By Claire Bernish at theantimedia.org
Slipping by virtually unnoticed, the United States made a surprising move last week toward entirelyending the contentious and wholly ineffective War on Drugs.
With the approach of the first Special Session of the U.N. General Assembly to discuss international drug policy in nearly 18 years, Bill Brownfield, Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, discussed the potential for an historic shift in U.S. drug policy with a panel on March 8th.
Seeking to return to a “greater focus on public health and healthcare as relates to the drug issue, rehabilitation, treatment, [and] education,”Brownfield described what will be “a pragmatic approach to reform … global drug policy.”
Despite the moniker Land of the Free, the U.S. recently fell under intense criticism after a number ofreports noted the country houses the largest prison population on the planet — a fact President Obama reluctantly admitted last summer.
Should it follow through with decriminalization as Brownfield described, the U.S. government would be marking the first effort to weaken the now-massive prison-industrial machine — including the controversial, corrupt, private prison corporations that now dominate the criminal justice landscape.
“We will call for pragmatic and concrete criminal justice reform, areas such as alternatives to incarceration or drug courts, or sentencing reform,” Brownfield explained. “In other words, as President Obama has said many times publicly, to decriminalize much of basic behavior in drug consumption in order to focus scarce law enforcement resources on the greater challenge of the large transnational criminal organizations.
“We will propose greater focus on what we call new psychoactive substances. These are the new drugs … which in the 21st century the pharmaceutical industry can produce at a faster rate than governments or … the United Nations system can actually review and register.”
Asked whether countries deciding to move in the direction of Portugal, which decriminalized all drugs in a massive, successful effort to combat addiction, would be penalized for breaking established international narcotics guidelines, Brownfield stated the issue would not be for the U.S. government to decide. He explained wholesale reform of drug policy couldn’t possibly be applied in a one-size-fits-all format, as individual countries are dealing with problems specific to their needs.
As an example, Brownfield pointed to cannabis policy in the U.S.
“It is the position of the United States government, for example, that despite the fact that four of our states have voted to legalize the cultivation, production, sale, purchase, and consumption of cannabis, or marijuana, that we are still in compliance with our treaty obligations, because first, the federal law, national law, still proscribes and prohibits marijuana; and second, because the objective, as asserted by the states themselves, is still to reduce the harm caused by consumption [of] marijuana.
“Our argument is that at the end of the day, the issue is not precisely whether a government has chosen to decriminalize or not to decriminalize; it is whether the government is still working cooperatively to reduce the harm caused by the product.”
Several times, Brownfield emphasized the necessity for policy reform to hold to international narcotics conventions, but he also expressed optimism that “experimentation, adjustment, and modification” of policy would nonetheless be allowable.
Drug policy experts, activists, and countless others have decried the Drug War’s criminalization in reference to treatment of what is largely viewed as an epidemic of addiction.
“The world is a different place in 2016 than it was in 1959 or 1960,” Brownfield noted. “So, of course, policy changes. Opinions change. Focus and priority changes.”
Set to take place around five weeks from now, if the Ambassador’s plans are well-received, the UNGASS might produce the most positive reforms to now-anachronistic drug policies since they were imposed decades ago.
“At the end of the day, dangerous drugs are a danger to anyone — right or left; Northern Hemisphere, Southern Hemisphere; developing, developed; industrial, agrarian — it doesn’t matter. The harm is the same on the human being,” Brownfield asserted. “But we must process it through the realities of our planet today.”
This article (Media Silent as US Announces Unprecedented Move to End Drug War) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Claire Bernishand theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, email [email protected].
Resume, resume,
Too much text mate.
And politicians talk in a bla bla language that is hard to understand what they are in reality saying when your 1st language is not english.
What did they change??
Cliff Notes:
Seeking to return to a “greater focus on public health and healthcare as relates to the drug issue, rehabilitation, treatment, [and] education,”Brownfield described what will be “practical considerations & approach to reform … global drug policy.”
