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September 24, 2012
Some Nuances of Presidential Pot Use
As this most bizarre of election campaigns lurches towards November 6, I'm finding that many of its confusing issues have been clarified for me by my (now) ten year study of cannabis applicants, while both the DEA and "reform" continue to demonstrate they haven’t a clue about either pot's amazing medical value or the extent of the harm done by its prohibition. That’s primarily because their own thinking about cannabis begins with its inhalation by large numbers of young people in the Sixties, the same phenomenon that inspired urgent drafting of the Controlled Substances Act by the Nixon Administration in 1970. By then, the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act had already faded from the memory of the relatively few pre-boomers able to remember Harry Anslinger. It has also surprised me to learn that Harry J is simply a pre-hippy bogey-man to most younger applicants- if they remember him at all.The timeline developed as a by-product of my applicant profile also confirms that what inspired NORML to begin its full-time advocacy for "Marijuana Reform" in 1972 was the flood of youthful arrests by local police enthusiastically applying John Mitchell’s (bogus) Schedule One algorithm. Ironically, the DEA, which didn't exist until Nixon created it with an Executive Order in 1973, was born without a coherent clinical theory of pot use; thus it had rely on an amalgam of imagination and dogma to counter the (somewhat better) rhetorical arguments used against the CSA by NORML from 1972 on.
No wonder both sides remain confused: they have been locked in a four decade argument between lawyers about straw men created by two other lawyers named Mitchell and Nixon; the whole world was also blocked from any possibility of gathering objective data from users until 1996. Another shocking reality is that the first, and most harmful, medical endorsement of the CSA came from psychiatrists and psychologists who misinterpreted early incomplete data as showing a ”gateway” effect that many still cling to despite its acknowledged incongruity.
A further irony is that my applicant profile suggests President Obama would have been an early pot initiate, and most likely, a serious "head." Newly available evidence confirms he was both. I’m also reasonably sure his desire for a political career led him to give up weed, probably between Punahoa and Columbia, maybe while at Occidental College in LA when he would have realized that the longer his toking could be documented, the harder it would be to dismiss as "youthful indiscretion." Finally, abstinence from pot could have led to his difficult-to-quit cigarette addiction.
Finally, I'm reasonably certain that if Obama’s Presidency extends beyond November, he'd be able to grasp the significance of his upbringing by a single mother; possibly to the point of restraining or even dissolving the DEA, especially in view of its creation by a notorious liar. The DEA has never undergone serious scrutiny, let alone received formal Congressional approval.
In comparison a President Romney, would be a disaster; rigidly opposed to any medical use; more likely committed to driving it back underground as US Attorney Melinda Haag has been quite successful at recently.
Doctor Tom
Posted by tjeffo at September 24, 2012 06:25 PM