September 11, 2010 – As California voters gear up for a November 2 vote on Proposition 19, a ballot measure that would legalize the growth, possession and distribution of marijuana, nine former administrators of the Drug Enforcement Administration have issued a preemptive call to the White House: If Prop 19 passes, they say, President Obama should sue.

The Associated Press reports that in an August 24 letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, the former DEA officials wrote that the potential legalization of marijuana would challenge federal authority and merit a lawsuit against the state – much like the one Mr. Obama has filed in protest of Arizona’s controversial immigration law, which the administration say contradicts national policy.

“We would expect the Department of Justice to act just as swiftly and for the same reason,” the DEA administrators said of the potential passage of Proposition 19.

The upcoming vote has incited heated national debate on the issue of cannabis legalization, and Californians once again find themselves in a position to set national precedent with a controversial ballot measure. If passed, Californians 21 and older would be the first Americans with the legal right to use marijuana recreationally.

Proponents of the measure argue that legalizing pot would allow for increased regulation of it, and that taxing the drug could bring much-needed revenue to the state. But Gil Kerlikowske, Obama’s drug czar, argued in an op-ed to the Los Angeles Times that while it would be “impossible to predict precisely the consequences of wholesale legalization,” he could say “with near certainty” that marijuana use would increase with the passage of Prop 19 – and so would the social costs associated with drug use.

But whether or not the Obama administration would be willing to intervene in the matter is unclear. The Justice Department has not issued a statement in response to the letter, and unlike with the case of immigration, the president has not made the legalization of marijuana a central focus of his political agenda. Source.

The Obama administration said Tuesday that it “firmly opposes” the legalization of any illicit drugs as California voters head to the polls to consider legalizing marijuana this fall.The president and his drug czar re-emphasized their opposition to legalizing drugs in the first release of its National Drug Control Strategy this morning.

“Keeping drugs illegal reduces their availability and lessens willingness to use them,” the document, prepared by Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske, says. “That is why this Administration firmly opposes the legalization of marijuana or any other illicit drug.”

Is anyone surprised? You shouldn’t be. After all, this is the same Gil Kerlikowske that has said repeatedly that legalization is not in his vocabulary, and publicly stated, “Marijuana is dangerous and has no medicinal benefit.” And this is the same administration that recently nominated Michele Leonhart to head the DEA — the same Michele Leonhart who overruled the DEA’s own administrative law judge in order to continue to block medical marijuana research, and publicly claimed that the rising death toll civilians attributable to the U.S./Mexican drug war “a signpost of the success” of U.S. prohibitionist policies.
Yet, given that national polls now indicate that an estimated one out of two Americans nationwide support legalization, and that a solid majority of west coast voters and Californians back regulating the retail production and distribution of pot like alcohol, it seems politically counterproductive for the administration to maintain such a ‘flat Earth’ policy. So what could possibly be their reasoning?

It’s actually spelled out here, in the White House’s 2010 Drug Control Strategy:

We have many proven methods for reducing the demand for drugs. Keeping drugs illegal reduces their availability and lessens willingness to use them. That is why this Administration firmly opposes the legalization of marijuana or any other illicit drug. Legalizing drugs would increase accessibility and encourage promotion and acceptance of use. Diagnostic, laboratory, clinical, and epidemiological studies clearly indicate that marijuana use is associated with dependence, respiratory and mental illness, poor motor performance, and cognitive impairment, among other negative effects, and legalization would only exacerbate these problems.

There it is in black and white — in less than 100 words: The federal government’s entire justification for marijuana prohibition; their entire justification for a policy that has led to the arrest of over 20 million Americans since 1965, that is responsible for allowing cops to terrorize families and kill their pets, that has stripped hundreds of thousands of young people of their ability to pursue higher education, and that is directly responsible for the deaths of over 20,000 civilians on the U.S./Mexico border. And that’s just for starters.
Yet the entire premise for maintaining the government’s policy — that keeping marijuana criminally prohibited “reduces [its] availability and lessens willingness to use [it]” — is demonstrably false. Under present prohibition, more than 1/3 of 8th graders, more than 2/3rds of 10th graders, and some 85 percent of 12th graders say that marijuana is “easy to get.” Even according to the stridently prohibitionist group CASA (National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University), more teens say that they can get their hands on pot than booze, and one-quarter say that they can buy marijuana within the hour. That means, President Obama and Gil Kerlikowske, that 25 percent of teens can obtain marijuana as easily — and as quickly — as a Domino’s pizza!

This is your “proven” method for “reducing availability?” Don’t make us laugh.

By contrast, dozens of studies from around the globe have established, consistently, that marijuana liberalization will result in lower overall drug use. For example, no less than the World Health Organization concluded:

“Globally, drug use is not distributed evenly, and is simply not related to drug policy. … The U.S. … stands out with higher levels of use of alcohol, cocaine, and cannabis, despite punitive illegal drug policies. … The Netherlands, with a less criminally punitive approach to cannabis use than the U.S., has experienced lower levels of use, particularly among younger adults. Clearly, by itself, a punitive policy towards possession and use accounts for limited variation in national rates of illegal drug use.”

In fact, NORML has an entire white paper devoted to addressing this issue here.

Of course, the best option to truly reduce youth availability to cannabis is legalization and regulation. This strategy — the same one that we employ for the use of virtually every other product except cannabis — would impose common sense controls regarding who can legally produce marijuana, who can legally distribute marijuana, who can legally consume marijuana, and where adults can legally use marijuana and under what circumstances is such use legally permitted.

But we already know that this option isn’t in the administration’s vocabulary, now don’t we?

I’ve written time and time again that this administration ought to view marijuana legalization as a political opportunity, not a political liability. They obviously aren’t listening. Nevertheless, it is the voters who have led — and will continue to lead — on this issue, and it is the politicians who will follow. Could we expect it to be any other way?

After all it was the federal government that followed the states lead in 1937 — federally criminalizing pot, but only doing so after virtually every state in the nation had already done so. California, for instance, outlawed marijuana use in 1913 — nearly a quarter of a century before the Feds acted similarly. Likewise, it is going to be the states — and California in particular — that are going to usher in the era of re-legalization.

And it will be the Feds who eventually will have no other choice but to fall in line.