Planet Earth’s most useful medical plant has been nearly impossible to research in the USA. Now, a positive action from the Obama White House will greatly uncomplicate and facilitate medical marijuana research! This simple step in the right direction has been somewhat lost in the recent avalanche of major national news recently. 

The irony is thick: Perhaps humankind’s most useful medical substance became the only substance that could not be researched, in good part due to unintended consequences of the Public Health Service review.  Since 1999, anyone wishing to research medical uses of cannabis has to pass a this torturous process, supposedly put in place to facilitate medical marijuana research after the 1999 Institute of Medicine report on positive medical uses.

In reality, though, the meager flow of medical research on cannabis in the USA slowed even more when the review was added to other bureaucratic hurdles during this time of maximum hostility to marijuana and its fans by all aspects of American government. Virtually any research that got approved had to be framed in terms of finding dangers of cannabis; no one was funded looking for medical benefits. This final knife into the back of cannabis research culminated the Clinton administration’s dismal drug war record.

Fast forward to 2015 and the political environment is quite changed.

Although, seemingly inexplicably, cannabis is still officially a Schedule I drug (rated highly dangerous with no medical use), the American public wants access to medical marijuana by a huge margin and many freedom fighting politicians are helping out. Removal of the noxious Public Health Service review was recently called out in congress. The righteous ringleaders include California Republican Dana Rohrabacher and Oregon Democrat Earl Blumenauer along with Morgan Griffith (R-VA), and Jan Schakowsky (D-IL). They sent a letter to the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) asking that this needless obstacle of the review be abolished.

Then, just weeks later, additional momentum to remove this research block came from an unusual place, Project SAM or Smart Approaches to Marijuana, the anti-cannabis lobby group run by ex-congressman (and guilty-pleading, pill-popping DC crash-driver Patrick Kennedy. Project SAM CEO and arch anti-cannabis lobbyist Kevin Sabet even argued against other bureaucratic rules stifling medical marijuana research, surprising and laudable actions from a group that has dishonestly promoted continued cannabis prohibition and persecution.

Whether it was congressional action, lobbying, or a long-overdue epiphany, the drug czar office announced this  welcome step of dropping the review. The action is significant especially in that it did come from the executive branch, one of very few actions ever taken by the White House, during any administration, to ease medical marijuana research and restrictions. The change was announced by the White House based ONDCP (drug czar) official Mario Zepeda who began the announcement with a lie: “The Obama Administration has actively supported scientific research on whether marijuana or its components can be safe and effective medicine.” Were this true, Mario, President Obama would have long ago rescheduled cannabis out of patently ridiculous Schedule I. The statement continued in about most negative way possible, but still the presidential action dropping the review is important:

The end of this stifling review will help open the research floodgates to the astounding good news about the medical benefits of cannabis. The world will never be the same.

South Carolina chicken hawk Lindsey Graham, left, and eleven other senators just voted against the rights of traumatized American veterans to hear of perhaps the best treatment option for PTSD. They voted NO on the Veterans Equal Access Amendment.

But the good news is, even with the disloyal-to-the-troops votes of these treacherous twelve, for the first time a Senate committee (Appropriations) voted in favor of marijuana law reform! As this motion moves through congress, medical care providers for veterans may soon have their gag order removed and may well gain the freedom of speech to tell their patients about the therapeutic effects cannabis can provide for PTSD and other wartime injuries.

The vote actually reverses asinine congressional legislation passed in 2009 (while Americans were being wounded in two wars)  forbidding veterans, even those living in states that had legalized medical cannabis, from asking about or hearing about this effective treatment for PTSD, pain, and other wounds of war.  Even now, incredibly, VA physicians themselves are denied the right to even discuss with their wounded warrior patients medical marijuana as a treatment option. How ironic that those supposedly fighting for American freedom are denied the basic freedom of choice regarding their own health.

Medical freedom is denied to both the veterans and their physicians by vindictive bureaucrats. This tyrannical policy:

• Withholds the best medicine for pain and PTSD. Cannabis Treats PTSD.

• Forces vets to use far stronger, far more dangerous drugs. Cannabis also synergizes with other, more dangerous pain relievers, allowing for smaller dosages of hazardous opiate and pharmaceutical pain medications.
• Tramples the right of free speech of physicians working for the VA. Doctors are required to first, do no harm. The VA demands they do harm by silencing recommendations to veterans for the best and safest medication for many ails.
• Betrays veterans by withholding of safe and effective treatment options  to its loyal citizen veterans. 

