If he keeps this up, the Drug Warriors are going to have John Tierney’s head on a most wanted sign:
When the Supreme Court ruled in June that states could not legalize marijuana for medical uses, Justice Stephen Breyer voted with the majority. But during oral arguments, he suggested an alternative way for patients to get it: let the federal Food and Drug Administration decide if marijuana should be a prescription drug.
“Medicine by regulation is better than medicine by referendum,” he said. In theory, that sounds reasonable. But what if the officials doing the regulation are afflicted with a bad case of Reefer Madness?
If you doubt this possibility, you should have been at a hearing that began this week at the Drug Enforcement Administration’s headquarters. Lyle Craker, a professor of plant and soil sciences at the University of Massachusetts, asked an administrative judge to overrule the agency so he could grow marijuana for F.D.A.-approved research projects by other scientists.
Dr. Craker is a well-regarded agronomist who’s being supported by the American Civil Liberties Union and both of his senators, Edward Kennedy and John Kerry. But for four years he’s been stymied by the D.E.A., which first stalled and then finally denied his request for a permit…
D.E.A. officials have already shown they’re quite capable of persecuting someone who uses marijuana to deal with AIDS, and they may well be even more eager to go after someone who encourages research into their least favorite drug. When it comes to marijuana research, the federal policy is “Just Say Know-Nothing.”
Read the whole thing.
Vladi G
As Anheuser Busch and Miller breathe a sigh of relief.
ppGaz
Drug Enforcement is an industry. You wouldn’t expect those guys to try to help their competition, would you?
Goose, golden egg, etc.
DougJ
I’m sure the people at Camp Sheehan will be applauding Tierney. Rush said there was more marijuana smoke there than outside a Snoop Doggy Dog show.
srv
DougJ,
You keep listening to that Vicodin addict.
All my best.
DougJ
He was dealing with chronic pain. If he had been some drug-addicted hustler living in a housing project, I’m sure you libruls would have been all weepy-eyed about his legal troubles. But when a guy who makes a good living has a problem, it’s bring in the executioner.
srv
Yeah, I know, if DougJ and Stormy didn’t exist, John would have to invent them.
The Supreme Court cases dealt with medicinal mary-jane users with chronic pain. Funny how almost every statement you make exposes a new hypocrisy. You’re either a genius or a real nutjob.
But sorry, I’m off to Mt. Tam
Otto Man
That should read: “But when a guy who makes a good living calling for the execution of drug addicts has a problem, it’s bring in the executioner.”
Narvy
And he knows this because…? He visited the place and saw it with his own eyes? He read about it in a reliable news publication? (Wait! That’s an oxymoron.) I suppose there probably is pot smoking there, but I don’t know it, and I’d like to know how Rush knows it.
And therefore he was justified in hiding his addiction and illicitly obtaining a controlled substance and coercing his housekeeper into helping him do it, while calling for the jailing of illicit drug users. Very deserving of sympathy.
ppGaz
Oh Dougie, you are going to keep me busy today!
See, you missed yet another point!
It’s not that he makes a good living. It’s that he made himself a millionaire demagoguing this issue and treating as disposable people just like himself ….. and now he wants us to go soft on him.
Irony, Doug, Irony. Delicious, ain’t it?
Cromagnon
Quite often, ‘chronic pain’ is just used as an excuse to obtain pain-killers (vicoden and oxycontin are opiates as is heroin). Doctor-shoppers will claim to have severe back pain or headaches in order to get their fix. The doctor can’t really dispute the claim. Happens all the time
jg
So the latest attack on Sheehan is that she’s a reefer addict? Classic. Anything they can find, any last little thing they can say or do to attack credibility. This is what our country has come to.
DougJ
Not her, but all the moveon crowd hippies that have moved into camp casey (probably because they got kicked out of their own mother’s homes).
jg
But you’re trying to use it as a way to discredit Sheehan. I don’t care if she’s hitting a six foot party bong, it doesn’t change anything. They could be Rush’s main supplier of hillbilly heroin and it wouldn’t change anything.
ppGaz
Fear not. 90% are saying that it’s okay to criticize the government. Junior’s teflon underwear has outlived its warranty. They can Swiftboat and demonize all day and all night, support for this war is not coming back.
ppGaz
In fact, let me revise and extend my remarks … I think that we’ve passed a tipping point, at which “counter-action” against what Sheehan is doing is going to backfire. People don’t want to be manipulated around this war issue any more, they want to see results. The bullshit isn’t working.
I predict that Bush’s “tour” in front of hand-picked audiences to sell the war now is going to have the same effect that his last tour had on his Social Security “program”: Drive support from low, to essentially zero.
Gary Farber
John, have you noticed this drug story? If you haven’t yet, I’m sure you will. I like to think I added a tad of value, though.
rilkefan
The people in Camp Casey are living with the chronic pain of having an incompetent for president – you’d think the DougJ character would cut them some slack.
goonie bird
Hey did you know that the BAYER company(you know the asperin)used to sell HEROIN as a cough medicine?
Bob
But once you got a swig of that heroin cough medicine the cough was gone.
If I’m not mistaken Rush was addicted to oxycontin. Did Breyer say anything about making that a prescription drug?