Someone should clue in neo-con John Walters (who Drug Policy Alliance director Ethan Nadelmann aptly described once as Bill Bennett’s ‘Mini-Me’) that he no longer is compelled by statute to lie about cannabis any more seeking to thwart the will of American citizens.
We’re in the middle of a recession. Jobless numbers are through the roof. If marijuana were regulated like alcohol or tobacco, you suddenly add a whole bunch of DEA, police, prosecutors, wardens, guards, and more to the unemployment line.
You can’t get more mainstream in the media than The New York Times and Wall Street Journal, who both highlight the growing medical acceptance of medical cannabis and the uber-political conditions placed on medical researchers who want to conduct rigorous scientific studies on cannabis’ medical efficacy and safety.
House and Senate negotiations for the 2010 Appropriations bill have been completed. This is the huge federal budget bill and it just so happens that Washington DC is a federal district and its spending is controlled by Congress.
Here we go…Dr. Barthwell has made a career and a lot of money advocating that the American public should be drug tested en mass, all children should be randomly drug tested, students should lose their loans upon a simple cannabis arrest; as well as the mass arrests, prosecutions and incarcerations of cannabis consumers.
While there is a constant buzz of cannabis law reform these days in America, largely at the local and state level, unfortunately these strong winds of change do not largely penetrate the Capital Beltway.
At a time of heightened national security post-911, a near-depression economy and state government budgets bleeding red coast to coast, what is the moral and economic imperative that compels some in law enforcement to seek lifetime sentences for small-time cannabis growers?
Checkout Tim’s on-point rebuttal of McCaffrey’s usual double-speak, and that of others like blogger Joe Campbell, who’ve simply called out McCaffrey as, in Mr. Campbell’s view, “a liar”.
Any long time observer of Mr. Caffrey’s m.o. when being interviewed is to tell some whoppers to an unquestioning media, but in these recent videos McCaffrey, again, wrongly claims that no one gets arrested for cannabis;