Broken promises about the drug war
LAST WEEK, the Rhode Island and Washington state governors petitioned the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) to reclassify cannabis sativa from a Schedule I to a Schedule II substance.
According to the DEA, substances in Schedule I "have a high potential for abuse, have no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States, and there is a lack of accepted safety for use of the drug or other substance under medical supervision." Substances in Schedule II have some medical validity, with cocaine and some opiates falling into this category.
The governors viewed this reclassification as a necessary step in order to provide medical marijuana to people without fear of the federal government holding those involved--including health care providers, dispensaries or compassion centers--legally liable for violating federal law.
The call from these governors (with Vermont's governor later adding his support) comes during a time of increased attacks on medicinal marijuana.
When Barack Obama was running for president, his rhetoric supported medicinal marijuana. Soon after he took office, the Department of Justice released the Ogden memo, which essentially stated that only major illegal traffickers, not caregivers, would be prosecuted.
But this June, the Department of Justice responded with another memo reclaiming the right to make arrests for those "in violation of the Controlled Substances Act, regardless of state law." In October, four U.S. state attorneys in California said that they would move against landlords who rent space to the storefront operators of medical marijuana dispensaries, whom prosecutors suspect of using the law to cover large-scale for-profit drug sales.
This crisis--of medicinal marijuana being legal under states rights, but being prosecuted by the federal government--is the direct result of Obama reneging on his campaign promise not to prosecute medicinal marijuana providers.
These actions have had a chilling effect, with states refusing to expand or continue their medicinal marijuana programs. Rhode Island was set to open three compassion centers that would distribute medicinal marijuana to those approved by the Department of Health. Gov. Lincoln Chafee stopped the implementation of this, and it is now nearly two years since the law mandated the opening of compassion centers.
Medicinal marijuana advocates view this petition of the DEA as a positive goal, but it does not address people's need to acquire their medicine in the short term.
The question is whether this petitioning is just a stalling tactic--political posturing--if the state only petitions the DEA without posing a challenge to the status quo by actually opening up the three compassion centers as well as expanding caregivers' rights.
Last February, proposed Rhode Island legislation would have ended the caregiver program by 2013. The ability for individuals to control how they attain their medicine means that caregiver rights must be expanded.
A recent New York Times article exposed how the DEA might very likely be the largest money launderer in the illegal drug trade. Why would the Rhode Island governor rely upon petitioning an office whose liaisons in his own state were not too long ago found guilty of massive corruption by the courts? Is there any reasoning with such an agency that profits from, and whose existence is largely based upon, the illegality of marijuana? The prison-industrial complex also depends on the imprisonment of those in possession of this substance.
The changing of classifications of marijuana would be a great reform in the "war on drugs." Unfortunately, this is more likely liberal posturing allowing politicians to wash their hands of the issue with no substantive change occurring. If the Rhode Island governor were truly an advocate of medicinal marijuana, he would open the three compassion centers tomorrow and expand caregiver rights.
Chris Murphy, Providence, R.I.
