TW: My guy Obama and his director of drug policy are not going to blaze any trails on pot legalization. To think they would do so is to believe in a bridge too far. Our country is so cockeyed on such issues that we will just keep bashing our collective heads bloody before pondering legitimate alternatives. Meanwhile the drug cartels get richer, enforcement dollars are squandered etc. etc.
There are some signs of progress, however, on the local level...more to come.
From Economist:
"...Gil Kerlikowske, the director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy. "Legalisation is not in the president's vocabulary, and it's not in mine,"... Sadly America's conversation about marijuana has not advanced to the point where an official can even mull the idea of legalisation. More depressing, though, was Mr Kerlikowske's line that "marijuana is dangerous and has no medicinal benefit". That is a trite and ignorant statement.
Mr Kerlikowske is simply echoing the conclusion reached by the FDA in 2006, which we said at the time seemed to "lack common sense".
Cannabis has been used as a medicinal plant for millennia. In fact, the American government actually supplied cannabis as a medicine for some time, before the scheme was shut down in the early 1990s. Today, cannabis is used all over the world, despite its illegality, to relieve pain and anxiety, to aid sleep, and to prevent seizures and muscle spasms...
...We can say that this has no medical benefit because no tests have been done, and then we refuse to let you do any tests. The US has gotten into a bind, it has made cannabis out to be such a villain that people blindly say 'no'..."
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2009/07/panning_pot.cfm
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