Additionally, President Obama has been using the resources of other federal departments to circumvent state laws on medical marijuana.
The Obama Administration’s Internal Revenue Service has ruled that medical marijuana dispensaries cannot deduct common business expenses, a move that cripples the ability of any business to remain viable.
The Obama Administration’s Department of Treasury has pressured banks to no longer hold accounts for medical marijuana businesses that are heavily regulated, taxed, and surveilled by the state of Colorado.
President Obama had pledged that “science and the scientific process must inform and guide decisions of my Administration on a wide range of issues, including improvement of public health”.
Yet the Obama Administration’s Drug Enforcement Administration has blocked legitimate requests from researchers to study marijuana’s medicinal effect.
The Obama Administration’s Department of Health and Human Services has rejected a Food and Drug Administration approved study of medical marijuana for treatment of post traumatic stress disorder.
President Obama has appointed the heads of all these departments. In fact, he even appointed to the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration Michele Leonhart, the acting administrator who had been appointed by President Bush.
It is by these measures that President Obama may be judged as more aggressively battling medical marijuana than the previous two administrations in the medical marijuana era."
http://stash.norml.org/
"The Associated Press has just dropped a bombshell on America's longest running war and the headline says it all: "The US Drug War has Met None of its Goals".
The extensive piece reviews the last 40 years, starting with President Nixon's official launch of the War on Drugs all the way to President Obama's annual strategy released this week.
I have been the director of media relations at the Drug Policy Alliance for ten years and this is one of the hardest hitting indictments against the drug war I've ever seen. And because the story comes from the Associated Press, it will run in hundreds of papers around the world, reaching tens of millions of people.
The piece packs a punch from the start: "After 40 years, the United States' War on Drugs has cost $1 trillion dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives, and for what? Drug use is rampant and violence more brutal and widespread."
Using Freedom of Information Act requests, archival records, federal budgets, and interviews with leaders and analysts, the AP tracked where that money went -- and found that the U.S. repeatedly increased budgets for programs that did nothing to stop the flow of drugs. The AP article states that in 40 years taxpayers spent more than:
$20 billion to fight the drug gangs in their home countries. In Colombia, for example, the United States spent more than 6 billion, while coca cultivation increased and trafficking moved to Mexico - and the violence along with it.
$33 billion in marketing "Just Say No"-style messages to America's youth and other prevention programs. High school students report the same rates of illegal drug use as they did in 1970, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says drug overdoses have "risen steadily" since the early 1970s to more than 20,000 last year.
$49 billion for law enforcement along America's borders to cut off the flow of illegal drugs. This year, 25 million Americans will snort, swallow, inject and smoke illicit drugs, about 10 million more than in 1970, with the bulk of those drugs imported from Mexico.
$121 billion to arrest more than 37 million nonviolent drug offenders, about 10 million of them for possession of marijuana. Studies show that jail time tends to increase drug abuse.
$450 billion to lock those people up in federal prisons alone. Last year, half of all federal prisoners in the U.S. were serving sentences for drug offenses."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/
The Obama Administration’s Internal Revenue Service has ruled that medical marijuana dispensaries cannot deduct common business expenses, a move that cripples the ability of any business to remain viable.
The Obama Administration’s Department of Treasury has pressured banks to no longer hold accounts for medical marijuana businesses that are heavily regulated, taxed, and surveilled by the state of Colorado.
President Obama had pledged that “science and the scientific process must inform and guide decisions of my Administration on a wide range of issues, including improvement of public health”.
Yet the Obama Administration’s Drug Enforcement Administration has blocked legitimate requests from researchers to study marijuana’s medicinal effect.
The Obama Administration’s Department of Health and Human Services has rejected a Food and Drug Administration approved study of medical marijuana for treatment of post traumatic stress disorder.
President Obama has appointed the heads of all these departments. In fact, he even appointed to the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration Michele Leonhart, the acting administrator who had been appointed by President Bush.
It is by these measures that President Obama may be judged as more aggressively battling medical marijuana than the previous two administrations in the medical marijuana era."
http://stash.norml.org/
"The Associated Press has just dropped a bombshell on America's longest running war and the headline says it all: "The US Drug War has Met None of its Goals".
The extensive piece reviews the last 40 years, starting with President Nixon's official launch of the War on Drugs all the way to President Obama's annual strategy released this week.
I have been the director of media relations at the Drug Policy Alliance for ten years and this is one of the hardest hitting indictments against the drug war I've ever seen. And because the story comes from the Associated Press, it will run in hundreds of papers around the world, reaching tens of millions of people.
The piece packs a punch from the start: "After 40 years, the United States' War on Drugs has cost $1 trillion dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives, and for what? Drug use is rampant and violence more brutal and widespread."
Using Freedom of Information Act requests, archival records, federal budgets, and interviews with leaders and analysts, the AP tracked where that money went -- and found that the U.S. repeatedly increased budgets for programs that did nothing to stop the flow of drugs. The AP article states that in 40 years taxpayers spent more than:
$20 billion to fight the drug gangs in their home countries. In Colombia, for example, the United States spent more than 6 billion, while coca cultivation increased and trafficking moved to Mexico - and the violence along with it.
$33 billion in marketing "Just Say No"-style messages to America's youth and other prevention programs. High school students report the same rates of illegal drug use as they did in 1970, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says drug overdoses have "risen steadily" since the early 1970s to more than 20,000 last year.
$49 billion for law enforcement along America's borders to cut off the flow of illegal drugs. This year, 25 million Americans will snort, swallow, inject and smoke illicit drugs, about 10 million more than in 1970, with the bulk of those drugs imported from Mexico.
$121 billion to arrest more than 37 million nonviolent drug offenders, about 10 million of them for possession of marijuana. Studies show that jail time tends to increase drug abuse.
$450 billion to lock those people up in federal prisons alone. Last year, half of all federal prisoners in the U.S. were serving sentences for drug offenses."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/
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