Will Obama continue failed drug war policies?

Obama is considering Rep. Jim Ramstad (R, Minnesota) as head of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. This is unfortunate because Ramstad (a recovering addict) opposes medical marijuana.

"It’s gratifying to hear Jim’s name being mentioned for drug czar," said Ramstad spokesman Dean Peterson. "Jim has worked in a bipartisan way for 27 years on anti-drug efforts in Congress and the Minnesota Senate. And as a recovering person, he’s worked every day to help those suffering the ravages of chemical addiction."

In January, Obama said he supported marijuana decriminalization.

And in August, Obama stated, "I would not have the Justice Department prosecuting and raiding medical marijuana users. It's not a good use of our resources."

So why is he considering Ramstad to be the drug czar?

Ramstad for drug czar?

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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wolfiesma

Thanks for bringing this to our attention, Mark. I hope people will register their concerns at change.gov. I am very unhappy about the possibility of extreme drug war hawks to the cabinet. And opposing medical marijuana is pretty extreme.

On the other hand, I had to come down from my Obama high at some point. Thud.
Teller

I would be surprised if Obama decriminalizes any drug. Deprioritizing pot, yeah I kinda agree with MDH. But as a role model for youth – particularly black youth – I think he’ll be pretty sensitive to the appearance of “sanctioning” drug use. Even in the area of championing reduced sentences for convictions.
bunnyman2112

Because “change” means Hillary as Sec of State (a Bush or Clinton in a major power position from 1980-2012!) and Ramstad as Drug Tsar, of course. Did anyone really think this man would change ANYTHING?
Takuan

all well and good there #20, but he ain’t done nothin yet
minTphresh

i have also heard, but have yet to see actual proof, that obama has picked the ex head of monsanto as his chief of USDA. which, if true, doesn’t bode well at all. and if it’s true about ramstad, then there is a bad pattern emerging. if the system is broken, you don’t reward the ones that broke it. first fisa, now this shit. he’s no bush/cheney/mcain/palin, but the politician in him is really startin to show. I’ll try not to make judgements until the admin is seated. deep breath, there min-t!
zyodei

And, the great sellout continues.

Or, rather, Obama is being true to his true interests, which are corporate.

Obama is change – his skin is dark, and he doesn’t have a “G” in his name. Other than that, he represents the establishment, status quo, corporate state we have have for many decades now.

He will be sort of like Bill Clinton – he will give everyone a good impression of being generally competent, as civil liberties continue to crumble, as wars are still fought for “peacekeeping”, as more awful plans like NAFTA are passed, as millions are thrown in jail for smoking weed.

Obama’s whole career is a mainstream, party-line, machine player politician. He hasn’t spent a day in his political life bucking the system. If you supported Obama for the rather superficial reason that he is black, fine. It’s about time we have a president who is not a white man. If you supported him because he is not George Bush, fine. If you supported him because you thought he represents fundamnetal change, you’ve been had.
warren_piece

two words.
bi
den
and remember that he was helpful in creating the position – drug czar. it is unfortunate that so few people railed on obama when he picked that overplugged bushel of washington establishment.
danimagoo

As a recovering alcoholic myself, I do like the idea of having a recovering addict and/or alcoholic as drug czar. I would hope such a person would be less likely to view addicts as criminals. Maybe Jim Ramstad is not the right guy, I don’t really know enough about him, but I would suspect he’d be better than what we’ve had in the past.
Takuan

I see Kellogg has dropped Phelps over the bong photo. Time to boycott cornflakes!
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  There’s a big foofaraw about how they didn’t dump him for drunk driving, which is actually dangerous, but they did dump him for being seen with a bong.
Takuan

http://www.sciam.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=stephen-colbert-for-fda-commissione-2008-11-13
grimc

Does anybody know the best way to voice opposition to a nominee?

If it reaches the confirmation phase, you could put contact your Senators. But as far as the ONDCP Director goes? This year? I can’t see a Democratic Senate derailing whomever Obama nominates, outside of the nominee eating kittens or something.

