U.S. attorney for Colorado John Walsh and DEA deputy chief Thomas Harrigan highlighted the difficulties of navigating conflicting laws on marijuana. Sylvan Lane/Medill.
WASHINGTON—The House Subcommittee on Government Operations took its best shot Tuesday at untangling mixed messages stemming from the White House’s policy that marijuana should remain illegal and some states’ decisions to legalize it. But in the end, the subcommittee failed to nip the problem in the bud, as federal law enforcement officials made it clear that those messages pose major difficulties in dealing with an evolving issue.
At a committee hearing, Drug Enforcement Administration deputy chief Thomas Harrigan and John Walsh, U.S. attorney for Colorado, highlighted the importance of federal, local and state partnerships in prosecuting marijuana offenses, especially in states where the drug has been legalized for medical or recreational use.
“We have to work together carefully, despite the fact that the laws differ at the state and the federal level,” said Walsh. “We have to work together to make sure that those common goals that we all share are achieved,” citing cracking down marijuana sales near schools, dismantling interstate and international trafficking operations and stifling growers that are associated with firearms or violent crime.
Even though the hearing was called to figure out how to reconcile conflicting federal and state laws, the conversation quickly veered toward the relative danger of marijuana compared with other drugs, and its rapidly increasing acceptance in the United States.
The top Democrat on the committee, Virginia Rep. Gerald Connolly, Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., and Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., tore into Harrigan because he insisted marijuana should remain federally classified as a Schedule I controlled substance. Drugs in Schedule I, which include heroin, LSD, and Ecstasy, “currently have no accepted medical use” and “a high potential for abuse,” according to the Department of Justice.
“Illicit drugs like marijuana threaten our institutions and society. By not enforcing our drug laws, we bring these dangers to our doorstep,” said Harrigan, who refused to the health dangers of marijuana compared with other drugs. “We must send a clear message to the American people and ensure our public safety by not abandoning science and fact in favor of public opinion.”
According to a CNN poll released in January, 55 percent of Americans said they support the legalization of marijuana. Harrigan and Walsh conceded that marijuana usage has increased, as its perceived danger plummets.
“I think it underscores the abject failure of our current policy. We’re spending billions of dollars and it’s not working,” said Blumenauer of what he called “outdated, antiquated, inconsistent and unfair” federal statutes. “Whenever we can’t give our kids and their families straight answers, I think it undermines our credibility and it speaks to misplaced priorities.”
The hearing was the second in a series that started exactly a month ago, when Michael Botticelli, deputy director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, asserted that the White House still opposed the drug’s legalization, even though the president said it was no more dangerous than alcohol.
The first hearing was meant to address how the White House was the enforcement of marijuana laws. However, it quickly turned into a debate over state penalties for marijuana possession and the drug’s health risks when the participants realized that no one there could offer reliable testimony on how the federal government was doing that.
Subcommittee chairman Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., said that there would be another hearing scheduled to focus on marijuana’s health effects.
