One of the results of a liberal arts education is that you end up reading a lot of stuff that either makes you mad, makes you think outside your normal paradigm, or bores you to death. The following, from the book Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market by Eric Schlosser (which I am reading for a sociology class), falls in the second category.
On the whole, conservative Republicans have been more willing than liberal Democrats to criticize the war on marijuana. In addition to former secretary of state George Shultz, economist Milton Friedman, and editor William F. Buckley, the former Republican governor of New Mexico, Gary Johnson, has called for decriminalization. “Drug problems are health problems, not criminal justice problems.” Johnson told an audience at the Yale Law School in November, 2001. “The war on drugs is an absolute failure.” An opinion poll taken around the same time found that 67 percent of the American people opposed denying marijuana for medical use; 61 percent opposed the arrest and imprisonment of nonviolent pot smokers. The new public mood has greatly minimized the importance of providing a solemn or contrite answer to the key political question of the 1990s. When asked if he’d ever smoked pot, Michael Bloomberg, the Republican mayor of New York City, replied: “You bet I did, and I enjoyed it.”
Although President George W. Bush has acknowledged his own struggles with alcohol, he’s refused to discuss whether he ever smoked marijuana. Much like the previous baby-boomer who occupied the White House, Bush has taken great care to appear “tough” on drugs. His attorney general, John Ashcroft, has vowed to “escalate the war on drugs.” His drug czar John Walters, previously called for stiffening the criminal penalties for marijuana and has attacked drug treatment in words that bring to mind the late Harry J. Anslinger. Providing treatment to drug users, Walters argued, is “the latest manifestation of the liberals’ commitmet to a ‘therapeutic state in which government serves s the agent of personal rehabilitation.” Instead of expanding drug treatment, the Bush administration plans to expand drug testing. The education bill passed in 2001 provides funds for the widespread testing of schoolchildren. President Bush’s choice to head the DEA, former congressman Asa Hutchinson, was one of the House managers of Bill Clinton’s impeachment. Hutchinson vehemently opposes the medicinal use of marijuana because “it would send the wrong message to children.” In October of 2001 the DEA decided to ban food products containing hem, even though none of them can get you high. The ban was justified on the grounds that health food products such as Hemp Nuggets may contain minute traces of delta-9-THC. “many Americans do not know that hemp and marijuana are both parts of the same plant,” Hutchinson explained. The DEA has thus far made no effort to ban poppyseed bagels, which contain minute traces of opium.