Bit of trivia: Biden coined “Drug Czar”.
- Antinous
  
  Could we at least appease Russia by changing it to Drug Tsar?
agger

#12 Teller:

“I would be surprised if Obama decriminalizes any drug.. as a role model for youth – particularly black youth – I think he’ll be pretty sensitive to the appearance of “sanctioning” drug use”

Decriminalization is not “sanctioning”. The only model that has actually proved helpful in dealing with the impact of drugs is the “harm reduction” strategy employed by Holland, among others. To not criminalize something does in no way mean you support or condone it.

Two examples: 1) I don’t drink alcohol (I had to give it up some years back, because I couldn’t control my consumption – early warning signs, & I decided to hit the break), and I even believe our society would be a better place if alcohol use was much less abundant. However, I in no way support or condone prohibition.
2) I don’t smoke pot, and I don’t condone its use, especially among young people. I frankly believe it’s harmful and think people should stay away from it. However, I believe the law criminalizing its use is completely stupid, counterproductive, even. Countries legalizing consumption (Holland, notably) experience no rise in consumption but criminalize their youth less and get to know more about what’s actually going on.

If Obama is really about the educated and intelligent policy-making he has campaigned on, he should be able to get the point through that decriminalization does not equal condoning anything. In the case of drugs, it just means being smart and dealing with these problems in an informed manner.
grimc

It should be noted that there’s nothing in the linked Politco piece that says Ramstad is actually being considered by Obama. All we know is that a)his name is “bouncing around”, and b)the actual tip came from “a Democratic congressman who backed Obama but was not closely associated with him.” This could even be an effort by Ramstad himself to toss his hat in the ring. In fact, I’d guess that that’s slightly more likely.
Anonymous

Isn’t it obvious that anyone who is styled a “hardliner” about drugs is a political player, since the only success the war on drugs has had is political?
eclectro

It’s a clever trick to promise everything to everyone when you are running for office, but who honestly thinks the president can or would deliver on most of them?
The electorate really does not know what decisions Obama will make, one can only hope that they would be reasonable. With the bad problems on the menu right now, I’m pretty certain medical marijuana falls pretty low on the list.
freeyourcrt

Change…not when it comes to the government monopoly on drug running. Please wake up folks. The more things “change” the more things stay the same.
zyodei

Why do we still have the drug war? It’s a patently insane and failed policy. No rational person who examines the facts can support it. It has failed to reduce use, it drives addicts into crime, it creates organized crime, it wastes money, and reduces the privacy and liberty of everbody.

So why do we still have it? Because America is run by corporations. The war on drugs is good for corporations – prison corporations, pharmaceutical corporations, and other big money interests. The WoD has an entirely corporate genesis, and nothing has changed.

If there is one issue that all Americans – conservative, liberal, libertarian, socialist, everyone – can get together behind, it is getting corporations out of the political process. Some might agree or disagree about whether these corporations have a net positive or negative effect on society, but we can ALL agree that one of the most important priorities is to remove corporate money from political influence. If there is one banner that we can all rally around together, that is it.

I became a libertarian when I realized that government is by its very nature corruptible, and will always be a servant of corporations – especially when it is pretending to reel them in. But that is another discussion entirely.

If he wanted to bring “change” to America, seriously reexaming the WoD would be a good place to start.
Takuan

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=43198
Takuan

“The grand jury accused Cheney of a conflict of interest because of his influence over the county’s federal immigrant detention center and his substantial holdings in the Vanguard Group, which invests in private prison companies.

The indictment accuses Gonzales of stopping an investigation into abuses at the federal detention center.”
Thebes

Could it be because the only change people will see is when they get desperate enough to pan handle?

He is just another politician, though an excellent public speaker. So far his actions show he is partisan, supports big government, a populist enough to listen to mass protests at least, but he is for: domestic spying, war on some drugs, war on so called terror, war in Iran, etc.

