The War on Drugs continued into the 1990s as former CIA Director George H.W. Bush was sworn in as the 41st U.S. president in 1989. One of his more famous quotes is the one in which he seems to be declaring war on Americans:
“Some think there won’t be enough room for them [those arrested on drug charges] in jail. We’ll make room. We’re almost doubling prison space. Some think there aren’t enough prosecutors. We’ll hire them with the largest increase in federal prosecutors in history.”
– President George H.W. Bush
By the mid-90s the U.S. was spending several billion dollars per year on its failed attempts to try to control marijuana use. At that time the country was in the middle of the biggest prison-building boom the world had ever seen. In the meantime, school funding was being cut. School sports programs were being cut. School art and music programs were being cut. And the cost of going to college was going up – and still is. And more people were going to prison for marijuana charges than ever – and they still are.
Some people believe that the drug war situation will change with the Obama administration, and it may. But presidents often straddle the bipartisan fence more during their first terms, and then do their most dramatic work in their second term. As I write this, Obama has just won the election. The changes people really want to see may not happen for a few years. However, in December 2008, President Elect Obama nominated former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack for the position of Secretary of Agriculture. As a Senator, in 1997 Vilsack voted in committee to pass a hemp study bill. Like many politicians are now doing, Obama has admitted to smoking weed in his younger days.
“I would start with nonviolent, first-time drug offenders. The notion that we are imposing felonies on them or sending them to prison, where they are getting advanced degrees in criminality, instead of thinking about ways like drug courts that can get them back on track in their lives – it’s expensive, it’s counterproductive, and it doesn’t make sense.”
– Barack Obama, as quoted in Rolling Stone Magazine, July, 2008
Obama’s vice president, Joe Biden, is said to have helped create the position of “drug czar” as he has been a strong supporter of U.S. drug policy, and has served as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, in which he dealt with drug policy, crime prevention, and civil liberties. U.S. drug policy has abused and neglected civil liberties and Biden helped write the laws creating the Drug Czar appointee who is over national drug control policy. However, some in the hemp industry rather hopefully point out that Biden’s focus was on drug rape drugs, such as Ketamine. Biden is known for being a liberal and the American Civil Liberties Union gives him a high score, including a score of 91 percent for his work in the 2008 session of Congress. It is also hopeful that Biden will wisen up and react accordingly to the great burden the War on Drugs has polace on minorities. As a teenager, Biden was involved with protesting segregation. In his first run for U.S. Senate he was positioned against a buddy of Richard Nixon, J. Caleb Boggs. Even though Biden’s campaign was greatly underfunded, he won the election, which was not appreciated by the Nixon administration. An automobile accident just weeks after his election win took the life of Biden’s wife and daughter, and injured his two sons. Biden was sworn into office while standing next to the hospital bed of one of his injured sons.
“Once he (Obama) is president, the (United States) will engage vigorously in theses negotiations and help to lead the world toward a new era on global co-operation on climate change.”
– Al Gore speaking at the United Nations Climate Change Conference, Poznan, Poland, Friday, December 12, 2008. Just days prior to this Conference, Gore had met with President-elect Obama in Chicago.
Some people are expecting Obama to form a commission to study the U.S. drug policy, and to recommend changes. If such a commission does get appointed, it is likely that it will suggest major changes in drug policy, including a wiser use of resources, changes in the justice system, and an overhaul of the laws regarding marijuana and hemp.
“Famously, Franklin Delano Roosevelt saved the United States banking system during the first seven days of his first term.
And what did he do on the eighth day? “I think this would be a good time for beer,” he said.
Congress had already repealed Prohibition, pending ratification from the states. But the people needed a lift, and legalizing beer would create a million jobs. And lo, booze was back. Two days after the bill passed, Milwaukee brewers hired six hundred people and paid their first $10 million in taxes. Soon the auto industry was tooling up the first $12 million worth of delivery trucks, and brewers were pouring tens of millions into new plants.”
– John H. Richardson, “Why Obama Really Might Decriminalize Marijuana,” Esquire Magazine; Dec. 23, 2008
Hopefully, the Obama administration will see through the problems of U.S. drug policy, break away from the same old same of the Democrat/Republican oligarchy, and make wise decisions with regards to creating a U.S. industrial hemp industry, including for food, fuel, paper, fabric, insulation, building materials, and biodegradable plastics.
