American Civil Liberties Union

Over the past generation, routine police work in the U.S. has become radically militarized in the name of the "War on Drugs." One frightening expression of this trend is the approximately 40,000 paramilitary-style SWAT raids that take place each year in the U.S. — most commonly to serve drug warrants, and often for misdemeanor, nonviolent offenses. SWAT raids are usually forced, aggressive, unannounced entry by heavily armed policemen dressed as soldiers, and are often accompanied by flash-bang grenades and major damage to the residence or business. (For more on the rise of paramilitary police raids, see Radley Balko's report, Overkill.)

If you've read the news the past two weeks, you may have noticed eye-grabbing headlines with bold proclamations that marijuana use leads to increased risk of heart disease and that teens who use marijuana suffer from greater rates of depression. If you took the time to read these so-called "studies," however, you know that they are fear-mongering government propaganda pieces meant to stand in for science. Unfortunately, with a few exceptions — like David Harsanyi's column in the Denver Post — much of the media has simply parroted the government's press releases.

(Originally posted on Daily Kos.)

In a devious 11th-hour move to undermine scientific freedom, the Bush administration dealt a serious blow this week to the effort to bring medical marijuana before the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Way back in 2001, University of Massachusetts-Amherst Professor Lyle Craker applied to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) for a Schedule I license to cultivate research-grade marijuana for use by scientists in FDA-approved studies aimed at developing the drug as a legal, prescription medication. After years of DEA stonewalling, in February 2007 the DEA's Administrative Law Judge issued a decisive — but nonbinding — recommendation that Professor Craker's application be approved. Now, after taking its sweet time for 23 months, the DEA finally got around to issuing a formal rejection of the Judge's recommendation, less than two weeks before Bush leaves office.

Like abstinence-only education and research into global warming, DEA's decision to obstruct FDA-approved research is an inappropriate insertion of political ideology into science. Why is the federal government going to such lengths to stop Lyle Craker? Clearly, it realizes that if the FDA has the opportunity to evaluate medical marijuana based on science, not politics,it would likely approve it for medical use.