Barney Frank's Marijuana Bill

Today I had the great opportunity to sit in on a House press conference. Barney Frank was introducing a bill to decriminalize marijuana at the federal level. Statements were read by two members of the Congressional Black Caucus, NORML, the MPP, and the Drug Policy Alliance. Were it not for Barney's constant quipping it would be a serious affair.

On the right you can see the CNN camera. (NOTE: MSNBC, FOX, and the other networks did not show up. The only other TV network besides CNN was HD News. The Raw Story did have a reporter there.) I don't know if the conference was broadcast live, but you can watch it online at CNN.com. Instead, I will quote you some of the flippant ad-libbing he did in between speakers:

"Given the effects of marijuana use, it seems like denying people access to food stamps is unusually harsh."

"I'd say the chances of this bill passing [this year] are not high."

"I do obey every law I vote for... no, seriously, I don't smoke marijuana myself. I do smoke cigars."

"There was one Presidential candidate who got a lot of popular support and supported legalization, and that was... Ron Paul." [Paul is one of the cosponsors of the bill.] "I think we'll end here."

As we were heading out the door, a sketchy-looking man in a tweed suit handed me a pamphlet from the Office of National Drug Control Policy. The title is "Marijuana: The Greatest Cause of Illegal Drug Abuse." It appears to have been released the day before Barney's press conference on purpose, but in terms of "striking back" it is hilariously awful. I am not exaggerating at all, go ahead and click on that link and see what evidence you can find for prohibition. The entire pamphlet contains only 500 words or so (and ~50 disjointed graphs), making the quest for rationality difficult, but their argument seems to run as follows:

• Marijuana is illegal.
  
• Therefore, it is abused.
  
• Therefore, it should remain illegal.

There are bonobos out there with a finer grip on logic than our president's drug policy office.

UPDATE

Barney will be interviewed on CNN at 2:45PM EST [not 3:45, sorry]. Tune in and watch! The interview was shown at 2:30PM. I like the part where they said "just moments ago"-- it was recorded at 1:15!

UPDATE 2

We've received roughly two dozen calls in support of this bill, and zero against.