To the shame of the GOP, the twelve senators that voted to continue denying wounded veterans possible life-saving information about their PTSD are all Republicans. They are:

• Cochran, Thad (MS) – NO
• McConnell, Mitch (KY) – NO, by proxy. Mitch has been good on hemp, but here he backhands veterans.
  
• Shelby, Richard C. (AL) – NO, by proxy
  
• Collins, Susan M. (ME) – NO
  
• Graham, Lindsey (SC) – NO. Pictured above, the biggest neo-con chicken hawk of the bunch, shafting the veterans he sent to multiple wars.
  
• Kirk, Mark (IL) – NO
  
• Blunt, Roy (MO) – NO, by proxy
  
• Moran, Jerry (KS) – NO
  
• Hoeven, John (ND) – NO, by proxy
  
• Boozman, John (AR) – NO, by proxy
  
• Capito, Shelley Moore (WV) – NO
  
• Lankford, James (OK) – NO
  

Four Republicans refuted their party and instead supported American veterans in passing this historic legislation. They are:

• Daines, Steve (MT)  This Montana senator co-sponsored the bill!  Cheers to Montana Senator Steve Daines!

  

  
  

• Murkowski, Lisa (AK)
  
• Alexander, Lamar (TN) This is somewhat a surprise vote for a fossilized drug warrior.
  
• Cassidy, Bill (LA)
  

All the committee’s Democrats voted for the bill extending to veterans the same medical rights of other American citizens in states with cannabis medical liberty!

• Mikulski, Barbara A. (MD) – YES
• Leahy, Patrick J. (VT) – YES, by proxy
• Murray, Patty (WA) – YES, by proxy
  
• Feinstein, Dianne (CA) – YES!  Ardent drug warrior California democratic senator Dianne Feinstein made one of the few compassionate and rational votes in her all-too-long long career.  Her legacy is tarnished by her knee-jerk support of the war-on-drugs, (and all other wars too). This ultimate drug war dinosaur finally cast a good vote.
  
• Durbin, Richard J. (IL) – YES
  
• Reed, Jack (RI) – YES, by proxy
  
• Tester, Jon (MT) – YES
  
• Udall, Tom (NM) – YES
  
• Shaheen, Jeanne (NH) – YES, by proxy
  
• Merkley, Jeff (OR) – YES, Cosponsor! Way to go, Senator Merkley!
  
• Coons, Christopher A. (DE) – YES, by proxy
  
• Schatz, Brian (HI) – YES
  
• Baldwin, Tammy (WI) – YES
  
• Murphy, Christopher (CT) – YES

The final result was 18 YES over 12 NO! Victory for American veterans, medical cannabis, and freedom of speech.

Yet again Barack Obama squanders an easy chance to accomplish desperately needed drug policy reform. His opportunity to replace ousted and disgraced DEA chief Michele Leonhart gave a chance for a fresh look at failed drug policies.

Instead, Obama disappoints yet again by choosing Chuck Rosenberg, an FBI agent and former US attorney, to stay the drug war course.

The continuity of the American drug war was clear in the words of prohibitionist prosecutor and now US Attorney General Loretta Lynch as she introduced the next DEA head. Seeming to miss the irony altogether of the recent tales of Colombian cartel sponsored sex parties for DEA agents, Lynch said. “I can think of no better individual to lead this storied agency.” Those are some stories, alright.

But far worse than DEA agent debauchery has been the agency’s self-serving cling to the harshest of drug policies for four long decades, with horrid consequences for the country.

With his background, there is little likelihood that Chuck Rosenberg will vary from the the agency’s rejection of science and embrace of harsh drug policies.  Sadly, the DEA administrator is one of the public officials who could reschedule or deschedule cannabis, a huge public need. No FBI agent or US attorney is going to challenge the draconian, cruel and idiotic Schedule I status where cannabis still languishes, legally harming Americans daily.

The sun is setting on the Obama presidency. With his drug-war-as-usual choices for Attorney General and now DEA administrator he again betrays those who once chanted, “yes we can.” Instead he gives us, again,  “just  say no.”

