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Thursday, Nov 26, 2009
If the polls are right, most Americans oppose this strident stance on pot. In March 2001, the Pew Research Center found that 73 percent of Americans support medicinal marijuana laws. After Sept. 11, the respected polling firm of Zogby International did a survey for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws that found 61 percent favor decriminalizing possession of small amounts of the drug.
Support for medical marijuana cuts across generations --and party lines. It may be a hot-button for some conservatives, but it's not a Republican issue. Former President Ronald Reagan's director of communication, Lyn Nofziger, whose daughter died from cancer, speaks out for medical marijuana. New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, another Republican, is an outspoken proponent of legalizing marijuana. In Maryland, David Brinkley, a Republican candidate for state representative who survived Hodgkin's lymphoma 14 years ago, says his support of medical marijuana isn't even an issue in his campaign. "I'm a very conservative person in a very conservative district," he says. "But there comes a time when you have to be practical in dealing with patients and their concerns and needs."
Even Bush, during the 2000 presidential campaign, said he didn't see medical marijuana as warranting national attention. In October 1999, he told The Dallas Morning News that, with respect to medical marijuana, "each state can choose that decision as they so choose." Yet Bush, who has skirted questions about whether he ever used illegal drugs, has publicly changed his position. When he nominated John Walters for director of the Office of Drug Policy, he told the audience in the Rose Garden: "Acceptance of drug use is simply not an option for this administration. We emphatically disagree with those who favor drug legalization."
"This is crazy," says Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., sponsor of the States' Rights to Medical Marijuana Act (H.R. 2592), a bill he introduced this year to permit states to allow the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes. "I can't think of worse use of resources as we struggle to fight terrorism, charging people with conspiracy who are trying to alleviate pain. To prosecute them is ludicrous. It's the worst example of putting people's very vindictive, personal obsessions ahead of decency and rational public policy," he says. "They're doing it because they're obsessive right-wingers who think marijuana threatens all that Americans hold dear." Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, another alumnus of the Reagan White House, is a co-sponsor of the bill.
As drug czar, Walters is trying his best to make Americans fear marijuana legalization. In September, with several states and municipalities planning pot-related ballot measures, his office rolled out an ad campaign linking the drug to violence. The campaign is reminiscent of earlier government efforts to demonize marijuana. In one TV ad, Dan, a handsome all-American white teenager, buys his pot from a dealer who gets her drugs from a smuggler who gets his supplies from a swarthy, nefarious-looking man.
"While many people have made the connection between opium and terror, they see marijuana as a benign drug," Walters said in a statement. He declined Salon's request for an interview.
Walters last month campaigned against initiatives in Arizona and Nevada to decriminalize possession of pot in small amounts as part of an effort to make the drug more accessible to patients. He stopped in Tucson a week after a Northern Arizona University poll found that 53 percent of the voters supported a measure decriminalizing possession of up to two ounces. It would also require the state's Department of Public Safety, most likely police officers, to provide the drug free to patients who have doctors' recommendations. Speaking to local reporters, Walters labeled the initiative a "stupid, insulting con" and called medical marijuana "the 21st-century snake oil." A more recent poll shows 51 percent of voters opposed to the ballot question.
A few days later, Walters was in Nevada to campaign against the initiative that would allow adults to possess up to three ounces of marijuana and set up state-licensed and -taxed smoke shops to sell the drug. Medical marijuana proponents say they were trying to prevent patients from buying cannabis seeds on the black market to grow their plants. But Walters, frustrated with what he calls "distortions" from the proponents, told a local TV station in Reno, "I call this reefer madness, madness." The latest polls show about 60 percent of voters opposed to the decriminalization measure.
While Walters gave the media catchy sound bites, he declined to participate in debates with local politicians or proponents of the marijuana initiative. In Nevada, Billy Rogers, spokesman for Nevadans for Responsible Law Enforcement, invited him to a debate, but Walters declined. He said he'd only debate three people: George Soros, a billionaire who's now chairman of the liberal Open Society Institute; Peter Lewis, CEO of Progressive Insurance in Cleveland; and John Sperling, founder of the for-profit University of Phoenix.
To a large degree, today's marijuana debate is being shaped by six men: Ashcroft, Hutchinson and Walters on one side and Soros, Lewis and Sperling on the other. Lewis gave money to the Nevada group. Soros, Lewis and Sperling are major financial backers of the Drug Policy Alliance, which supports state medical marijuana efforts. In a May 2002 Op-Ed in the Washington Post, Walters wrote: "By now most Americans realize that the push to 'normalize' marijuana for medical use is part of the drug legalization agenda. Its chief funders, George Soros, John Sperling and Peter Lewis, have spent millions to help pay for referendums and ballot initiatives in states from Alaska to Maine."
Ironically, pot does turn out to be the gateway drug, after all -- the gateway to less draconian drug laws. Probably no one understands this more than Walters, who has made a career out of championing the war on drugs. When William Bennett was secretary of education under Reagan, Walters, whose late father, Vernon Walters, served as deputy director of the CIA under Nixon and as U.N. ambassador under Reagan, was in charge of the Schools Without Drugs program. Then, when the first President Bush appointed Bennett the first drug czar in 1989, Walters was his chief of staff. And for a brief stint in 1993, he was acting drug czar until he quit when Clinton redirected the drug policy office's focus to hardcore users instead of enforcement and interdiction.
