New Year’s Resolutions
With that time of year approaching, we humbly offer a few New Year’s resolutions for some of the individuals and institutions sure to be affecting all of our lives in 2009:
President-elect Barack Obama: To move quickly to keep your campaign promise to end the DEA’s medical marijuana raids. And to appoint a drug czar who treats science as a guide for policy, not something to be spun in the service of ideology.
The news media: To treat announcements from the drug czar’s office, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and other government drug war agencies with the same skepticism that normally greets other political statements — and to seek out the perspectives of drug policy critics and reformers without us having to throw ourselves at you.
Massachusetts state and local officials: To move swiftly to implement the marijuana decriminalization law passed by voters in November, and to stop claiming that somehow it’s harder to not arrest people and fine them $100 than it is to arrest them, fine them a higher amount, and possibly jail them.
The Drug Enforcement Administration: To stop stalling and approve Prof. Lyle Craker’s application for a facility at the University of Massachusetts Amherst to grow and test different strains of marijuana for medical purposes.
The California Narcotics Officers Association: To finally stop fighting Prop. 215 a dozen years after its enactment, and to drop your absurd policy statement claiming, “There is no justification for using marijuana as a medicine.”
Politicians of all stripes and their consultants: To recognize that the “just say no” era is over, that voters are ready to consider reasonable reforms of marijuana laws, and that medical marijuana in particular is so overwhelmingly popular that there is literally no downside to supporting it.
Okay, that’s a start. Readers, feel free to chip in with your own proposed New Year’s resolutions.
Tagged with: drug czar and legislation and Medical Marijuana and Obama and Prohibition by the author
6 comments
cnoa.org appears dead… Try this one.
I resolve not to smoke anymore…than is necessary
I also resolve to not smoke anymore…. vaporizing, eating, and drinking is still fair game
To the citizenry at large:
To hold our recently elected officials accountable to us, by politely but forcefully reminding them at every opportunity that the social conservative movement building since the Reagan administration was repudiated in the last two election cycles, and that we the People elected them to change the course of a misdirected nation by enacting rational policy in place of emotional policy.
Obama is the man! and prop 215 is the plan!! We need our meds not no feds. I want to love the USA…. This is where i was born… can you dig it? We have so many problems in the U.S if you didn’t know.. let me let you know marijuana is not a problem… people smoking crack is.. Come to Oakland Ca and see for your self……….
Macsen Apollo
obviously smoking any substance is probably harmful. but the fact is we can’t test it either way. I honestly don’t know if it helps with health problems as i am only 21 and have no health problems. but what i can say it didn’t do is limit or hinder me. I’m not slow, i have no thought of murdering anyone and I’m not insane. yet that’s the basic message society is given. but you know…the real problem isn’t that people are afraid of its effects. most people don’t care what others do. if i were to smoke marijuana with the same laws as cigarettes i’d be in select places when smoking, so i wouldn’t bother anyone. I believe that the only reason there is a social stigma for the use of marijuana is because it’s illegal. if it were legal to buy a pack of J’s then most of that would go away. The rest is simply old people. that’s not to say that i don’t respect the elderly, but rather, they have strong views on everything. they talk about how things were in ‘62, or that it’s not right. but i was born after ‘62, and their view of morals is based in the same time period as segregation and scooby doo. I challenge the U.S. Government to completely legalize marijuana for 1 year. regulate it like a free market, like cigarettes. If that were to happen, then it is my belief that crime would fall drastically. the tax dollars earned would be in the billions. and prison counts and spending would reduce by as much as 30%
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