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novapsychePropaganda Czar
JOHN P. WALTERS is a man on a mission to save Americans from themselves. The director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy told Congress he's battling widespread "ignorance" about the dangers of marijuana, and about the true motives of those who would permit its use for medicinal purposes.
Legalization of the drug is their goal, he contends, which Mr. Walters equates with "giving up" on the problem of drug abuse.
Ignorant hicks we may be, but we know enough to be alarmed about zealots from Washington using our tax dollars to promote ideological crusades.
The Bush administration's drug czar is seeking the power to cut off federal drug enforcement money to local police in states where marijuana has been decriminalized for medical use.
[...] Mr. Walters, who waged a fierce last-minute lobbying effort against the Maryland measure, also wants the authority to run advertising campaigns against similar legislation in other states.
This is frightening stuff from a career bureaucratic drug warrior who is not a doctor yet claimed the Maryland legislature had been "conned" into aggravating the state's addiction problems by a "cynical, cruel and immoral effort to use the sick and suffering" to legalize marijuana.
The federal government has no business using tax dollars to help wage such lobbying campaigns, or to punish states that don't fall into line.
Mr. Walters' obsession with marijuana is also wrong-headed, says Del. Dan K. Morhaim, a sponsor of the Maryland legislation and an emergency room physician who has seen the drug wars from the front lines. Cocaine, heroin, alcohol, tobacco - those are drugs that send people into the emergency room every day, he said. Marijuana, almost never. But pot does offer comfort, he said, when comfort is all that doctors can provide.
[...] Most Americans know that the danger of drugs lies elsewhere. Mr. Walters is wasting his firepower on the wrong target.
JOHN P. WALTERS is a man on a mission to save Americans from themselves. The director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy told Congress he's battling widespread "ignorance" about the dangers of marijuana, and about the true motives of those who would permit its use for medicinal purposes.
Legalization of the drug is their goal, he contends, which Mr. Walters equates with "giving up" on the problem of drug abuse.
Ignorant hicks we may be, but we know enough to be alarmed about zealots from Washington using our tax dollars to promote ideological crusades.
The Bush administration's drug czar is seeking the power to cut off federal drug enforcement money to local police in states where marijuana has been decriminalized for medical use.
[...] Mr. Walters, who waged a fierce last-minute lobbying effort against the Maryland measure, also wants the authority to run advertising campaigns against similar legislation in other states.
This is frightening stuff from a career bureaucratic drug warrior who is not a doctor yet claimed the Maryland legislature had been "conned" into aggravating the state's addiction problems by a "cynical, cruel and immoral effort to use the sick and suffering" to legalize marijuana.
The federal government has no business using tax dollars to help wage such lobbying campaigns, or to punish states that don't fall into line.
Mr. Walters' obsession with marijuana is also wrong-headed, says Del. Dan K. Morhaim, a sponsor of the Maryland legislation and an emergency room physician who has seen the drug wars from the front lines. Cocaine, heroin, alcohol, tobacco - those are drugs that send people into the emergency room every day, he said. Marijuana, almost never. But pot does offer comfort, he said, when comfort is all that doctors can provide.
[...] Most Americans know that the danger of drugs lies elsewhere. Mr. Walters is wasting his firepower on the wrong target.