“More money has been spent trying to find something wrong with cannabis than any other vegetable material in human history.”
– Terence McKenna, author of Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge: A Radical History of Plants, Drugs, and Human Evolution
“When I smoked pot it was illegal, but not immoral. Now it is illegal and immoral. The law didn’t change, only the morality. That’s why you get to go to jail and I don’t.”
– Newt Gingrich, Republican Speaker of the House, 1997. This smarmy hypocrite introduced the Drug Importer Death Penalty Act that called for the life imprisonment for those importing what could be 100 doses of an illegal substance, and the death penalty for those convicted on a second offense.
Marijuana arrests skyrocketed during the Clinton administration. He also initiated a $15.1 billion commitment to reduce drug use in the U.S. Both Clinton and Al Gore had admitted to smoking marijuana (Clinton famously claimed that he didn’t inhale).
The Clinton/Gore drug war funding didn’t do much to stop people from smoking marijuana, especially not Al Gore’s son, Albert Gore III, who was busted on cannabis charges in 2003 in Bethesda, Maryland, was busted again on July 4, 2007 in Laguna Niguel, California. Maybe the boy simply misunderstood his father’s advice to “go green.” Within hours of his arrest he had already spent more time in jail than Scooter Libby.
Gore is hardly the first, and not the last, politician’s child to smoke weed, including the ones with the last names Kennedy, Carter, Reagan, Bush, and Bush. Movie star and husband of Demi Moore, Ashton Kutcher, told a magazine interviewer that he got stoned with Bush twins Jenna and Barbara at his Hollywood Hills home by smoking weed in a hookah.
In addition to the children of presidents, the offspring of congresspersons also have a broad history of marijuana use. California Republican Congressman Duke Cunningham, who was so outspoken about strengthening the drug laws found himself in the peculiar situation of finding that his son, Randy, was busted with 400 pounds of marijuana. Minnesota Republican Congressman Rod Grams once called the police to help find his son, Morgan. They found his son, and ten bags of marijuana in the boy’s vehicle. Republican Representative Dan Burton, who backed the idea of creating laws applying the death penalty to drug dealers, asked a judge for leniency when Dan Burton II was convicted of possessing marijuana with intent to sell. There is a long list of politician’s children and other family members who have been busted for breaking pot laws.
“Politicians’ children probably don’t use illegal drugs more than other young people do, but they are the victims of a special irony: the laws that ensnare them are often written by their parents!”
– Pete Brady, Cannabis Culture magazine, July 2004; CannabisCulture.com
It is likely that the great majority of politicians have either tried, or do smoke marijuana, as have and do judges who sentence people to jail for pot offenses (Chief Justice Clarence Thomas has admitted to smoking weed), and those working in law enforcement who hold jobs where they regularly arrest people on marijuana charges. During her run for government, Sarah Palin admitted to having smoked weed in her younger days. The drug history of George W. Bush is well known. He increased the billions of dollars being spent on the drug war. Earlier presidents who are known to have smoked cannabis include Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Jackson, Taylor, Pierce, Lincoln, and Kennedy. And now, Obama.
All of this drug war stuff increased the price of illegal drugs, making it enticing for those who need cash, or who at least want to make a quick ten grand. Throughout the decades there have been cases of the underground drug market being helped along by those who are in professions meant to stifle the drug trade. On January 21, 1998, federal agents charged 44 Ohio and New York police and corrections officers with helping to run the cocaine underground in northern Ohio. The arrests took place after a two-year investigation into organized crime in and around Cleveland. During the investigation the officers had escorted federal agents posing as cocaine dealers.
More common is a situation in which officers aren’t involved in making money from drugs, but sometimes partake of illegal substances.
While I was writing this book I spoke with a man who worked as a police officer in the drug unit of a major American city during the 1990s. He told me that it wasn’t uncommon to smoke weed with his fellow officers on the weekend after taking a little weed from confiscated marijuana. He said that if it showed up in a blood test they could easily reason that he breathed it in during a drug bust or undercover investigation. But, he said, as far as he knew, the officers didn’t take hard drugs like cocaine or heroin because they couldn’t rationalize that. They simply liked to relax now and then with a little puff of a burning dried leaf. “No harm in that,” he said.
“If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.”
– Charles Darwin