Michele Leonhart, fanatical, rogue DEA administrator, is forced out by sex scandal. Oh, happy day!

Supposedly resigning, hopefully we will find that she was sacked as Drug Enforcement Agency head by the president who should have never appointed her. We will report further as more details of her “resignation” become known.

She has been petulant and petty for years, dismissing medical cannabis or any drug reform, but amassing ever-larger DEA budgets. Her disservices to her country are many, from successfully stifled nearly all research into medical marijuana, to fighting tooth and nail against hemp. This latter obstruction, in the spring of 2014,  finally brought on the ire of Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell, as she defied his efforts to get hemp planted in Kentucky.

Michele Leonhart dissed the president who idiotically appointed her. In 2014, Obama correctly pointed out that marijuana is safer than alcohol. Leonhart was quick to criticize her boss and his views, again demonizing cannabis while giving alcohol a free ride. Ludicrously, she mourned when an American flag made of hemp once more flew over the US capitol a couple of years ago.

Finally the DEA sex scandal, featuring agents’ undercover activities with cartel prostitutes, taxpayer paid rooms, and thuggish guards has done what her administrative idiocy and evil had not. This and DEA head’s total lack of any response, along with a disastrous congressional committee hearing on the subject, has finally brought a dismal end to her obstructive career.

With whom President Obama replaces the disgraced Leonhart will be telling. Since the outed administrator held beliefs diametrically opposite of those expressed by Obama, he now has an opportunity to reboot. The virulently anti-medical marijuana and anti-hemp Leonhart is the perfect example of politics coming before science, certainly before compassion. The scandal-plagued collapse of her bureaucratic regime is a fitting end. The president should use this opportunity to appoint a true leader to head the Drug Enforcement Administration. This leader should then fundamentally change this rogue agency, and hopefully oversee its down-sizing, with the end of the war on drugs. Here is a great place to save $27 billion dollars a year direct savings!

The next DEA administrator will have the power to reschedule cannabis down from the draconian Schedule I.

The president, attorney general and DEA administrator can all change drug schedules. Should Obama nominate a truly good choice, a person who sees the evils caused by the war on drugs, he or she would naturally initiate a change from the current totally obstructive and unjust Schedule I.

If, in the unlikely event that President Obama would solicit my suggestion for new DEA administrator, I would select someone from LEAP, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.

Ex-Seattle Police chief Norm Stamper would make an excellent choice to head the disgraced agency.

Another wonderful choice would be ex-Senator Jim Webb. He initiated important criminal justice reform as US senator. See his “vastly counterproductive” critique here.

Who would you like to see as Obama’s replacement for Michele Leonhart at DEA administrator?

New York federal prosecutor Loretta Lynch, President Obama’s candidate to replace Attorney General Eric Holder, is a disappointing choice.  She will set back desperately needed criminal justice reform.

If, at this point in American history, the criminal justice system needed an aggressive prosecutor at the helm, Loretta Lynch would be highly qualified. But American “justice” has become anything but just. It is time, past time, for fundamental change to our criminal justice system. Loretta Lynch, though, is a prosecutor, not a reformer. In particular, her statements at confirmation hearings about marijuana, a linchpin in criminal justice reform, are troubling.

All prosecutors have had their world view shaped and careers enhanced over the last 40 years by the aggressive war on drugs, especially marijuana. The draconian drug law passed in the 1980s and 90s tilted criminal justice policing away from actual crimes to pursuing easy arrests and prosecution of certain (usually black) people’s drug “crimes” without victims. Enhanced penalties, mandatory minimums, and asset forfeiture made it easy for prosecutors to arrest, imprison, and seize fellow citizen’s money and homes, all “accomplishments” in the careers of prosecutors. All hideously cruel and damaging to American families.

This same prosecution (or is it persecution) mindset can be found in other ex-prosecutor public officials like Alabama senator Jeff “I love the DEA” Sessions and Governor Chris “I Will Crack Down And Not Permit” Christie. Tragically, Sessions gets to set American drug policy as a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Hopefully, Chris Christie will never attain the presidency and a platform for him to devastate cannabis law reform and brutalize the lives of Americans.

