Eric Holder Nips Marijuana in the Bud and Invents a Time Cover Story

[douglas9]

Barack Obama's selection of Eric Holder as his attorney general is a very discouraging sign for anyone who hoped the new administration would de-escalate the war on drugs. As Dave Weigel noted earlier today, Holder pushed for stiffer marijuana penalties when he was the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, and the details are strikingly at odds not only with Obama's signals regarding marijuana but with his opposition to long sentences for nonviolent drug offenders. According to a December 1996 report in The Washington Times excerpted at TalkLeft, Holder wanted "minimum sentences of 18 months for first-time convicted drug dealers, 36 months for the second time and 72 months for every conviction thereafter." He also wanted to "make the penalty for distribution and possession with intent to distribute marijuana a felony, punishable with up to a five-year sentence." The D.C. Council made the latter Holder-endorsed change in 2000. Holder thought New York City's irrational, unjust crackdown on pot smokers was a fine idea and worth emulating, saying "we have too long taken the view that what we would term to be minor crimes are not important." His rhetoric on the seriousness of marijuana offenses was indistinguishable from that of the most zealous Republican drug warrior:

con't
http://www.reason.com/blog/show/130163.html

[annabanana]

1. A US Atty in DC in 1996 *-might-* have a different perspective

on the issue than an Atty General in 2009. At least I hope so.

[fla nocount]

2. Defending legislation against a weed. Change? n/t

[Dogtown]

4. Give it a rest

If you wanted to pick the cabinet, you should have run for the office.

:eyes:

[fla nocount]

6. To busy campaigning, canvassing and volunteering for that.

Now you want me to give up bitching? I've worked too hard for the privilege and now it's all many of us have left.

Perhaps it's the subject of the OP itself that generates the response.

[Warren Stupidity]

10. yeah we are supposed to just sit down and shut the fuck up.

How dare we want change? How dare we hope that this administration really would be different?

[Dogtown]

13. What?

The poster decried "change", suggesting that PE Obama has betrayed us by his cabinet choices.

I call bullshit.

It's absolutely ridiculous to complain about Obama's cabinet choices, especially before he gets to take office and implement his *actual* choices. It smacks of divisiveness and disruption.

I smoke *a bunch* of pot. Still, I'll trust Mr. Obama, or his appointments, to not enact further abusive restrictions until the man is actually in office and actually does something wrong.


But you go ahead and exercise your clairvoyance and gloom&doom us into utter boredom. Some assholes are just never happy...

[The Bakery Wagon]

3. Biden, who was mostly responsible for creating the "drug czar" (...) was the first clue

This is beginning to look like one of the biggest bait and switch scams in recent history

next we'll be told we can't really end the war

"but it's not really important" is said by people who haven't had their home invaded by masked jackboots at 3am with the wrong address who were looking for an herb that shouldn't have been made illegal to begin with.

Those who say the Drug War was a failure couldn't be more wrong. The Drug War is one of the most successful government programs ever devised.

It has divided the nation, all but nullified many of our Bill of Rights, and given the Gov virtually unlimited powers to snoop into our phone calls and bank accounts on mere suspicion.

All while ads for penis enlargement run on 4pm cable news shows.

insanity


>>>NEVER ALLOW HERB TO BE TAXED<<<

[fla nocount]

7. Welcome.

Please forgive us for our own brand of ditto-heads, this board didn't start out that way.

[douglas9]

9. Speaking of Wars

US Releases $90 million in Plan Mexico Military Hardware
Posted by Kristin Bricker - November 19, 2008 at 2:50 pm

Sources within the US Congress have confirmed to Narco News that the US government has released approximately USD$90 million of the $116.5 million in foreign military financing (FMF) under Plan Mexico, also known as the Merida Initiative or Plan Merida. The $90 million comprises approximately 77% of Mexico's total FMF allotment under Plan Mexico in 2008.

The US Congress authorized the release of up to 85%, or $99 million, of 2008 FMF funds pending a report from the Secretary of State on Mexico's compliance with the human rights conditions laid out in Plan Mexico. However, congressional sources state that Mexico has not yet met the human rights conditions, so the State Department has not submitted the report.

The human rights conditions are minimal--they requite the establishment of a commission to receive complaints about police conduct, that the Mexican government regularly meet with Mexican human rights organizations so that they can "make recommendations concerning the implementation of" Plan Mexico (thereby excluding from the consultations any NGOs that oppose the military aid package), that civilian prosecutors and judges investigate and prosecute federal police and military forces who are accused of committing human rights abuses, and that evidence obtained through torture not be used in court.

http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/kristin-bricker/2008/11/us-releases-90-million-plan-mexico-military-hardware

[4lbs]

5. Eric Holder has shown he can separate his personal views from his job duties.

Case in point, the death penalty.

