Two weeks ago, when drug czar Gil Kerlikowske told reporters that “marijuana is dangerous and has no medical benefit,” he also repeated a line he’s been using since taking the job as director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy: “Legalization is not in the president’s vocabulary, and it’s not in mine.”

This oft-repeated line (see an example here) is concerning to those of us who want President Obama making informed decisions about our nation’s marijuana policies. How can he discuss its merits if he doesn’t know the word?

To solve this problem, MPP has created a Web page that allows you to e-mail President Obama the definition.

Click here to define “legalization” for President Obama.

It also lets you add a message about why you support ending marijuana prohibition. Go ahead and take action today, and help MPP arm President Obama with the knowledge he’ll need to make an informed decision about the future of America’s marijuana laws.

Steve Fox, MPP’s new director of state campaigns (who was also MPP’s federal lobbyist from 2002-2005), sends in the following dispatch:

While riding the Metro’s Red Line yesterday, I spotted former drug czar John Walters entering the train. When he ended up standing right beside me, I realized I couldn’t pass up the chance for a conversation. I know it sounds like a fruitless endeavor, but I’m an eternal optimist and thought, “Maybe if we have a casual lunch together, he’ll come to see the folly of keeping marijuana illegal.”

I opened with a polite, “Hello, Mr. Walters. I just wanted to introduce myself. I am Steve Fox and I work with the Marijuana Policy Project.” The chipper look on his face quickly changed. It looked like he had just thrown up in his mouth a little and was regretting the fact that he had nowhere to spit.

I said, “I know we have been on opposite sides of the issue, but I was wondering whether you would be interested in having lunch any time just to talk about our differences and to see whether we have any mutual interests.” He seemed to stifle a laugh and said, “I don’t think that would be worth our time. You know where I stand and I know where you stand.” This is not the first time I have been turned down for a date, so I let it slide right off. More importantly, I had more work to do. I had just eight more minutes to get him to support ending marijuana prohibition.

I don’t mean to spoil the ending, but it didn’t work. But it was a fascinating conversation nonetheless. The most interesting part is that he never broke character. I assumed he must, at some level, appreciate that most of what he said during his tenure as drug czar was either a distortion of the facts or completely ignorant of other available information. Boy, was I wrong.

He proceeded to give me all of his standard lines as if they were actually true and meaningful, like alleging (incorrectly) that marijuana is the leading cause of drug treatment admissions for teens, even more than alcohol.

When I asked him if he really thinks that marijuana is more harmful than alcohol, he quickly said, “Sure.” I said, “I mean, in terms of overdose deaths, overall deaths from use, the likelihood of causing domestic abuse and other forms of violence?” He said, “I talk to directors of treatment facilities and they tell me that those who are violent use all kinds of substances – marijuana, alcohol, heroin, cocaine…”

As we reached his stop, I repeated my lunch offer and extended my hand with my business card. For a moment, I thought he was going to just walk away, but he took it with a look of annoyance on his face.

I assume that card is in the trash somewhere now. But perhaps it is sitting on his desk and each look at it is making him ponder the true value of his work as drug czar.

As I said, I am an optimist.

[P.S. – Be sure to check out Steve’s new book, Marijuana is Safer: So Why Are We Driving People to Drink? (Chelsea Green, July 2009).]

Watch the video below to see Congressman Cohen refute the arguments that marijuana is particularly harmful and that marijuana is a gateway drug.

This poll, in combination with recent trends, is further evidence that Americans are quickly realizing the value of taxing and regulating marijuana. Congress, however,  is often slow to keep up. If you want to push Congress to act, visit mpp.org/federal-action, where MPP’s online system makes it fast and easy to ask your member of Congress to end 70 years of failed marijuana prohibition.

Looking beyond the top-line level of majority support to the cross tabulations, where support and opposition are shown among numerous variables, we can build a helpful profile of marijuana legalization supporters:

Age: Taxing and regulating marijuana enjoys majority support across every age group except for the over-65 crowd, which registers 44% support.

Region: Voters in the East (52%) and West (60%) are more likely than voters in the South (48%) or the Midwest (48%) to support taxing and regulating marijuana.

Culture: Those who never shop at Wal-Mart (72%) are more than twice as likely to support marijuana legalization than regular Wal-Mart shoppers (35%).  NASCAR fans (38%) are significantly less likely to support it than non-fans (54%).

Religion: Jewish voters (76%) were more likely than Catholics (47%) or Protestants (45%) to support legalizing marijuana.  Voters who consider themselves “born again” (33%) are far less likely to support it than voters who are not “born again” (55%).

Party affiliation: Democratic Party members are the most likely to support legalizing marijuana (68%), with Independents showing strong majority support (54%).  Liberals (79%) are the most likely to support it, with moderates (58%) trailing by 21 points and conservatives (25%) trailing fully 54 points behind liberals.

Presidential election: Those who voted for President Obama (69%) were much more likely to support legalizing marijuana than McCain voters (30%).

Clearly, he got that wrong. But that isn’t everything.

