.Narcs Furious Obama Said Pot Is Safer Than Alcohol

The head lobbyist for president of California’s drug cops is asking President Obama to take back his recent statement to The New Yorker that marijuana is safer than alcohol.

In a letter sent to President Obama Monday and copied to the press, California Narcotics Officers’ Association head lobbyist John Lovell president Steve Riddle never disputes that marijuana is safer than alcohol, but writes that the President’s comments “minimize the dangers of drug use, and by doing so, lessen the impression that drugs are harmful.”

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“The California Narcotics Officers’ Association would respectfully request that you retract your comments on marijuana and alcohol. They are being misused by people with their own legalization agenda to somehow make the argument that the legal status of alcohol demands legalization of yet another addictive substance that will inevitably be commercialized and marketed to children.”

Here Lovell Riddle is repeating the Big Lie that marijuana is not currently available to any American who wants it, without any regulations at all.

Lovell Riddle also fails to note that if the war on pot ends, California’s drug cops stand to lose tens of millions of dollars in profits each year. They make that money on the seizure of the homes and vehicles of their fellow Californians charged with marijuana-related crimes. CNOA lobbyist John Lovell also funnels millions of dollars more in federal anti-drug grants to local drug cops. Police profits from marijuana-related forfeitures are at an all-time high, the excellent Zusha Elinson reports for the Wall Street Journal.

Here’s Lovell’s Riddle’s full letter to President Obama; see how many inaccuracies you can count.

Speaking of “minimizing the dangers of drug use,” you should watch Senator Steven Cohen blast the US’s Deputy Drug Czar for minimizing the dangers of heroin by classifying pot as more dangerous than smack.

“It is ludicrous, absurd, crazy to have marijuana at the same level as heroin. Ask the late Philip Seymour Hoffman, if you could. Nobody dies from marijuana. People die from heroin. And every second that we spend in this country trying to enforce marijuana laws is a second we’re not enforcing heroin laws. And heroin and meth are the two drugs that are ravaging our country.”

For more on how marijuana is objectively safer than alcohol, check out the updated version of Marijuana is Safer: So Why Are We Driving People to Drink?

[Correction: an earlier version of this post incorrectly attributed the CNOA letter to its lobbyist and press contact John Lovell. It’s from CNOA president Steve riddle. We regret this error.]

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