Surprising marijuana moments in (mostly) American culture

Let D.C. have its weed
At a meeting of the Center for Strategic and International Studies on Friday Feb. 6, 2015, acting U.S. Drug Czar Michael Botticelli said … “The president, as it relates to the District, I think was very clear that the District should stick to its home rule. As a resident of the District, I might not agree about legalization, but I do agree with our own ability to spend our own money the way that we want to do that.”
Botticelli is expected to be confirmed as the next director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy in February 2015.

Updated Feb. 6, 2015 (Surgeon General’s statements are below and in second slide above): 
The latest White House figure to show some softening toward marijuana is …
At a meeting of the Center for Strategic and International Studies on Friday Feb. 6, 2015, acting U.S. Drug Czar Michael Botticelli said, “The president, as it relates to the District, I think was very clear that the District should stick to its home rule. As a resident of the District, I might not agree about legalization, but I do agree with our own ability to spend our own money the way that we want to do that.”
Botticelli is expected to be confirmed on Monday as the next director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy .
Vox.com has a good background summation:

In November, Washington, DC, voters overwhelmingly approved legalizing the possession, growing, and gifting of marijuana in the nation’s capital. The initiative is currently in front of Congress for a mandatory 30-day review period; if Congress doesn’t act — as is widely expected — it could become law in DC.
Congress passed a spending deal in December that attempted to block the legalization initiative from taking effect. But DC Council bypassed the spending deal, pushing the measure to the congressional review period anyway.

Mason Tvert, director of communications for the Marijuana Policy Project (whose group apparently asked the question at the meeting) said in a news release:

“We’re sorry to hear he is opposed to making marijuana legal for adults, but at least he agrees states and the District should be able to. This is a big step for someone who works in an office that has for decades gone out of its way to keep marijuana illegal everywhere and at any cost.”

 Botticelli goes to Congress 
Of course if you remember U.S. House hearings from last year, you’ll remember Botticelli took quite a beating trying to toe the anti-marijauna line. That scene is here reproduced from our story of a year ago this month: “Answered: Can America’s drug czar tell the truth about marijuana?”
Last month (January 2014), President Obama said in an interview that marijuana is less dangerous than alcohol. In the ensuing storm of backlash and high-fives, another big question emerged: Why the hell is marijuana federally labeled among the very worst drugs in the history of humankind if the president of the United States says it’s not as bad for you as alcohol?

On the one hand, we saw plenty of arguments that marijuana is as bad as and even worse than alcohol (though you have to leave out the simple fact that alcohol leads directly to tens of thousands deaths every year). And on the other, we saw calls for marijuana to be “downscheduled” or removed from the list of federally controlled substances. It’s currently sitting at “schedule I.”

And, we saw administration officials hauled before Congress to explain the “mixed signal” between Obama’s statement and his staff saying later that the administration still opposed legalization.
Then, on Feb. 4 (2014), the GOP-controlled U.S. House tried to beat up the Obama administration over the matter, but the anti-marijuana folks got pretty soundly beat up instead.
Of particular note, Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) and Rep. Cohen mercilessly hammered away at the deputy drug czar Michael Botticelli and his reluctance to say anything other than marijuana was a godawful drug that would destroy the nation.

Blumenaur: “Let me just say, that I think your equivocation right there, being unable to answer something, clearly and definitively when there is unquestioned evidence to the contrary is why young people don’t believe the propaganda, why they think it is benign. If a professional like you cannot answer clearly that meth is more dangerous than marijuana, which every kid on the street knows, which every parent knows, if you can’t answer that, maybe that’s why we’re failing to educate people about the dangers.

I don’t want kids smoking marijuana. I agree with the chairman, but if the deputy director of the Office of Drug Policy can’t answer that question, how do you expect high school kids to take you seriously? … You, sir, represent part of the problem.
Cohen: “It is ludicrous, absurd, crazy to have marijuana at the same level as heroin. Ask the late Philip Seymour Hoffman if you could. Nobody dies from marijuana. People die from heroin.”

So that means … 
Then Cohen got to the heart of the matter.
Not only weren’t they buying that marijuana is worse than everything (though clearly it can be exceptionally bad for some people and kids, let’s just be honest), the congressmen weren’t even sure they were getting an fully honest answer from Botticelli.

Here’s Cohen: “Let me ask you this, You are prohibited by law from using any funds to studying marijuana legalization for medicinal purposes or any other reason? … Aren’t you troubled by these constraints and don’t you think that your expertise should be allowed to be used to study science and to contribute to a positive classification of drugs?”
Botticelli said he didn’t know that background.

C – Would you support legislation that would allow you to participate and to voice your opinion and use science as a basis for your determination?
B – What I would do is support that federal agencies have the ability to do that, so …
C – Yours is prohibited by law, should that restriction not be lifted?
B – … I think that it’s important that our office not involve itself in terms of a given legislation or given activity, and I believe that that was the genesis for that language, that the office not involve itself in state and local …
C -  … your job should be to have a sane drug policy not to be muzzled and handcuffed.
B – That has not handcuffed other offices and other federal agencies who are tasked with that work from an investigative (standpoint) …

So, he’s saying other agencies in the federal government, such as the National Institute on Drug Abuse (an arm of the National Institutes of Health), aren’t muzzled so we can rely on what they say … !
But that means, unfortunately, that even if these other agencies came out with glowing recommendation for marijuana, the drug czar and his staff would have to continue breathing fire against any form of legalization or rescheduling.

Earlier post: What the Surgeon General said
Breaking with his fellow federal employees and hopefuls over at the Department of Justice and DEA, US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy on Wednesday said ”marijuana can be helpful” for some medical conditions.
And he appears to be standing by that statement, since his office tweeted the same message:

“We have some preliminary data that for certain medical conditions … marijuana can be helpful” – @Surgeon_General : http://t.co/Y3sfhwJ0DJ
— HHS Media (@HHSMedia)

Then again today they tweeted:

Add’l from SG: “Marijuana policy shld be driven by sci & subject to same clinical trials FDA applies to all meds” http://t.co/Y3sfhwJ0DJ
— HHS Media (@HHSMedia) February 5, 2015

The main point here is not just this one person’s opinion, but that to subject marijuana to the same standards that “applies to all meds,” cannabis would have to be moved from Schedule 1 (dangerous with no medical value) to something down the line that would then allow private and public institutions to grow, refine and experiment with the plant.
How many dominos have to fall before re-scheduling?