Pubdate: Fri, 18 Jan 2013
Source: Oregonian, The (Portland, OR)
Copyright: 2013 The Oregonian
Contact:  http://www.oregonlive.com/oregonian/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/324
Author: Noelle Crombie

MARIJUANA LEGALIZATION 'NOT SENDING A GOOD MESSAGE,' DRUG CZAR SAYS

President Barack Obama's point man on drug policy made a quick stop in
Portland this week, meeting privately with a wide range of community
leaders to talk about Oregon's prescription drug abuse epidemic.

But R. Gil Kerlikowske, the director of the Office of National Drug
Control Policy, said marijuana came up too.

"Marijuana always comes up," Kerlikowske, the former Seattle police
chief who is known as the nation's drug czar, told The Oregonian in an
exclusive interview during his Portland visit.

Kerlikowske's arrived in Portland Wednesday on the heels of a visit to
Colorado, which like Washington voted last year to legalize cannabis.
Marijuana remains illegal under federal law and the U.S. Department of
Justice has not issued an official response to legalized marijuana in
Washington and Colorado. The Office of National Drug Control Policy
website calls marijuana a harmful drug with the potential for
addiction, particularly among young people.

Kerlikowske said his concerns about marijuana center on public health.
He pointed out a 2012 survey conducted by the California Office of
Traffic Safety that found 7.4 percent of drivers tested positive for
marijuana use  more than for alcohol.

Kerlikowske, who met with high school students during his Portland
visit, said he's concerned about what legalizing marijuana says to
young people.

"We are certainly not sending a very good message when we call it
medicine and legalize it," he said.

Earlier this month, while speaking to a law enforcement gathering in
San Francisco, Kerlikowske was critical of medical marijuana.

"Medicinal marijuana has never been through the FDA process," he said,
according to the San Francisco Examiner. "We have the world's most
renowned process to decide what is medicine and what should go in
peoples' bodies. And marijuana has never been through that process."

However, Kerlikowske this month also wrote on a White House website
that the election results in Colorado and Washington show "it is clear
that we're in the midst of a serious national conversation about marijuana."

Doug McVay, a Portland-based advocate of marijuana legalization and
editor of Drug War Facts, welcomed Kerlikowske's acknowledgement that
a national conversation about marijuana is taking place. But McVay
objected to the drug czar's position that legalized and medical
marijuana send kids the wrong message.

"We should be a mature enough society to understand that simply
because something is legal doesn't mean that it is good or even
necessarily acceptable," he said, pointing to alcohol and tobacco.
"This is about adults so stop treating us like children."

Eighteen states, including Oregon, and Washington, D.C., allow
marijuana for medicinal use. Oregon voters last fall rejected a ballot
measure to legalize cannabis. 
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