Obama nominates Michele Leonhart as DEA administrator. This is not good. [View All]

[jmowreader]

http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/618/obama_nominates_michele_leonhart_dea_adminstrator

"The Leonhart nomination is very disappointing, but not surprising," said Bill Piper, national affairs director for the Drug Policy Allliance. "We need to use her confirmation hearing to get her on record as promising to abide by the Obama administration guidelines on medical marijuana enforcement. She may just be someone who goes along to get along, but it would be good to get her on record on whether the DEA is going to continue to waste law enforcement resources going after low-level offenders."

I wonder if Leonhart really hates drugs, or if she's learned the first rule of diplomacy--don't piss off the boss. If she was working for Shrub, she would have known being progressive on drugs is the surest way to get thrown out on yout ass.

If they just reschedule weed from Schedule 1 to Schedule 3, that'll be enough for right now--that will allow it to be prescribed on a nationwide basis. I don't think the Republicans would let it become a recreational drug right now, but they've got no real problem with some seriously harmful medications. (On edit: if they'll allow medicines with super narrow therapeutic indices to be prescribed to the public, they should be okay with a medicine you can't realistically overdose on.)