Unfortunately, Loretta Lynch will probably be confirmed. From her statements, she will do nothing to forward criminal justice reform, and she just may well set back some of the few positive current trends.  Lynch would be the first Afro-American woman attorney general. That is great, but she arrives at her exalted position riding on the backs of Afro-Americans (and other drug war victims) she has imprisoned and impoverished. As AG, all indications suggest she will take a business as normal approach to the justice department, and ignore the need for drug policy reforms.

Lynch opposes ending criminal prohibition or even reschedule of marijuana. She says dumb things about medical marijuana, especially edibles. Yet again, President Obama has appointed an official that disagrees with him on the dangers of cannabis. The president has correctly stated that marijuana is safer than alcohol. Yet Lynch disagrees with this obvious truth:

“It would be shocking if she is actually unaware that marijuana is far less harmful than alcohol. The CDC attributes tens of thousands of deaths each year to alcohol use alone, including hundreds from overdose, whereas no deaths are attributed solely to marijuana use and there’s never been a fatal overdose.” Mason Tvert

The seizure of money and property by police and prosecutors, greased by draconian drug war laws, is a mockery of the civil and property rights of Americans. Lynch also opposes asset forfeiture reform, a stance that earned her the opposition of Senator Rand Paul.  Paul’s views were captured by Casey Harper of the Daily Caller:

“Loretta Lynch became famous for her Herculean confiscation of private property,” Paul, who is running for the Republican presidential nomination, said at the hearing. Paul said Lynch confiscated over $100 million dollars during her time as U.S. attorney using the process of civil asset forfeiture, a process wrought with abuses.

“When questioned about civil forfeiture, Loretta Lynch seemed to be unconcerned about the need for reform,” Paul said. “I think no one who listens to these horrendous abuses of our civil liberties should be not moved to think that we really do need reform in our country.”

This writer had high hopes that President Barack Obama would accomplish drug law and criminal justice reform during his presidency. Instead, he has raised the drug war budget yet again, appointed a medical marijuana arch-enemy to head the DEA, refused to down schedule cannabis from Schedule I, and has overseen virtually no change in the prison population of this incarceration nation. And now, one of his last, most strategic appointments is poised to stall, if not reverse, criminal and drug war reform.

If not Obama, who? If not now, when?

What do YOU think of Loretta Lynch as Attorney General?

“Adult use, adult use” chanted the crowd at the Oregon Medical Marijuana Business Conference, exhorted on by premier Oregon cannabis attorney Leland Berger.  He is referring to marijuana use in the four states and District of Colombia now (or soon) allowing adults to possess and use the newly legal cannabis, and the many more states planning to do so soon.

Berger pleaded with the large crowd, “can we NOT call it recreational use again?  Adult use, adult use!“

The semantic distinction the activist attorney makes is important in how it frames newly liberated and legal cannabis use in these pioneering states. Being able to refer to “medical use” has helped pass state reforms since California in 1996 and Oregon’s successful medical marijuana vote in 1998. “Medical use” has been harder to demonize by prohibitionist propagandists. Indeed, Merriam-Webster defines ‘recreational drug‘  as one used “without medical justification.” Berger believes that referring to “adult use” is psychologically superior and an important key to future legalization success.

For many, the term “recreational use” in several ways belittles the use people actually make of cannabis.

This should not be so; the actual term re-create suggests a process of renewal, a lofty and worthwhile goal, and actually often the positive result of cannabis use. It does help one renew and re-create. But that is not the current image of “recreational drug”.

What image pops into your own mind when you think “recreational use of marijuana?” Cheech and Chong hot-boxing a low rider Chevy? Hippies dancing in the mud at Woodstock? Your own daughter smoking a joint? Your daughter smoking a joint with hippies dancing in the mud?

How does that image differ from what comes to your mind when you consider “adult use of marijuana?” Do you not see an image more like a cocktail party of young (and not so young) adults, with the addition of perhaps a pot pipe passing around? Or now, much more likely, vapor pens sipped discretely by the happy adults. Like, smoke is so 20th century.

Consider too, all the many reasons people use cannabis that are not “recreational” in nature.

For many people, all cannabis use is medical use. This becomes clear especially when the wellness perspective is considered: Cannabis helps people relax, enjoy life, and relate to others, all keys to personal well-being and all medically important in keeping people alive.

