Prosecutor who indicted Marc Emery ("king of pot") : LEGALIZE IT

[RainDog]

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2012804422_guest05mckay.html

Please go to the link and read John McKay's op-ed from Saturday.

As Emery's prosecutor and a former federal law-enforcement official...I'm not afraid to say out loud what most of my former colleagues know is true: Our marijuana policy is dangerous and wrong and should be changed through the legislative process to better protect the public safety.

Congress has failed to recognize what many already know about our policy of criminal prohibition of marijuana — it has utterly failed. Listed by the U.S. government as a "Schedule One" drug alongside heroin, the demand for marijuana in this country for decades has outpaced the ability of law enforcement to eliminate it.

Not only does our policy directly threaten our public safety and rest upon false medical assumptions, but our national laws are now in direct and irreconcilable conflict with state laws, including Washington state. So called "medical" marijuana reaches precious few patients and backdoor potheads mock legitimate medical use by glaucoma and chemotherapy patients. State laws are trumped by federal laws that recognize no such thing as "medicinal" or "personal" use and are no defense to arrests by federal agents and prosecution in federal courts.

So the policy is wrong, the law has failed, the public is endangered, no one in law enforcement is talking about it and precious few policymakers will honestly face the soft-on-crime sound bite in their next elections.

While I don't share McKay's stereotypes about many cannabis users, his rational approach to the issue of cannabis laws in this nation is necessary and long-overdue from the many, as he notes in his op-ed, who are in law enforcement who recognize the law is the worst offender in regard to cannabis drug policy in this U.S.

McKay's op-ed only touches briefly, however, on the real problem with making rational changes to current law: the toxic political environment promoted by right-wing politicians who care more about scoring points on a political opponent than they do about the welfare of American citizens.

John McKay knows this aspect of American political life personally. He was one of the attorneys who was ousted by the theocratic quislings in the Gonzales Attn. General's office, most likely because of his attempt to keep an investigation into the murder (in his home) of Asst. U.S. Attn. General Tom Wales (who took on the NRA, the death penalty and white-collar crime.)

Jeffrey Toobin wrote about the incidents leading to the firing here:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/08/06/070806fa_fact_toobin?currentPage=all

On September 22, 2006, McKay’s office received a glowing evaluation from the Department of Justice. On December 7th, McKay, along with six other U.S. Attorneys, was fired.

...Gonzales’s justifications for McKay’s dismissal now seem unlikely to be true, because it has become clear that Justice Department officials were seeking to fire McKay before 2006. On March 2, 2005, Kyle Sampson, Gonzales’s chief of staff, included McKay’s name on a list of thirteen U.S. Attorneys to be fired, in an e-mail to Harriet Miers, the White House counsel. Sampson sent the e-mail four months after the 2004 elections, and after McKay decided not to bring charges against the Democratic Party, or people affiliated with it, in Washington State, in the wake of a narrow victory by Christine Gregoire, the Democratic candidate, in the governor’s race. The contest, which was resolved after two recounts, prompted a lawsuit by the state Republican Party alleging widespread voting irregularities.

Several of the fired U.S. Attorneys had declined to prosecute Democrats in electoral disputes. Many Democrats have suggested that the prosecutors were dismissed by Gonzales and the Bush White House in retaliation for failing to advance Republican political objectives.

It's an act of political courage and bipartisanship for McKay to publicly state the truth about current cannabis drug policy. Unfortunately such courage is the exception rather than the rule.