He might not be as bad as McCain would have, nor Bush, but he is not going to undo all the harm which has been done to this nation and I still have no hope for the future of my country.
wolfiesma

One question: If I do register a complaint on change.gov regarding drug laws and cabinet appointees, etc… will I be put on a special watch database because of my comments?
Takuan

cut him some slack. If he tried to undo all the obvious evil in his first month they would certainly kill him – or allow him to be killed. Even if he had Imperial power, the Guard and others close to the throne wouldn’t hesitate if their own little gravy trains were threatened.

Be content if he at least stops creating new daily evils like his predecessor. If he actually undoes any: bonus. He’ll be riding the economic tiger as well, something he has no control over.
hombreman

Obama was an addict too. He was addicted to Nicotine, a drug that has killed 100 million people in the 20th century alone. Why is it still legal then in every country except Bhutan? Countries realized by taxing and regulating they could educate people, without arresting them, on the dangers of tobacco abuse. If it was made illegal by the DEA they could arrest tobacco users, citing Nicotine as more addicting than cocaine or heroin. Filling jails with non violent people. So according the Feds it’s OK to kill yourself with ciggs and alcohol but God forbid using marijuana as medicine, recreationally or industrially. People see the hypocrisy!
Takuan

couple of years ago
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/12/18/report-usas-biggest-.html
Takuan

too late
CVR

“Be content if he at least stops creating new daily evils like his predecessor.”

Right on. If he’s “just another corporate sellout” a la Clinton, that’s a HELL of a lot better than what we’ve had for the past two terms.

In 2000, I voted my conscience and on my ballot wrote in Nader (I lived in a State that at the time was considered red as a fire truck, but Obama flipped it!).

‘What the hell’, I thought, I should not compromise for the Gorebot and just accept more of the same Democratic Leadership Council centrist b-s-. ‘The Democrats are basically whipped by conservatives at this point [2000] anyway, so this will just allow them to focus on what they really believe in instead of rewarding them for merely slowing down the progress of national suicide.’

Ah, how far away that time seems now, how tender that heart…
error404

wasn’t Biden the guy behind implementing the W.O.D.s?
Takuan

Vetinari’s skill lies in balancing opposing forces.

Drug Czar is so soiled….. “Dope Generalissimo”? anyone? anyone?
Takuan

http://www.esquire.com/the-side/richardson-report/obama-marijuana-legalization-122308
Takuan

over 7,000 presidential appointment positions up for grabs….. hmmmmmmm.
Nelson.C

Even if Lord Vetinari had the job, would you expect him to get everything done by the end of Day One, let alone several weeks before he took office?
oakstead

GRIMC is right, all this Ramstad speculation is just speculation — nothing solid coming from inside the Obama camp. For example, Politico previously reported that William Bratton was on the short list for ONDCP Director (the formal title for the “Drug Czar”). Bratton is the current LAPD Chief of Police and the former Commissioner of the NYPD. He is a supporter of medical marijuana.

Of course, he’s also a cop. Don’t expect anyone appointed to head up the ONDCP to advocate something other than a criminal law model for drug policy writ large. We’re not there yet, and Obama would be unwise to spend his political capital on such reform in his first term.
NicoNicoNico

It is disappointing to hear Ramstad is considered. I still have faith Obama will try something in the name of medicine, I agree that it could be twisted the wrong way all because of his race. It’s silly, especially to people like me who would benefit from legalization. If it were legal in my state, it would be a great alternative to the jumble bag of pills (6!) I have to take. At least it was made low priority in my area, though I still won’t grow it myself because of the chance someone might want to prosecute anyway because that would mean the end of my financial aid for school.

I’m hoping local communities will take the reign where the federal government has failed. The states have the power to legalize it and, if enough of them do, it could pressure the government to make it a federal law. As it is, federal agents can still prosecute for possession, even in states where it is legal for medicinal purposes.
David Carroll

Nelson.C (#37):

Wasn’t Lord Vetinari’s (fictional) motto “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”?