How about ‘spiritual use?’ The adult use of cannabis to attain spiritual enlightenment goes back millennia and is not well described as “recreational use.” Cannabis use plays an important role in many religions including Hinduism with its bhang and Christianity with its Old Testament anointing oil, brimming with kaneh bosem, an early term for cannabis.  And many people by-pass the religious aspect but use cannabis spiritually as a sacrament for personal transcendental, uplifting experiences with nature, with the universe, and with other people.

How about ‘productivity use?‘ Many people use marijuana, especially energetic, focusing strains of cannabis, to be productive and to create. Perhaps the best example was Carl Sagan hitting up Dr. Lester Grinspoon for a joint. “Lester, I hate to do this, but could I ask you to give me that second joint? I have to finish writing a chapter tomorrow, and I’d love to have that.”

Surely this and other productive, creative use is not what is thought of as ‘recreational use.’ By the way, the fact that Carl Sagan, one of the greatest and most expressive minds of the 20th century, enjoyed and benefited from cannabis use, says a lot of good things about cannabis use.

Adults use cannabis for a variety of reasons and generally with positive results, often far transcending the rather lame label, “recreational use.” Prohibitionists have and will continue to use the term to denigrate legal use.  On the other hand, your reference to “adult use” points out one of the most positive aspects of ending cannabis prohibition: Legalization for adults, like Oregon’s Measure 91 always entails (and does accomplish) reducing underage use.

So let us join with Leland Burger and chant (or not), and each personally begin to use the term, “adult use!”

Can it possibly be that hemp agriculture presents a catastrophic threat to sinsemilla marijuana cultivation? Will the hemp field of dreams be a cannabis nightmare?

The climate of southern Oregon is among the world’s best for cultivating cannabis. Local growers have been producing some of the world’s finest marijuana for decades. Many have suffered arrest, imprisonment, and property forfeiture to the draconian drug war. But cannabis cultivation has persisted in this idyllic area, especially after marijuana became medically exempted in 1998, and again now as legal use for adults begins in July 2015 through Proposition 91. Yet as the legal environment improves for this huge, medically-valuable cash crop, a new danger arises.

Hemp is another manifestation to cannabis sativa, the same plant that produces medical cannabinoids. Hemp is wonder in itself, hugely useful to humankind and to the environment. Hemp seeds, oils, stalks — virtually every part of the plant — can provide humans with food, fuel, and fibers. Nationwide, hemp cultivation is quickly becoming legalized, thanks much in part to Kentucky republican Senators Ron Paul and Mitch McConnell, along with Oregon democrats Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley. Hemp cultivation in Oregon was legalized in 2009 and now some farmers, including those in southern Oregon’s Jackson County are preparing to plant hemp crops.

Hemp is grown from very different varieties of cannabis sativa than is medical cannabis and is nearly devoid of any cannabinoids, psychotropic or otherwise. Is has no seizure-stopping CBDs, nor more than trace amounts of the medical (and transcendental) cannabinoid THC.

But what hemp does produce is pollen. Male pollen from newly legalized hemp cannabis sativa is a deadly threat to sinsemilla cultivation. At certain, quite lengthy periods in their life cycle, male hemp plants will produce copious amounts of sperm-producing pollen. Bad boys, bad boys! With industrial hemp planting legalized in Oregon, the first fields of seed-bearing hemp are even now being planned. At the same time these hemp seeds go into the ground, new medical cannabis starts will sprout (and be cloned) across the region.

After summer begins and the days begin to shorten, maturing cannabis plants will begin establish their sexual identities. White hairs show the beginnings of female bud, and small pods that will soon produce pollen mark male plants. These males will be quickly culled in sinsemilla gardens to avoid pollination of the female buds. But perhaps somewhere close by, maybe in the adjoining field, the hemp farmer will welcome the male plants as they will fertilize his females and cause them to produce seeds, perhaps nature’s most perfect food and the most valuable part of the hemp crop.

The question is, will massive clouds of this hemp pollen sweep across the land like a plague of Pharaoh, seeping into every sinsemilla garden, inside and out? Southern Oregon growers certainly fear so. The Oregonian’s OregonLive cannabis reporter Noelle Crombie quotes Cedar Grey of the Oregon Sungrown Growers’ Guild:  “You have to have world-class flowers. Anything that is seeded is reminiscent of the 1960s or pot from Mexico. No one is interested in that at all.” Medically, pollination would rob marijuana of its potency, depriving patients of the pain relief, anti-inflammation, and other palliative, treatment, and even curative benefits.

