The DEA schedule of narcotics — in which cannabis is classifed alongside heroin — was a product of the Nixon era, when the modern War On Drugs started cranking up. Tricky Dick himself, on a leaked White House tape, was said to have called marijuana “…the drug of choice of Mexicans, hippies and niggers.”

Here’s former White House Domestic Affairs Advisor, the notorious John Ehrlichman, with a slightly more nuanced framing of this policy in a 1994 interview:

“The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
–John Ehrlichman, Nixon Domestic Affairs Advisor, 1994

The DEA schedule is Nixon’s schedule, part of a policy born out of deception and racism. It’s time to DEschedule cannabis.

We’ll be at the White House on May 20, how about yourself?

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The initial decision to criminalize marijuana in 1937 wasn’t based on a study of the science and biology of addiction or pharmacology, but purely on politics and racism. Harry Anslinger, Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics — precursor to today’s DEA — was a notorious racist and liar who based his opinions on marijuana on pure, raw racist stereotypes and who believed that marijuana was a sure gateway to violence, sedition and social discontent. It was Anslinger’s inflammatory lies which led to the passage of state marijuana laws as a component of Jim Crow and stoked the hype for propaganda films such as Marihuana: The Devil’s Weed and Reefer Madness.

As a follow-up to their wildly epic April 2nd event and their historic meeting with White House representives from the Office of National Drug Control Policy, DCMJ — the people who brought you legal weed in DC — are throwing a sequel to April 2 on May 20, the one-month anniversary of 4/20, to highlight the fact that Obama is late on descheduling cannabis, and to remind folks of the racism behind the 1937 marijuana ban which is still a major component of the War On Drugs.

And, here’s more of the wit and wisdom of Harry Anslinger…

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Yesterday, following on the heels of a successful “Smoke-In” protest earlier this month, was DCMJ’s historic meeting with White House officials from the Office Of National Drug Control Policy concerning the rescheduling or descheduling of marijuana from its current status at Schedule 1 — listed alongside heroin and methamphetamine. Along with combat veteran Brandon Wyatt of the group “Weed For Warriors”, DCMJ leaders Adam Eidinger and Nikolas Schiller spoke to the ONDCP representatives at length on the need for a political — rather than scientific — solution to the current cannabis prohibition situation. Citing the racism of Federal Narcotics Bureau Commissioner Harry Anslinger (responsible for the initial Federal ban on cannabis in the 1930s) and, later, President Nixon in the late ’60s and early ’70s, Eidinger asserted that because cannabis prohibition was a political act, a solution to end prohibition must also be political.

Eidinger and Schiller called for a followup to this meeting at a higher level, a “bud summit” at the White House with El Presidente himself. “He doesn’t even have to say anything,” commented Eidinger, “he just needs to listen. Because it’s going to take a year of dialogue at the federal level to figure out federal legalization.”

Listening to a recording of the ONDCP meeting at a “post-mortem” meeting back at the DCMJ office, conversation turned toward the fact that Obama was late in deciding on how to handle Federal legalization; “late for 4/20″ was the joke going around the room, and it inspired a literary analogy “hook” on which to hang a “hashtag point” — #HesLate — and this cartoon.

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According to this report on WAMU-FM here in DC, the latest Congressional spending bill prevents the District Of Columbia from funding abortion services for poor women and regulating and taxing the sale of marijuana. They did, however, repeal the ban on sledding on the Capitol grounds, after a vigorous local outcry last winter.

Apparently, they’re still hurting from all the bad publicity they caught with the sledding ban, but could care less about all the ill will they get by restricting women’s healthcare rights and the right to tax and regulate a plant that’s been legal for nearly a year. Still, there’s prime sledding opening up on the hill at the West Front, so there’s that.

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