Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske “is potentially the ideal person to head the Office of National Drug Control Policy, and overhaul its mission,” says Seattle Post-Intelligencer.com columnist Joel Connelly. Connelly contends that “U.S. drug enforcement policy has seemed dated, clumsy and comic.” He cites 2005 federal charges against Marc Emery, founder of the Marijuana Party in British Columbia and publisher of Cannabis Culture, for trafficking marijuana seeds.
Connelly applauds Attorney General Eric Holder for saying this week that in the future, the feds will go after marijuana distributors only when they violate both federal and state law. The Justice Department will direct its energies toward big-scale grow operations, says Connelly, potentially setting an example for county sheriffs whose idea of law and order is to bust in on a cancer or MS patient growing a few plants for personal use.