Hemp pollination (and hence destruction) of sinsemilla is may cause havoc and disruption to growers and to medical marijuana patients. Will mom and pop cannabis boutique farms, a newly possible way to make a living for a family on a small piece of land, see their money trees literally go to seed? Will outdoor and indoor medical and adult use growers, a vital part of the southern Oregon economy, be wiped out? Will medical specialty grows, such as CBD-dominant cultivation no longer be able to supply patients? Will parents of seizure-stricken children be unable to get seizure-calming cannabis medications?

At this point there are more question than answers, as the huge experiment is about to begin in southern Oregon. What happens there will be instructive, as this same collision between hemp pollen and sinsemilla flower will play out across the state, the country, and around the entire planet as cultivation ramps up tremendously this century of both these two highly valuable aspects of cannabis.

How do you see this playing out? How do you think can conflict be avoided?

Please check out my related post on this important new topic at Your Brain On Bliss.

The small town of Talent, Oregon is blessed with two medical cannabis dispensaries, and a third will open soon. At the same time, neighboring Phoenix, Oregon has shuttered the doors of its single (thriving) dispensary and nearby Medford tries to discourage all things marijuana. The old saying is “all politics is local.” It does look like, at some point at least, that “all marijuana politics is local” too.

Michael Monarch, CEO of Green Valley Wellness in Talent, Oregon discusses some of the details, political and otherwise, in establishing a first class medical marijuana dispensary in Oregon’s new wild, wild west. Actually, things are not that wild here, more like mellow, at least inside (and outside) Green Valley Wellness. To get underway, Michael and partner Peter Gross effectively lobbied Talent mayor and city council, and helped this chic little city become a dispensary oasis in a desert of cactus-like city councils and county commissioners.

Please check out my interview with Michael Monarch at the Oregon Medical Marijuana Business Conference (OMMBC) on his challenges, successes, and responses to new legal threats.

Once again Steve Cohen, US Congressman from Tennessee (TN-09), has shown great leadership in taking on the misguided and cruel drug war. He recently called out Attorney General Eric Holder to end the ludicrous Schedule I legal status for cannabis, just the latest of Cohen’s many courageous challenges to the War on Drugs.

Last summer he called on Michelle Leonhart to resign as DEA administrator because of her hard line on cannabis and her statements undercutting the president.  Cohen recommended that her replacement “ought to be in tune with what the president believes, which is that marijuana is no worse than alcohol. This is going to be looked upon in 10 or 20 years as the dark ages and it is the dark ages – we have someone who needs corrective vision surgery.”

At the same time as Congressman Steve Cohen’s actions, two other democratic legislators, Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Oregon, and Rep. Jared Polis, D-Colorado, have submitted bills tackling federal marijuana prohibition. In the Senate, senators Randy Paul, Cory Booker and Kirsten Killibrand have introduced the groundbreaking Compassionate Access, Research Expansion and Respect States (CARERS) Act, which, among several positive steps, would reschedule cannabis to Schedule II.

Check out Cohen’s challenge to Eric Holder at Your Brain On Bliss

In the “Please Say It Ain’t So” category, President Obama increased 2016 funding for the drug war in his next budget.

Wait, haven’t we determined, by all measures, that the War on Drugs has failed? And haven’t we realized that dismantling the drug war is a great place to save billions of dollars each month?
So why does the president’s 2016 budget raise total drug war funding by over a billion dollars a year, to $27.6 billion?

Disgustingly, the Drug Enforcement Agency got a raise. In the last few years, the DEA has played a key role in restricting use of and research into medical marijuana. From research done that skirts these tight restrictions, and especially from research in Israel, Spain, Italy, and other countries around the globe, we now know that cannabis has powerful preventive, palliative, and curative medical properties, and very little risk.

This DEA blockage of research represents a crime against humanity. Its casualties include glaucoma victims gone blind, pain victims denied natural plant relief while being addicted to heavy pharmaceuticals, and cancer victims dying while denied the palliative effects—and perhaps even treatment benefits—of cannabinoids from marijuana. Another DEA disservice to this country is the four-decades-long inquisition inflicted upon Americans who chose to break unjust marijuana laws and who often paid horrific prices. Like victims of the original Inquisition, they suffered in cages, but for far longer time; in many cases, decades of time. They lost jobs, family, friends, and futures. These Americans suffered not from marijuana, but from punishment for marijuana. Such DEA crimes should earn this fundamentally dishonest agency a steep drop in funding. Why on earth should the DEA’s already bloated budget get a $90 million dollar raise, boosting it to $2.5 billion dollars?

