2008 Democratic candidate positions on Cannabis Reform
I came across a very good article at Cannabis Culture Magazine that lays out each of the 2008 Presidential candidate's positions on medical marijuana, cannabis reform, and/or addressing the "war on drugs".
Cannabis Culture is a Canadian magazine and website run by Marc Emery, a longtime cannabis activist, businessman, and founder of the British Columbia Marijuana Party, as well as longtime thorn in the side to American drug warriors. He is currently fighting extradition to America for engaging in conduct in Canada (like, where he is a citizen) that is illegal in America. This is how important perpetuating cannabis prohibition is to those with the power to affect it.
The article, a, Sneak Preview: Your Next President on Drugs addresses all the Democratic and Republican party candidates.
Cannabis Culture is a Canadian magazine and website run by Marc Emery, a longtime cannabis activist, businessman, and founder of the British Columbia Marijuana Party, as well as longtime thorn in the side to American drug warriors. He is currently fighting extradition to America for engaging in conduct in Canada (like, where he is a citizen) that is illegal in America. This is how important perpetuating cannabis prohibition is to those with the power to affect it.
The article, a, Sneak Preview: Your Next President on Drugs addresses all the Democratic and Republican party candidates. The article has their own bias clearly on display. they are up front about their support for Ron Paul, citing a number of cannabis related issues on which his voting record is very consistent:
In our opinion, Republican Ron Paul is the best Presidential candidate to emerge from either party in 50 years. If George Bush has you rightly disgusted for his drug war, his Iraq War, for letting neo-cons usurp the US government, then Ron Paul is the anti-Bush. Ron Paul has been a Congressman for 20 years, and votes on every occasion with 100 percent consistency against the drug war, against the drug czar's office, and in favor of medical marijuana; he's also chief sponsor of the 2007 Industrial Hemp Act. Ron Paul is the only one of all the Republican Presidential candidates to continually oppose the Iraq War in Congress, since before the first vote in 2002. Ron Paul voted against The Patriot Act, and against regulating the Internet.
Ron Paul believes this: "While recognizing the harm that drug abuse causes society, we also recognize that government drug policy has been ineffective and has led to frightening abuses of the Bill of Rights which could affect the personal freedom of any American. We, therefore, support alternatives to the War on Drugs. Per the tenth amendment to the US Constitution: matters such as drugs should be handled at the state or personal level. All laws, which give license to violate the Bill of Rights, should be repealed." (Republican Liberty Caucus Position Statement 00-RLC13 on Dec. 8, 2000.)
Ron Paul promised in the Detroit Free Press on September 21, 2007 that he would pardon non-violent drug offenders, also saying "mandated life sentences are insane. I'd release them. I'd pardon them."
That is serious stuff. Paul is a model of cannabis reform effort.
Ron Paul is easily...EASILY, the single best candidate the GOP has, if they would pull their heads out of their asses and realize how out-of-touch they are with America (like they'd care..) they'd be running Ron Paul and hiding the rest of their sorry pack.
Now, I have always wondered about Paul. How can he really be a Republican? Why have they tolerated him?
Hunter from Daily Kos answers some of my questions in Because Ron Paul is Nuts, that's why.
Ron Paul, like the vast majority of the rest of America -- Republican congressmen and senators excluded, that is -- wants out of Iraq. Great. How enlightened. Stand in line. But he also thinks the "War on Christmas" is real, and that the separation of church and state is a myth. He believes the founding fathers wanted to discriminate on behalf of certain religions, and that morality cannot be accomplished absent Christianity.
*****
And wait, there's more: because of Paul's hardline isolationist and anti-government philosophies, he is doing very well in winning the support of white supremacists and other, shall we say, race-obsessed individuals -- a glowing accomplishment, considering the Republican presidential race has horked up such notable far-right luminaries as Tancredo, Brownback and Hunter, usually favorites of the Minuteman crowd themselves.
Hunter goes on to complain that Paul's other, more traditional GOP values and voting have earned him the admiration of of White Power groups and other bizare fringe groups. He has some distasteful quotes attributed to Paul, but then, again, nobody's perfect. (If they were, we'd throw THAT in their face, right?)
While I don't think it's Paul's fault that skinheads and white power sorts like him so much, it does go a good distance in explaining to me why the GOP appears to tolerate his notable anti-GOP stances. Those people are part of their base. A Ron Paul presidency is a Republican presidency.
In the end, I cannot support Ron Paul simply because he is a Republican and I simply do not want a Republican president. Plain and simple.
He has a huge and successful online presence but a lot of people in the real world have no idea who he is. If he ran as an Independent he would have nary a chance so he'll stick with them.
Real politicians would steal his thunder.
Cannabis Reform is too big to be a Single Issue
Now, the focus at the CC article is what I would consider "cannabis reform being presented as a single issue".
The CC focus makes it similar to demographics that care ONLY about gun control or abortion or this OR that. And I think that is not the most accurate nor the most effective way to present it. Their links to the videos are dead and you can read their perspective at the link to the article above.
