Obama's medicalization of America's war on drugs

San Francisco Chronicle ^ | 4/19/12 | Debra J. Saunders

[SmithL]

President Obama's drug czar, Gil Kerlikowske, doesn't like the term "drug war." He argues that none of the smart guys in law enforcement uses it.

Instead, the smart guys talk about middle-of-the-road strategies that emphasize treatment over incarceration - as did both Presidents Richard Nixon and George W. Bush - while they also advocate tough law enforcement.

Folks in the drug czar's office have "gotten really good at stealing the rhetoric of drug policy reformers," griped Bill Piper of the antidrug war Drug Policy Alliance, but they don't mean it. Obama may talk up having a dialogue on legalization and decriminalization, but his newly announced strategy proclaims, "Legalization of drugs will not be considered in this approach."

Nonetheless, Rafael Lemaitre, spokesman for the Office for National Drug Control Policy, credited the administration's approach as representing a "revolution" in drug strategy, one based on science, research and evidence. The drug czar's office maintains that addiction is "not a moral failing on the part of the individual - but a disease of the brain that can be prevented and treated." The 2012 drug plan emphasizes treatment for "substance-use disorder" - and there will be more of that because the disorder happens to be covered in the president's Affordable Care Act.

[Mariner]

Legalization and treatment is the only rational approach.

Everything else is driven by emotion or another agenda.

Certainly Law Enforcement at all levels want drugs to remain illegal, it's a major source of funding and power for them.

And, many folks object on moral grounds. They just want to protect people from their won bad judgement.

But the rational approach is legalization and treatment.

[TigersEye]

0bama promised he would not go after Medical Marijuana providers in states that legalized Medical Marijuana.

A few months ago the DoJ announced it was cracking down on Medical Marijuana providers.

0bamaZombies, meet 0bama's bus.

[JustSayNoToNannies]

The drug czar's office maintains that addiction is "not a moral failing on the part of the individual - but a disease of the brain that can be prevented and treated."

What about nonaddicted use - that's certainly not a disease, but is it a moral failing? (Including the nonaddicted use of the drug alcohol?)