Alarmingly, the IRS budget for federal drug control funding took a huge jump, from $60 million to $100 million. IRS Section 280E disallows many common business deductions if they are in violation of federal drug laws, even in legal states. As such, Section 280E is one of the sharpest arrows in the prohibitionists’ quiver. This rule, depending on how it is applied, could theoretically quickly drive any dispensary or other cannabis-related enterprise out of business. To what evil use is the IRS going to put its $40 million 2016 drug war bonus?

One of the very worst funding increases was a $50 million raise to the Office of Justice Programs, to $294 million dollars a month. This expands funding of the infamous Byrne grants. (More about them below.)

The Asset Forfeiture Fund, of all things, takes a big jump, up from 2014 by $70 million, to $297 million. We recently had good news (hopefully) from Eric Holder on new restrictions in asset forfeiture, one of the least just of all the drug war wrongs. So why would the Asset Forfeiture Fund take a big jump?

The Federal Law Enforcement Training Center got a substantial jump, to more than $48 million dollars. Their training focuses on hard-core militarization of American police, with training done by Blackwater-type spin-offs. Should we be increasing such training when the jack-boot tactics and overkill weaponry of the police now threaten American democracy to the core?

Inside this wasteful spending bill are a few bits of sanity. The drug czar known as the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) received lower funding, dropping by $52 million, mostly in reduced High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas (HIDTA) grants. This program is in desperate need of downsizing, but unfortunately will still receive $193 million per year to inflict the harshest drug war tactics onto American communities. This drug czar still gets a half million dollars a day to lie to us about marijuana and other drugs.

Another positive drop was the decline in funding for US attorneys, down $4 million to $72.6 million. Perhaps punitive prohibitionist prosecutors such as northern California’s cruel Melinda Haag will take a small hit. But that’s right, federal prosecutors don’t really need funding; they can partially fund themselves by stealing directly from the citizenry by asset forfeiture.

Funding for the Drug Interdiction and Counterdrug Activities (including OPTEMPO and OCO) in the Department of Defense dropped $40 million.
So much for the meager good news and cost savings in the president’s 2016 drug war budget; most of the dozens of drug war bureaucracies funded in the budget received increases. The Bureau of Prisons gets a $200 million increase, to nearly $4 billion. Why? Because our over-incarceration binge is such a good idea?

One of the most damaging programs of the drug war has been the 28-year-old Edward Byrne Justice Assistance grants. These programs fund multiagency teams and incentivize them to make drug busts at the expense of other law enforcement activity. Such funding supports the worst excesses of the drug war to self-fund: militarization, bogus SWAT raids, federal charges for long mandatory minimums, and asset forfeiture. The Byrne grants laid waste to communities—especially minority communities—using jack-boot drug war tactics, and depopulated many of the males into prison. In recent years, females have been the fastest-growing segment of the bloated prison population, leading to a huge increase in children suffering the dire consequences of an imprisoned parent.

One of Obama’s worst drug war crimes has been to waste billions of his 2009 stimulus package on Byrne grants in a “stimulus for narcs.” While American communities struggled with the recession, drug war bureaucrats used these boondoggle billions to smash families, steal citizens’ assets, and cage away ever more Americans. Even George W. Bush, in one of his few positive actions as president, had tried to defund these community-destroying grants. Obama brought them back, on steroids. The fact that his 2016 budget increases their funding is unconscionable. Long before he was president, Barack Obama was a community organizer; as president, he acts as a community disorganizer by literally unleashing the dogs of drug war.

A rational drug war budget would acknowledge the failure and enormous collateral damage of this misguided crusade and reduce funding. Billions could be spared this counterproductive squandering, starting immediately. By removing marijuana alone from federal scheduling, tens of billions of dollars could be saved through reduced enforcement, prosecution, and incarceration. The United States has wasted roughly a trillion dollars, and countless lives, in its 40-plus years of drug war failure. Let us not waste more.