Also, umm... when during the two years of campaigning did Obama ever say he was going to legalize certain drugs? I certainly missed it if he did.

[Warren Stupidity]

11. well yes he did.

In response to recent questions from The Chronicle about medical marijuana, Obama’s campaign - the only one of the three contenders to reply - endorsed a hands-off federal policy.
“Voters and legislators in the states - from California to Nevada to Maine - have decided to provide their residents suffering from chronic diseases and serious illnesses like AIDS and cancer with medical marijuana to relieve their pain and suffering,” said campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt.
“Obama supports the rights of states and local governments to make this choice - though he believes medical marijuana should be subject to (U.S. Food and Drug Administration) regulation like other drugs,” LaBolt said. He said the FDA should consider how marijuana is regulated under federal law, while leaving states free to chart their own course.
http://www.mpp.org/states/new-york/obama-to-stop-raids-on-marijua.html

[4lbs]

14. Looks like he's going to leave it to the states to decide for themselves as per the 10th Amendment..

Even though it appears he personally wouldn't mind if it were made legal, it probably won't be a front-burner issue in the short term. Regarding the FDA, I'm guessing that's part of the medical marijuana issue.

That's a far cry from saying "I'll do everything I can to make <drug> legal."


EDIT:

I personally wouldn't mind if marijuana, cocaine, and heroin were made legal and controlled, treated, and taxed like alcohol and tobacco, but I'm not going to expend a lot of energy to make it so. If it happens, it happens. If it doesn't, it doesn't.

[opihimoimoi]

8. Its them "Bong Crimes" ala Tommy Chong a few years back...Damn...

its gonna get worse.....

[riverdeep]

12. I'll say what I've said about many of Obama's picks so far,

I'll wait and see. Many of his picks don't make me do cartwheels, but unlike what the rabid right were pushing, I knew he was a centrist. They don't let anyone not in the center or the right get the wheel, an organized takedown occurs long before that. Witness Kucinich or Paul.

[Uncle Joe]

15. Marijuana arrests set new record.

http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/20-marijuana-arrests-set-new-record/

For the fourth year in a row, US marijuana arrests set an all-time record, according to 2006 FBI Uniform Crime Reports. Marijuana arrests in 2006 totaled 829,627, an increase from 786,545 in 2005. At current rates, a marijuana smoker is arrested every thirty-eight seconds, with marijuana arrests comprising nearly 44 percent of all drug arrests in the United States. According to Allen St. Pierre, executive director of the National Organization for Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), over 8 million Americans have been arrested on marijuana charges during the past decade, while arrests for cocaine and heroine have declined sharply.

The number of arrests in 2006 increased more than 5.5 percent from 2005. Of the 829,627 arrests, 89 percent were for possession, not sale or manufacture. Possession arrests exceeded arrests for all violent crimes combined, as they have for years. The remaining offenders, including those growing for personal or medical use, were charged with sale and/or manufacturing.

<snip>

A study of New York City marijuana arrests conducted by Queens College, released in April 2008, reports that between 1998 and 2007 the New York police arrested 374,900 people whose most serious crime was the lowest-level misdemeanor marijuana offense. That number is eight times higher than the number of arrests (45,300) from 1988 to 1997. Nearly 90 percent arrested between 1998 and 2007 were male, despite the fact that national studies show marijuana use roughly equal between men and women. And while national surveys show Whites are more likely to use marijuana than Blacks and Latinos, the New York study reported that 83 percent of those arrested were Black or Latino. Blacks accounted for 52 percent of the arrests, Latinos and other people of color accounted for 33 percent, while Whites accounted for only 15 percent.1

<snip>

“Enforcing marijuana prohibition . . . has led to the arrests of nearly 20 million Americans, regardless of the fact that some 94 million Americans acknowledge having used marijuana during their lives,” says St. Pierre.

In the last fifteen years, marijuana arrests have increased 188 percent, while public opinion is increasingly one of tolerance, and self-reported usage is basically unchanged. “The steady escalation of marijuana arrests is happening in direct defiance of public opinion,” according to Rob Kampia, executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project in Washington, DC, “Voters in communities all over the country—from Denver to Seattle, from Eureka Springs, Arkansas to Missoula County, Montana—have passed measures saying they don’t want marijuana arrests to be priority. Yet marijuana arrests have set an all-time record for four years running . . .”

<snip>

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

16. It looks like for Whites in NYC the police conveniently remembered that possession of 25 grams was

only punishable by a summons and a fine of $100 for the first offense.

BTW...as a teenager, I used to get high at Queens College all the time!

Small amounts of marijuana possession has been decriminalized now here in NY for over 20 years.