No Truce With Kings

What kind of person are you, Thomas Harrigan, who expects to get away with spouting such nonsense? And why in the world are we paying for you to make such patently foolish remarks?

When you advise Congress to keep the current policy on marijuana, here’s what you’re advocating:

• wasting more peoples’ lives in prisons,
• wasting more money supporting a prison-industrial complex,
• encouraging corruption in our police forces,
• turning police forces into gangs of highwaymen, and
• taking children from their parents if the parents realize that smoking marijuana isn’t the evil you claim it is.

Here’s a suggestion, Mr. Harrigan: Talk with the families of the Mexicans who’ve been killed in drug-gang-related violence while Mexico enforces its prohibition laws – with your agency’s help.

America was once the Land of the Free, but the War on Drugs, forfeiture laws, and national security policy are turning the United States into a police state. That’s what you’re advocating, Mr. Harrigan.

Anti-prohibitionists like myself don’t claim that drugs are good for people. Nor do we say there are no problems resulting from legal drug use. But there are problems with many activities that are currently legal: eating, drinking alcohol, gambling, smoking tobacco, owning weapons – it’s a long list. We only point out that the problems caused by drug prohibition are worse than the problems caused by the prohibited drugs.

The last three presidents of the United States admit that they’ve smoked marijuana. I think my children have as much right to decide whether to smoke dope as Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama have.

Your testimony shows an amazing lack of sense. So I conclude that its purpose was to defend the DEA’s budget and your job in particular. Are you just another self-serving bureaucrat? Is that the deal, Mr. Harrigan?

Get a clue, brother. You could get one from your boss, you know.

DEA Official: ‘Every Single Parent’ Opposes Marijuana Legalization

WASHINGTON — A top Drug Enforcement Administration official said Tuesday that legalizing marijuana “insults our common values” and insisted that “every single parent out there” opposed legalization.

“We also know that marijuana destroys lives and families, undermines our economy, and insults our common values. There are no sound scientific, economic or social reasons to change our nation’s marijuana policies,” Thomas M. Harrigan, the agency’s deputy administrator, told the House Oversight Committee in prepared testimony on Tuesday. “We must send a clear message to the American people and ensure our public safety by not abandoning science and fact in favor of public opinion.”

Later, pressed by Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.), Harrigan said that “every single parent out there” opposed marijuana legalization.

“Your statement that all parents are against this is ludicrous,” said Cohen. “What do you think, that people who are in favor of decriminalization or changing policy don’t procreate?”