EMAIL SIGN UP!
Progressive Community
The press releases posted here have been submitted by
America's Progressive Community
For further information or to comment on this press release, please contact the organization directly.
Most Popular This Week
Today's Top News
|
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE |
CONTACT: Marijuan Policy Project Mike Meno, MPP director of communications: 202-905-2030, 443-927-6400 or mmeno@mpp.org |
Obama Nominee to Lead DEA Scheduled for Confirmation Hearing Tomorrow
Nomination of Michele Leonhart, a Bush Administration Holdover, Is Fiercely Opposed by Drug Policy Reform Community, Others
WASHINGTON - November 16 - The Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to hold a confirmation hearing tomorrow for Michele Leonhart to serve as administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration, a post Leonhart has held on an interim basis for two years after serving as deputy administrator under the Bush administration from 2003 to 2007.
During her tenure, Leonhart has presided over hundreds of paramilitary DEA raids on medical marijuana patients and providers in states where medical marijuana is legal. Even after the Department of Justice, in an October 2009 memo, instructed federal prosecutors to no longer target medical marijuana providers "whose actions are in clear and unambiguous compliance with state laws," the DEA under Leonhart's leadership has continued to stage raids on individuals operating under state law.
In July, DEA agents flouted a pioneering Mendocino County (CA) ordinance to regulate medical marijuana cultivation by raiding the very first grower to register with the sheriff. Joy Greenfield, 68, had paid more than $1,000 for a permit to cultivate 99 plants in a collective garden that had been inspected and approved by a local sheriff. Informed that Greenfield had the support of the sheriff, the DEA agent in charge responded by saying, "I don't care what the sheriff says."
"During Ms. Leonhart's confirmation hearing, I hope senators ask how she plans to engage with local authorities in the growing number of states where medical marijuana is legal," said Steve Fox, director of government relations for the Marijuana Policy Project. "In order to comply with the Justice Department's directive, the DEA needs to adopt a policy whereby agents consult with local law enforcement to determine whether someone is in compliance with local laws - before they raid and seize private property."
Leonhart's nomination is opposed by the Marijuana Policy Project, the Drug Policy Alliance, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws and its California chapter, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, Students for Sensible Drug Policy, the 10th Amendment Center, and Jane Hamsher, the founder and publisher of the progressive political blog Firedoglake.
Comments
Note: Disqus 2012 is best viewed on an up to date browser. Click here for information. Instructions for how to sign up to comment can be viewed here. Our Comment Policy can be viewed here. Please follow the guidelines. Note to Readers: Spam Filter May Capture Legitimate Comments...

1 Comment so far
Show AllIt's time for us all to stop being ignorant hypocrites and start being TRUE conservatives!
Pragmatic libertarians (minimal-statists) and "true" Conservatives agree that many, if not most, of society's problems are caused by government usurping choices that could better be made by individuals and that government is just about the worst way of doing almost anything. Where libertarianism normally parts company with "fake" conservatism is over moral issues. But a true conservative would have no problem with agreeing, that what people do with their own bodies, and especially in the privacy of their own home, should be supremely their business, and that anything else would entail ignoring the basic tenet of limited government.
Fake-Conservatism on the other hand has much in common with socialism; Both Leftists and Fake-Conservatives appear to harbor the belief that nature does not exist and that any human can be anything he wants to be, or can for the "greater good", be "re-educated" into being. Leftists therefore think little boys can be conditioned into preferring dolls over toy soldiers, and similarly Fake-conservatives believe that adults can be coerced into choosing alcohol over marijuana. A true conservative, just like a pragmatic libertarian, would immediately reject both ideas as nonsense.
If you support prohibition then you are NOT a conservative.
Conservative principles, quite clearly, ARE:
1) Limited, locally controlled government.
2) Individual liberty coupled with personal responsibility.
3) Free enterprise.
4) A strong national defense.
5) Fiscal responsibility.
Prohibition is actually an authoritarian War on the Constitution and all civic institutions of our great nation.
It's all about the market and cost/benefit analysis. Whether any particular drug is good, bad, or otherwise is irrelevant! As long as there is demand for any mind altering substance, there will be supply; the end! The only affect prohibiting it has is to drive the price up, increase the costs and profits, and where there is illegal profit to be made criminals and terrorists thrive.
The cost of criminalizing citizens who are using substances no more harmful than similar things that are perfectly legal like alcohol and tobacco, is not only hypocritical and futile, but also simply not worth the incredible damage it does.
Afghani farmers produce approx. 93% of the world's opium which is then, mostly, refined into street heroin then smuggled throughout Eastern and Western Europe.
Both the Taliban and the terrorists of al Qaeda derive their main income from the prohibition-inflated value of this very easily grown crop, which means that Prohibition is the "Goose that laid the golden egg" and the lifeblood of terrorists as well as drug cartels. Only those opposed, or willing to ignore this fact, want things the way they are.
See: How opium profits the Taliban: http://tinyurl.com/3ytnxun
Prohibition provides America's sworn enemies with financial "aid" and tactical "comforts". The Constitution of the United States of America defines treason as:
"Article III / Section 3. Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort."
Support for prohibition is therefor an act of treason against the Constitution, and a dire threat to the nation's civic institutions.
The Founding Fathers were not social conservatives who believed that citizens should be subordinate to any particular narrow religious moral order. That is what the whole concept of unalienable individual rights means, and sumptuary laws, especially in the form of prohibition, were something they continually warned about.
It’s time for us all to wise up and help curtail the dangerous expansions of federal police powers, the encroachments on individual liberties, and the increasing government expenditure devoted to enforcing the unworkable and dangerous policy of drug prohibition.
To support prohibition you have to be either a socialist, ignorant, stupid, brainwashed, insane or corrupt.
* The US national debt has increased at an average rate of $3,000,000000 per day since 2006.
* The unemployment rate has increased by 7300 per day since 2008.
* The loss of manufacturing jobs has been 1400 per day since 2006.
* Without the legalized regulation of opium products Afghanistan will continue to be a bottomless pit in which to throw countless billions of tax dollars and wasted American lives.
* The hopeless situation in Afghanistan is helping to destabilize it's neighbor, Pakistan, which is a country with nuclear weapons.
* The mayhem in Mexico has deteriorated so badly that it’s bordering on farcical.
There is nothing conservative about prohibition, which enlists the most centralized state power in displacement of domestic and community roles. There is everything authoritarian and subversive about this policy which has incinerated American traditions such as Freedom and Federalism with its puritanical flames. Any person seeking to insure and not further compromise the safety of their family and of their neighbors must not only repudiate prohibition but help spearhead its abolition.
We will always have adults who are too immature to responsibly deal with tobacco alcohol, heroin amphetamines, cocaine, various prescription drugs and even food. Our answer to them should always be: "Get a Nanny, and stop turning the government into one for the rest of us!"