I argue that cannabis reform is simply NOT a "single issue". It is a collection of different issues all mashed together and mostly referred to as "The War on Drugs". It's just too big and affect too many disparate things to be a single anything. It is a series of unmitigated disasters, but we can talk about that another time.
A couple general observations
- First: Without cannabis being illegal, the war on drugs would be a relatively small governmental endeavor. My most conservative calculation is that about 1 in 8 people in America smoke pot at least 1 time per year or more. That is tens of millions of otherwise law-abiding people.
- Secondly: The entire endeavor of criminalizing drug use to prevent it is the incorrect choice as evidence by both it's failure to achieve desired results and by being directly responsible for creating crimes where none previously existed and creating a black market that feeds off of the illegality causing, lo and behold, more and more crime.
- Thirdly, and as pointed out by Ron Paul: The war on drugs has also been a war on the Bill of Rights. Law enforcement and the Federal government use the "war on drugs" as a battering ram against the Constitution. Medical Marijuana is a very clear example - it is highlighting the 9th and 10th amendments as states struggle to retain their rights and the Federal government asserts that the war on drugs supersedes state's rights.
Again, I am not thrilled by the prospect of a Ron Paul presidency, but he exhibits desirable leadership on how the war on drugs assails the Constitution.
I am thrilled by the sound of a Kucinich presidency, although many others aren't for various and sundry reasons. Kucinich and Paul both share the characteristic of being shunned by the Old Media Cartel because their messages are NOT "on the table" of mainstream consumer society.
The problem is that their message ARE on the table and the media and those who make the decisions want to have people believe its not there. If it's not on television, then it ain't real.
So hip, hip, hooray! for YouTube and the dear old internets.
The 2008 Democratic Candidate Positions on Cannabis reform
Following are the Democratic candidates on video talking about what I will call collective "The Cannabis Issue". I have not included the Republican videos because you already know how they feel about it.
Dennis Kucinich
"Medical marijuana should not even be an issue". Dennis gets to go first because he is the Democratic leader on this topic.
John Edwards
He's not bad at all - more or less he just needs to talk about it more often.
It IS a political football, but involving the FDA shows he doesn't really undestand the dynamics. The FDA doesn't want to rule on it and shouldn't. But that's all for another day. Edwards leads when he talks about it, plain and simple. He will advance the issue just by talking about it like a sane human being who knows which end is actually up.
Chris Dodd
His leaderhship style appears tamed by the medical marijuana question but pay attention to this: he says he doesn't know enough about it. Which may actually be the truth and if it is (I am not expecting him - or any presidential candidate - to be a closet cannabis scholar) and saying "I am not qualified to answer that" is, in my world, the mark of a professional. One sticks to what one knows forwards and backwards.
That said, his policy would likely taste good with butter and syrup.
Barak Obama
Here's a rather deliberate answer. He's awful short on substance though. A hint for him and his supporters. Talk about getting the federal government off the backs of medical marijuana patients and support the right of the people in their state to make these laws. All he's gotta do is talk about it postively and consistently and he can do that. He's already on record saying he's smoked so we know HE knows the deal.
If somebody has a better video of him, I'll update this diary.
Hillary Clinton
She can say the words "medical marijuana" and NOT burst into flames!.
She relays the standard operating line about "we need more studies" to see what medicines can be made out of it. It's true we need to allow medical studies to go forth unimpeded in the country, but it's an uphill battle. Other nations are leading the way.
Hillary SUPPORTS the continued criminalization of cannabis. She says it plain and simple, that she doesn't think it should be decriminalized. In a way I agree: decrim is a scam to keep cannabis illegal and won't really solve anything and will perpetuate the war on drugs as you know it now. It must be as "legal" as tobacco: "legalizing" means "regulating". Period.
Hillary's NOT a leader on this topic and represents maintaining the status quo. Ugh.
Cannabis Reform Politics: It's an Umbrella, Not a Wedge
Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich demonstrate real leadership. They are addressing the desires of many different people when they address cannabis reform: farmers, medical patients, and kicking a big leg of support out from underneath the siege which has been laid against the Constitution for lo these many years.
The Big Three - Barak Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John Edwards - can advance their candidacies without risk AND help the issue progress just by talking about cannabis reform like sane people. (I just included Hillary to be nice - she's clearly for continuing the disaster...but she could wise up and flip-flop and get on the right path. She could....)
By doing so they can take MUCH of the wind from Ron Paul's sails as well as usurp make a real effort to court the folks who are itching to vote for Dennis Kucinich AND Ron Paul.
Cannabis reform is so popular across a wide swath of different demographics I think it's just smart for the politician who lives to get votes to exploit it for all its worth.
And ALL the Democratic candidates have to do to help is talk about it. Actual legal reforms will be forthcoming once we can talk about this like normal people.
Millions of people are listening.
And we vote.