Obama sends mixed signals on medical marijuana

Medical marijuana (photo: Scott Beale / Laughing Squid, laughingsquid.com)

During the presidential campaign, Barack Obama promised to end federal investigations and prosecutions of patients who used medical marijuana legally in their home states. This is of particular interest in Michigan as the state prepares for legal use of medical marijuana for the first time. But some of the president-elect’s appointments have sent mixed signals about whether he intends to keep his word.

Those appointments begin with naming Joe Biden as his vice president. While Biden has said that he does not support federal prosecutions for medical marijuana users, he is one of the most zealous drug warriors in Congress. This is the man who coined the phrase “drug czar” and authored some of the most severe anti-drug legislation of the last few decades.

He was the author of the 2003 RAVE Act, which made sponsors and hosts of an event liable if anyone at the event was found using drugs. A month after it was passed, the Drug Enforcement Administration used the act to convince the owners of a venue in Montana to cancel a benefit for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.

More disturbing is the appointment of Eric Holder as Obama’s attorney general. Jacob Sollum of the libertarian Reason Foundation recently wrote:

Barack Obama’s selection of Eric Holder as his attorney general is a very discouraging sign for anyone who hoped the new administration would de-escalate the war on drugs. … According to a December 1996 report in The Washington Times excerpted at TalkLeft, Holder wanted “minimum sentences of 18 months for first-time convicted drug dealers, 36 months for the second time and 72 months for every conviction thereafter.” He also wanted to “make the penalty for distribution and possession with intent to distribute marijuana a felony, punishable with up to a five-year sentence.” The D.C. Council made the latter Holder-endorsed change in 2000. Holder thought New York City’s irrational, unjust crackdown on pot smokers was a fine idea and worth emulating, saying “we have too long taken the view that what we would term to be minor crimes are not important.” His rhetoric on the seriousness of marijuana offenses was indistinguishable from that of the most zealous Republican drug warrior.

We do not have a record of Holder’s position on medical marijuana specifically, but we do have it for Rep. Jim Ramstad, R-Minn., who is rumored to be Obama’s choice to head the Office of National Drug Control Policy. Ramstad is a staunch opponent of legalizing medical marijuana and has voted several times against ending federal prosecutions for patients registered legally to use it in their states.

We don’t know what all of this portends for the Obama administration in regard to such laws. It doesn’t necessarily mean that Obama isn’t going to follow through on his promise to end federal prosecutions for sick people who need marijuana to ease their symptoms. It is the president who sets policy, not the appointee.

But it is not reassuring that he is surrounding himself with people who have made a career out of pushing for more and harsher laws on marijuana use. At a time when we are spending huge sums of money keeping low-level users and dealers in prison — bankrupting state budgets, breaking up families and destroying lives in the process — we need to be withdrawing from that war rather than ramping it up.

Michigan residents passed a referendum legalizing marijuana use by patients with certain medical conditions by a nearly 2-1 margin. Twelve other states have done the same thing. But the Bush administration has continued to pursue investigations and prosecutions in these cases. Obama needs to follow through on his promise and end this practice. The voters of this state and those who need the drug to ease the symptoms of debilitating illness deserve better.