We will call for criminal justice reform, areas such as alternatives to incarceration or drug courts, or sentencing reform
Brownfield emphasized the necessity for policy reform to hold to international narcotics conventions, but he also expressed optimism that “experimentation, adjustment, and modification” of policy would nonetheless be allowable
Our argument is that at the end of the day, the issue is not precisely whether a government has chosen to decriminalize or not to decriminalize; it is whether the government is still working cooperatively to reduce the harm caused by the product
Cannabis is a medicinal herb given to us by the Creator.
“And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.”
Gen. 1:29
In 1937 evil lying men changed the name of this God-given plant to the M-word (marihuana) and enacted an unconstitutional “law” to make the herb illegal.
After the “Marihuana Tax Act of 1937” was found to be unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1969, evil lying men and women enacted the tyrannical, evil so-called “Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970” (aka The Controlled Substances Act [CSA]).
The federal government of the USA and all fifty states classify cannabis/M-word as a schedule I controlled substance:
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/21/812
(1) Schedule I.—
(A) The drug or other substance has a high potential for abuse.
(B) The drug or other substance has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States.
(C) There is a lack of accepted safety for use of the drug or other substance under medical supervision.
Sane, decent, rational citizens know that cannabis has a plethora of medical (and other) uses.
Cannabis/M-word clearly does not meet the definition of a schedule I controlled substance:
1. cannabis does not have a high potential for abuse;
2. cannabis has a currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States; and
3. cannabis is the safest of all drugs, whether used under medical supervision or not, no drug deaths from the use of cannabis.
There is a drug that does meet the definition of a schedule I controlled substance:
1. tobacco/nicotine has a high potential for abuse;
2. tobacco/nicotine has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States; and
3. there is a lack of accepted safety for use of tobacco/nicotine – over 480,000 tobacco drug deaths annually in the United States.
These same evil lying men and women, who falsely classified the safest of all drugs, cannabis, as one of the most harmful drugs, at the same time unlawfully and hypocritically exempted the only true schedule I controlled substance, tobacco/nicotine, from their tyrannical evil CSA:
(6) The term “controlled substance” means a drug or other substance, or immediate precursor, included in schedule I, II, III, IV, or V of part B of this subchapter. The term does not include distilled spirits, wine, malt beverages, or tobacco, as those terms are defined or used in subtitle E of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986. [21 U.S.C. § 802(6)]
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/21/802
Only a nation with an insane and evil government classifies the two deadliest of all drugs, tobacco & alcohol, as being exempt from all drug laws, especially from being classified as the schedule I & II controlled substances these hard drugs are, respectively; and, at the same time, classifies the safest of all drugs, cannabis, falsely and wrongly as a schedule I, one of the most deadly drugs.
President Obama has failed to bring honesty and integrity to the dishonest, hypocritical drug laws of the USA.
Obama must order his DEA Administrator to immediately reclassify the following drugs according to the definitions in the CSA [21 U.S.C. § 812]:
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/21/812
* tobacco – schedule I;
* alcohol – schedule II;
* coffee – schedule V;
* cannabis – schedule V (not I, not II, not III, not IV).
If Obama will not or cannot do that, then he must stop enforcing the unconstitutional CSA which unlawfully exempts tobacco & alcohol by name [21 U.S.C. § 802(6)], and Congress must repeal the CSA and abolish the DEA.
People need to realize that Obama can reschedule cannabis from the wrong, false, immoral, irrational, unjust, and unconstitutional category of schedule I to the category cannabis fits in according to the definitions in the CSA, schedule V. With a stroke of his famous “pen”, or a call on his famous “phone”, Obama can reschedule cannabis from schedule I to schedule V. No action by Congress is required.
Obama is certainly no liberal or progressive. He remains soft on drugs, having surrendered to the tobacco and alcohol drug lords. He refuses to use his Executive authority to right the immoral wrong of the misclassification of cannabis.
It’s Obama’s fault that cannabis wrongly and unjustly remains a schedule I controlled substance.
Why won’t Obama undertake right now the right, moral, rational, and just action of removing cannabis from schedule I?