Tag: obama
Carlos Santana Wishes Obama Would Legalize Pot
by admin on Apr.07, 2009, under Growing
President Barack Obama brushed off a question about legalizing marijuana in his online town hall last month, but guitar god Carlos Santana says he wishes he would seriously consider it.
“Legalize marijuana and take all that money and invest it in teachers and in education,” Santana said in an interview this week. “You will see a transformation in America.”
During his online town hall on March 26, Obama fielded a question about whether legalization of the illicit drug would help pull the nation out of recession. Obama said he didn’t think it was good economic policy, and also joked: “I don’t know what this says about the online audience.”
But Santana said making pot legal is “really way overdue, like the prohibition with the alcohol and stuff like that.
“I really believe that as soon as we legalize and decriminalize marijuana we can actually afford a really good governor who won’t keep taking money away from education and from teachers and send him back to Hollywood where he can do ‘D’ movies and we can get an ‘A’ governor,” referring to former movie action hero and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Santana made the comments as he was promoting his upcoming rock residency in Las Vegas at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino. The show debuts May 27 and runs through 2010.
“It’s a milestone for me because I always said I would never do certain things,” Santana said, adding that the list included staying in one place for too long.
“Yet what is very different is this is the year I decided to do all the things that I said I would never do. It’s a way of coming into a room that I thought was dark and I would be afraid and I actually bring my light to it.”
Santana, whose hits vary from “Evil Ways” to “Maria Maria,” said he is also working on two upcoming albums.
While the 61-year-old has previously talked about a possible retirement, he’s decided to be more careful about predicting the future.
“Every time I tell God my plans he cracks up, he starts laughing. So I just decided to be quiet for a while and not say that I am going to retire and go to Maui and become a minister,” he said. “God was cracking up. He thought it was a good joke. So I said, ‘OK.’ Every time I want to make him laugh I tell him my plans. So we’ll see.”
- Article from The Associated Press.
Cardoso, Gaviria, Zedillo Urge Obama to Decriminalize Marijuana
by admin on Feb.12, 2009, under Bud Report, Laws, Legal Smokes, News
Former presidents of Brazil, Mexico and Colombia said the U.S.-led war on drugs has failed and urged President Barack Obama to consider new policies, including decriminalizing marijuana, and to treat drug use as a public health problem.
The recommendations by former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, along with Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico and Cesar Gaviria of Colombia, were made in a report today by the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy.
Among the group’s proposals ahead of a special United Nations ministerial meeting in Vienna to evaluate global drug policy is a call to decriminalize the possession of cannabis for personal use.
“We need to break the taboo that’s blocking an honest debate,” Cardoso said at a press conference in Rio de Janeiro to present the report. “Numerous scientific studies show that the damage caused by marijuana is similar to that of alcohol or tobacco.”
Gaviria, who as president of Colombia from 1990-1994 worked with U.S. anti-narcotics agents to hunt down and kill cocaine kingpin Pablo Escobar, said he hoped Obama invests in harm reduction and prevention efforts that would relieve Latin America of the burden of fighting drug traffickers.
Recognize the Failure
“It makes no sense to continue a policy on moral grounds without getting the desired results,” said Gaviria, citing an October report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office showing drug reduction goals in Colombia have not been met. “Obama, being a pragmatist, should recognize these failures.”
The group was created last year to focus the global drug debate on harm reduction and prevention efforts and away from policies based on the eradication of production and the criminalization of consumption.
Latin America is the world’s largest exporter of cocaine and cannabis and a major supplier of opium and heroin. It’s also been the main focus of U.S.-led drug eradication and interdiction efforts ever since U.S. President Richard Nixon declared “war on drugs” in 1971.
The GAO report, made at the request of then Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman, now vice president, Joseph Biden found that production of coca, the base ingredient of cocaine, increased by 15 percent in Colombia since 2000. The U.S. has provided Colombia with $4.9 billion in anti-narcotics aid since 1999 with the goal of reducing coca production by half.
Gaviria said Mexican President Felipe Calderon should demand Obama do more to reduce drug consumption. The U.S. pledged $400 million and increased cooperation with Mexico last year as part of an anti-drug plan known as the Merida Initiative.
More than 5,300 people were killed in drug-related violence in Mexico last year, and Mexican lawmakers have said the U.S. holds some responsibility for the bloodshed because demand for narcotics has made the cartels powerful.
By: Joshua Goodman
DEA Must Stop Medical Marijuana Raids!
by admin on Feb.11, 2009, under Bud Report, Laws, News
During the presidential campaign President Obama was asked several times what his attitude would be toward federal Drug Enforcement Agency raids on medical marijuana patients and medicine providers. Many believe these raids are calculated to undermine the laws of the 13 states that allow patients with a physician’s recommendation to use marijuana medicinally.
On every occasion, Obama said he would stop the federal raids.
Thus he told the Mail Tribune in Oregon last March that “I’m not going to be using Justice Department resources to try to circumvent state laws on this issue.”
Last May an Obama spokesman, speaking of state medical marijuana laws, told the San Francisco Chronicle that “Obama supports the rights of states and local governments to make this choice.”
It is true that although 13 states have such laws, federal law, counter to known scientific evidence, maintains an absolute prohibition on the possession or use of any amount of marijuana, even for life-saving medicinal uses.
Under the law, then, the federal government could target any of the millions of Americans who use marijuana for any purpose.
Traditionally, the feds had confined their activities to large-scale traffickers and growers of 1,000 plants or more. In recent years, however, they have targeted dispensaries and a few patients. It is those raids that Obama promised to end.
The day after President Obama was inaugurated, however, the DEA raided two dispensaries in the Lake Tahoe area in California, as well as a couple’s home in Colorado. Then on Feb. 3, the day Attorney General Eric Holder took office, the DEA raided four dispensaries in the Los Angeles area. No one was arrested, but $10,000 in cash and 224 kilograms of marijuana and marijuana-infused products were seized.
The DEA is still under the control of acting administrator Michele Leonhart, a Bush appointee. It appears as if these warriors want to persecute a few more patients before they are turned out of office — or perhaps establish precedents that will prevent or delay President Obama from fulfilling his promise.
We can understand some delay in naming new top officials at the DEA and in fact would urge President Obama to take the time to find qualified and sensible people who understand and respect science. In the meantime, however, given that the DEA is part of the Justice Department, Attorney General Holder has full authority to order a stop to such raids and to fire those who ordered them. He should do so immediately. - CNJOnline
New President and Same Old DEA Raids
by admin on Jan.28, 2009, under Bud Report, Laws, News
The DEA raided a dispensary on Jan. 22, the first such act by federal law enforcement since Obama’s inauguration earlier this week.
The raid flies in the face of campaign promises made by Obama, who said he would rein in this type of behavior from federal agencies. Holistic Solutions is was the name of the dispensary, and while cash and marijuana were seized, no arrests were made.
Senator Obama said in an August 2007 statement:
I would not have the Justice Department prosecuting and raiding medical marijuana users. It’s not a good use of our resources.
I’m not quite sure if kicking down the doors of an unoccupied, state-sanctioned medical facility is the biggest waste of federal tax dollars (see: Bridge to Nowhere), but it has to be up there.
According to a statement on the Americans for Safe Access Web site, the raid is just one of more than 100 in California in the last two years (roughly two per week for those without a calculator). No surprise, since CA has received an overwhelming share of federal scrutiny for its pioneering of federally-outlawed efforts at medical marijuana.
New Mexico, which recently adopted a MMJ card program, was threatened by the DEA for its plan, according to the same release.
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