evidence was such that I don't think we could have had any other conclusion other than guilty. ...

How do you feel about the sentence?

I wish I didn't know now that they'd got life.

Clarence's photograph, sitting in prison, became the visual shorthand for the entire movie.

On May 13, Dafna Linzer reported that the Pardon Attorney in the Department of Justice did not fully disclose to President George W. Bush the position of the prosecutor and the trial judge in Clarence Aaron's case regarding commutation of sentence, in a blockbuster front page story in The Washington Post. Later that month, U.S. Reps. John Conyers (D-MI) and Bobby Scott (D-VA) wrote to President Obama asking him to commute Aaron's life sentence.

Bikel's documentary also featured the case of Dorothy Gaines, a mother of three whose boyfriend was a crack addict. A raid of Gaines' home yielded nothing. The State of Alabama dropped charges against her. But the federal government used the informants against her, she went to trial, and was sentenced to over 20 years. In December 2000, President Clinton commuted her sentence and reunited her with her family.

"Snitch" included interviews with U.S. Senators Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and Jeff Sessions (R-AL), former U.S. Attorney in Alabama. Sessions, perhaps as a consequence of his depiction in "Snitch," became the key Senator in getting partial reform of the crack cocaine mandatory minimum quantity triggers through the Congress. The Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 was signed by President Obama in August 2010. (I played a major role both in writing the original 1986 crack law (secs. 1002 and 1302 of P.L. 99-570), and in achieving the 2010 reform. In 2005, I wrote the model for section 4 of the Fair Sentencing Act, which increased the monetary penalties for major drug trafficking violations, in order to encourage law and order Members of Congress to support the bill.)

Please write to President Obama and simply ask him to grant Clarence Aaron's petition for commutation of sentence, and tweet #FreeClarenceAaron.

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June 2012: The new direction of marijuana politics?

Jill Harris, managing director of strategic initiatives at Drug Policy Action (the political arm of the non-profit Drug Policy Alliance), has an op-ed in USATODAY on June 20, 2012 that concludes that key Democratic office holders and a couple of key primaries are the "weather vane" pointing to the political logic of marijuana decriminalization specifically and reform more generally.

The policy case for marijuana decriminalization is over 40 years old now. The concept was advanced by the National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse in its 1972, and about a dozen states enacted such laws in the early 1970s. Ms. Harris is making an excellent political case that this reform is once again politically safe; indeed politically astute.

I am thrilled that she was able to have this op-ed published in one of the most important newspapers. But I would be much more confident if this op-ed column had been authored by a professional political commentator. If so, political advisers to the President and Democratic candidates would probably pay closer attention.

Consider some history of marijuana and politics. A key prize in President Bill Clinton's successful campaign for re-election in 1996 was California, which he won with 51%. (President Georg H.W. Bush won California in 1988 with 51%, but Clinton won California in 1992, with only 46%). That year, the medical marijuana initiative, Proposition 215, received one million more votes than Bill Clinton! In 2004, George Bush won re-election in Montana as voters there passed a medical marijuana initiative. And in 2008, as Obama carried Michigan, voters passed a medical marijuana initiative. Blue state, red state -- it doesn't matter.

In May 2011, the legislatures of three states sent medical marijuana legislation to their governors, who signed the laws. In recent weeks, Connecticut became the 17th medical marijuana state, the New Hampshire legislature sent a medical marijuana act to their governor (who has threatened a veto), and Rhode Island's legislature enacted a marijuana decriminalization law. (And as I noted earlier, the candidates more sympathetic to marijuana reform won primary elections in Oregon and Texas!)

In 2007 and 2008, the Obama political team outmaneuvered the premier national political machine of the past 20 years, the Clinton organization, to snatch the Democratic nomination. As incumbent, he has been unchallenged for renomination in his party. But it is clear that he has failed to re-energize the young people who rallied and volunteered for him. When it comes to marijuana, the administration of Barack Obama seems to think the zeitgeist is locked on 1995! Perhaps this is because Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder turned marijuana policy over to a DEA Administrator who spent her career in California and Washington with photographs of the two George Bush's on her wall.

Perhaps Obama and his team believe the Attorney General's misrepresentations to the House Judiciary Committee and the public that the Justice Department crusade against medical marijuana is merely designed to help states enforce conformity to their laws. If so, they appear to be sitting in a 1995 medical marijuana time capsule. On this issue, sadly out of touch and deaf to their savvy colleagues like Andrew Cuomo and Rahm Emanuel, the Obama team's self-delusion points to a Mitt Romney inauguration next January.

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LEAP asks Obama if "We do big things" on drug policy

Retired Deputy Sheriff McKenzie Allen (Los Angeles County, CA, and King County, WA), a LEAP member, addresses the President in 30 seconds on YouTube to ask if he will consider studying legalization, regulation and control of drugs to reduce violence and save lives.

The President is taking questions from the public such as this to be addressed on Jan. 27, 2011 at 2:30 p.m. EST to be streamed live on youTube. Mr. Allen's video received more votes than any other submitted question in on-line voting.

LEAP is Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. Tom Angell, Media Director for LEAP, notes that President Obama has treated previous questions along these lines as a joke. LEAP Executive Director, retired Maryland State Police Major Neill Franklin, noting that close friends of his have been murdered while investigating drug cases, says this is "not a laughing matter, and the president should not treat it as such."

Tune in and see if the White House and the President, when it comes to fixing our failed drug policy, is able to say "We Do Big Things!"

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Happy Birthday President Obama -- What do you say now?

The Democratic Party is making a big deal about President Obama's 49th birthday tomorrow.
I posted this comment on FireDogLake.com on August 3.

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