{"id":192859,"date":"2009-02-12T19:58:00","date_gmt":"2009-02-13T00:58:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/02\/12\/a-breath-of-fresh-air-for-drug-czar\/"},"modified":"2009-02-12T19:58:00","modified_gmt":"2009-02-13T00:58:00","slug":"a-breath-of-fresh-air-for-drug-czar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/02\/12\/a-breath-of-fresh-air-for-drug-czar\/","title":{"rendered":"A Breath of Fresh Air for Drug Czar"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Obama has <a href=\"http:\/\/seattlepi.nwsource.com\/local\/399533_kerlikowske11.html\">selected Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske as the new drug czar<\/a> and it appears that while he is 100% cop, and a heavy duty law enforcement guy, unlike previous heads of the ONDCP, he&#8217;s not an insane drug warrior.<\/p>\n<p>People who are looking at a more humane policy in dealing with drugs <a href=\"http:\/\/slog.thestranger.com\/slog\/archives\/2009\/02\/11\/czar_struck_obama_s_brillia\">are pleasantly surprised by his appointment<\/a>, as are <a href=\"http:\/\/briefingroom.thehill.com\/2009\/02\/11\/leagalization-groups-warm-to-reported-drug-czar-pick\/\">legalization groups<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Specifically, during his tenure as police chief, he actually followed a law, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thestranger.com\/seattle\/Content?oid=25507\">initiative 75<\/a>, which specifically deprioritized marijuana enforcement,<sup>*<\/sup> and kept the police from harassing needle exchange programs, which helps reduce AIDS transmission.<\/p>\n<p>He&#8217;s never going to be NORML&#8217;s man of the year, and he&#8217;s not going to call for legalizing weed, but he is remarkable improvement over the &#8216;war on drugs&#8217; crowd that has done nothing but fill prisons with non-violent offenders.<\/p>\n<p><sup>*<\/sup>I-75 saw a decline in drug use as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Obama has selected Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske as the new drug czar and it appears that while he is 100% cop, and a heavy duty law enforcement guy, unlike previous heads of the ONDCP, he&#8217;s not an insane drug warrior. People who are looking at a more humane policy in dealing with drugs are &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1013,972,1081],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-192859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-drugs","category-justice","category-laws"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192859"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=192859"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192859\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}