So why would I expect him of all people to do everything (or anything) on day one?

Now Vlad the Impaler as a reformer! He would have killed a couple of dozen lobbyists and bureaucrats on day one.. ;)
robaustin

I don’t know anything about this guy, but I haven’t heard anyone point out that the President can effectively end the marijuana prohibition with a stroke of the pen. An executive order to the DEA, FBI and whomever stating that enforcing marijuana laws will be their lowest priority (because resources are better spent elsewhere), and any anti-marijuana efforts will be exclusively focused on imported marijuana (it’s better for the economy if all marijuana is grown domestically). I don’t expect him to do it.

Personally, I’d take Tommy Chong as Drug Czar. Let’s see, how is it that hipsters would phase it? Oh yeah… Best. Cabinet. Meetings. Ever.
zikzak

Obama has repeatedly articulated his intention to fully continue and if necessary escalate “Drug War” policy abroad, which includes destroying the livelihoods of Colombian farmers, funding right-wing paramilitary death squads and other fun.

For taking this stance, he received the endorsement of the Partnership for a Drug-Free America. Here’s the most informative link I could find, try to ignore the Ron Paul fanaticism: http://www.cannabisculture.com/articles/5147.html
Takuan

and so the deal making begins
Ugly Canuck

Bah.
You all have been suckered again.
For forty years it has boiled down to:
Drug users vs. Nazis.
It’s that simple.
Nelson.C

David @38: But the motto implies that things that are broke should get fixed, which Vetinari does on several occasions, generally within 300 pages or so.
aldasin

Why even have a drug czar?
Let HHS handle it.
emg72

But let’s not confuse appointments with policy. Just because Ramstad opposes medical marijuana doesn’t mean the policy of the administration in general or that department in specific would be to prosecute or even look hard in that direction.
venicerocco

Presumably Obama will tell him “You can be drug Tzar, but here’s how it’s going to be” Ramstad can either take it as it is, or leave it.
David Carroll

Presidents who don’t know how to wheel and deal don’t get very far, even if they have the kind of mandate Mr. Obama is enjoying.

for me the most encouraging piece of trivia about the president elect is that he likes to play poker, and horse. This will probably do him more good than all those years at Harvard Law.
Ugly Canuck

Shall people be ALLOWED to use marijuana? That this very question is asked shows how little people understand and appreciate their own born freedoms…
How did these people get a power to disallow its use? To ruin lives, to take life property and liberty away forever (lost time is lost forever, we do not live forever)for not obeying their diktat….
If its use makes people well from their diseases, if its use makes people happy, (and if it can do so now, then marijuana always since forever has…)…then,
Who are these people to deny its use, to punish those who do?
The enemies of your liberties, the enemies of your happiness….
agger

Rahm Emanuel, the new chief of staff, is already a hardliner in the war on drugs, as pointed out by conservative blogger Daniel Larison in this post:

http://www.amconmag.com/larison/2008/11/12/cracking-down/

Unless someone start putting a very heavy pressure on the future Obama administration, we’re going to see a Clinton-style continuation of the war on drugs, including crackdowns on marijuana, medical and otherwise.

This is a very troublesome prospect, given the horrendous price for the American war on drugs. But Obama’s track record in this question and his selection of Rahm Emanuel don’t really offer much hope for change in this respect.
David Bruce Murray

Obama will still be his boss. I doubt he’d get very far if he acted in a manner that was opposite of Obama’s desires.

If he has been known to behave in a bi-partisan fashion as the article mentions, chances are strong that he will respect the wishes of his boss.

This point seems to be pretty nit-picky, even for Boing Boing.
- Antinous
  
  If he has been known to behave in a bi-partisan fashion as the article mentions, chances are strong that he will respect the wishes of his boss.
  