The president himself, not the moderator who was reading questions submitted via whitehouse.gov, raised the topic. His answer was prefaced with the recognition that this was a “fairly popular question.”

Actually, it was the most popular question, by far. Yet the president failed to treat it with the same thoughtfulness awarded to other topics. The entirety of his response is below (yes, it’s only 53 seconds long). Do you think he handled it fairly?

At his press conference announcing the annual report, Monitoring the Future, I asked White House drug czar John Walters to explain his insistence that marijuana must be prohibited for adults in order to protect children when the data suggest the exact opposite.

I don’t have a transcript yet, so what follows is my recollection of the exchange. However, if Walters or anybody from his Office of National Drug Control Policy public affairs department wants to dispute any of it and give me a transcript or video, I’d be grateful.

Anyway, the substance of his response was pretty much his standard circular logic: Marijuana is the most widely used illicit drug for teens and therefore must remain illegal. Or something. Again, help me out here, ONDCP public affairs.

He could have stopped there, and I kind of wish he had, because frankly I’m tired of making fun of this guy. But he couldn’t resist adding that he believes the real reason marijuana prohibition has been so impotent is that organizations like MPP devote so much time and energy to recruiting the next generation of potheads.

That’s right – I’ve just pointed out to him that youth use rates of a taxed and regulated substance, tobacco, have plummeted, and he accused MPP of wanting to adopt the same model to control marijuana because we secretly want to encourage teen use.

Of course, he knows this is nonsense, so I said, “Ok, Director Walters, you know that’s not true.” He muttered something feeble about how maybe MPP has been more effective reaching kids than he was. Which is funny, since ONDCP has spent billions on misleading, ineffective ads that condescend to kids, while MPP spends nothing. And why should we? We’re a policy organization. Policy is for grownups.

A lot of my colleagues feel understandably offended by the ridiculous accusation that any of us would favor encouraging children to engage in risky or dangerous behaviors. But Walters has resorted to that particular tantrum many times, and I find it more pathetic than offensive.

You know what bothers me? Where was the press? The biggest successes in reducing teen drug use, according to Monitoring the Future data, involve substances that are responsibly taxed and regulated – alcohol and tobacco. Meanwhile, we flounder with teen marijuana use rates. That’s news, folks.

But it wasn’t spelled out in the official press release, so nobody thought to ask about it. Except me. But then again, I work for an organization that, for some reason, wants to corrupt children.

“Will you consider legalizing marijuana so that the government can regulate it, tax it, put age limits on it, and create millions of new jobs and create a billion dollar industry right here in the U.S.?” (link)

This is a clear indication that visitors to Obama’s transition Web site want to see a change in America’s marijuana policy.  After decades of failed prohibition, rising marijuana use, and the recent surge in drug trade violence along the Mexican border, it makes sense that Americans are ready for a new approach.

The Web site’s blog will post responses to this and other questions over the next few days.

An astute reader in Texas sent an interesting link today: a court docket from Amarillo, Texas in which eight people were sentenced to jail for simple possession of marijuana (listed below).  Texas law has a specific provision for repeat marijuana offenders that makes jail time a likely sentence, so these might not be the first offender unicorns John Walters was after, but these cases reveal two things.

First, people go to jail for having small amounts of marijuana all the time. Not a surprise to anyone reading this blog.

So why do I point this out? I mention it because you can help us continue to highlight these injustices. Take a few minutes and go over to your county’s official web site and look up today’s court docket.  If you find a case where someone went to jail for marijuana possession, send a link to MPP or post it in the comments below.

Second, jail sentences are frequently imposed on repeat offenders.  These are not the drug dealers and violent criminals who Walters claims are the only people going to jail for marijuana offenses, just regular citizens who have run afoul of a law that causes more harm than the drug they consumed.

Potter Court At Law Docket

• John Dean Sherry Jr. Judgment. Possession of marijuana, Class B. Punishment assessed 30 days in Potter County Detention Center and costs.
• Orzaindro Nigaul Cortez. Judgment. Possession of marijuana, Class B. Punishment assessed: 45 days in Potter County Detention Center and costs.
• Timothy Dewayne Fellabaum. Judgment. Possession of marijuana, Class B. Punishment assessed: 75 days in Potter County Detention Center, $300 fine and costs.
• Archie Brewer. Judgment. Possession of marijuana, Class B. Punishment assessed: 30 days in Potter County Detention Center and costs.
• Jerry Stephen Harris. Judgment. Possession of marijuana, Class B. Punishment assessed: 120 days in Potter County Detention Center and costs.
• Seanery Shawn Hall. Judgment. Possession of marijuana, Class B. Punishment assessed: 30 days in Potter County Detention Center, $300 fine and costs.
• Bradley James Janssen. Judgment. Possession of marijuana, Class B. Punishment assessed: 75 days in Potter County Detention Center, $300 fine and costs.
• Michael Onofre Apodaca. Judgment. Possession of marijuana, Class B. Punishment assessed: 45 days in Potter County Detention Center, $300 fine and costs.

(Source 1 and 2)