  Cabinet and related posts are not hourly jobs at Wal-Mart. They don’t just hire someone and tell him/her what to do. A White House appointment means that the administration is adopting all the baggage that comes with the appointee. Anybody have some examples to prove me wrong?
Ugly Canuck

Oh and by the way do you think that maybe the vast underground economy and the grotesque overpricing (relative to costs of production) of harmless recreational drugs(not to mention the taxpayer-funded police/prison spending to go with it) generated by these drug policies of the past forty years has anything at all to do with the mis-allocation of economic resources demonstrated by the general “economic crash” of today? No?
Ever-increasing prison/police/military spending is sancrosanct, so publicly-funded health/education spending will have to be cut again…
mdh

Well, Obama supports “lifting the ban” on needle exchange, which speaks to how Obama perceives drug use and medical authority.

I rather expect weeeeeeeed to be deprioritized except where it is found with stronger stuff.
Dead Air

Rather than either condemning him for considering what would likely be a bad appointment, or taking on the role of apologists in advance…

Does anybody know the best way to voice opposition to a nominee? Obama is hearing from plenty of center-right types who he’s feeling some pressure to appease. It would wise to remind him that the civil-libertarian crowd needs a little appeasing of our own, the earlier the better.
dirty sneakers

Letâ€™s talk about real change, about getting together and using our numbers. That Obama was able to say the things people wanted to hear and get to be prom king does not cut it. That he is able to display his dominance over others through careful speech and a sly hand on the opponentâ€™s elbow is just a change in the cosmetics of the old chest beating & antler clashing. His reign will be insignificant to the real fundamental changes we need to work towards.
Anonymous

Obama took advantage of a real popular social movement for change and redirected the efforts of millions of people towards getting himself elected. Sadly, he is an American centrist politician– and in most of the rest of the industrialized world, that really means he’s on the right, since that’s where the american “center” is– a center that is pretty unrepresentative of a sizeable portion of the american public that believes in progressive politics. Obama’s mandate for change is just that– “we” who got him elected must mandate that he enact changes in the corporate-controlled government we call a democracy.

We are the social movement that Obama rode on, and unless we get our act together, allow for dissent and criticism and stop acting the way right-wing morons did about Bush– he could do no wrong until the stench of his wrongdoings was too great– Obama will just continue the underlying political direction this country has been in for decades. Generations of Americans and their politicians dug the hole we’re in– Bush just pushed us in to it finally.

If we do nothing, if we just act like Dailykosdroids and Huffpobots and just blindly support Obama, we are no better than those blind republicans. The US faces imminent collapse, and trying to deal with it using the the same tired philosophies and policies of the 20th century will not get us out. I’m not kidding about the collapse– if the US dollar crashes, our oil imports dry up and the ultra-complex and very fragile industrial systems that keep our civilization on life support will collapse. Industry, agriculture, transport will seize up. Food will get scarce especially on the coasts as shelves go bare and trucks stop coming out of the midwest. People will freeze to death in the winter. It will be unlike anything people encounterd in the great depression– many people had family farms to go back to, or find work in. That entire sector of the economy is gone now.

It’s been said that during the cold war, the industrialization of the USSR and the US was like a competition to see who could build the tallest building. The USSR built a tall but rickety building that only looked impressive from the distance, so they only moved into the first floor. When it collapsed, they just had to run out the front door and start planting potatoes. The US, on the other hand, built its really tall building using the labor and resources of world conquest and imbalanced neocolonialist trade schemes. And then inhabited the penthouse. Not a good place to be. To take the analogy another step– only by immediately evacuating the building and resettling the inhabitants in safe, sound, sustainable houses can we save the most lives. Propping it up with braces and screws isn’t going to save anyone in the long run. Obama, so far, and really our entire political infrastructure, shows a constitutional inability to take the steps any good fire marshall would take.
Mark Frauenfelder

“This point seems to be pretty nit-picky, even for Boing Boing.”

I disagree. If Obama is filling posts with people who believe in certain policies, he shouldn’t expect them to promote different policies that go against their beliefs. It would be like hiring a creationist to write a textbook on evolution.