Barry McCaffrey has the most distinguished career of any Drug Czar, but that is very, very faint praise indeed.
In fact, McCaffrey was the youngest and most highly decorated four-star general in the army at the time of his retirement from the military in 1996.
The high point of his military career was his role in America’s decisive victory in the First Gulf War.
After that, McCaffrey's last command was the United States Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), the unified command responsible for U.S. military activities in Central America and South America from 1994 to 1996.
Unfortunately, SOUTHCOM is the nexus between the US military and the “Drug War.” and that led to his appointment as Drug Czar by President Clinton in 1996. He supposedly did not like calling the Drug War a “war”. I wonder how Breona Taylor’s family feels about that. See: LOUISVILLE SETTLES WITH BREONNA TAYLOR’S FAMILY ENDING NO-KNOCK WARRANTS BUT ONLY IN LOUISVILLE
As the Greek playwright, Aeschylus, said, “In war, truth is the first casualty.” It is appropriate that he is considered the “Father of Tragedy”, and he might well have written about McCaffrey.
In fact, McCaffrey was really the most prolific propagandist to hold that undistinguished office. His major opus was the million dollar Institute of Medicine Report “to conduct a review of the scientific evidence to assess the potential health benefits and risks of marijuana and its constituent cannabinoids.”
When the IOM report explicitly said that "There is no clear alternative for people suffering from chronic conditions that might be relieved by smoking marijuana, such as pain or AIDS wasting…." McCaffrey simply escalated the lying. From the report’s claim that “the future of cannabinoid drugs lies not in smoked marijuana”, the Czar simply decreed that “No Medicine Is Smoked” and “Smoked Marijuana Is Not A Medicine.”!!!
See: PROFILES IN PROHIBITIONIST: WILLIAM BENNETT THE FIRST “DRUG CZAR”
Later he even lied about little old me.
From TESTIMONY OF BARRY R. McCAFFREY DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF NATIONAL DRUG CONTROL POLICY BEFORE THE HOUSE GOVERNMENT REFORM AND OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE, SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE, DRUG POLICY, AND HUMAN RESOURCES. THE DRUG LEGALIZATION MOVEMENT IN AMERICA June 16, 1999:
“For example, Richard Cowan, a member of the Advisory Board of an advocacy group called the "Drug Policy Foundation," in 1995 stated: "Key to legalization is medical access [to marijuana] because once you have hundreds of thousands of people using marijuana medically under medical supervision, the whole scam is going to be blown. Once there is medical access and we continue to do what we have to, and we will, we’ll get full legalization."
Actually, it was in 1992, and I did not say that. On the contrary. My next sentence was "I mean what we know is that marijuana prohibition is the greatest fraud ever perpetrated on the American people."
In any case, all this proves nothing about the merits of the arguments for medical marijuana, but it does prove that marijuana prohibition is built on lies.
See The Heritage Foundation: A Last Refuge For Reefer Madness?
It’s a pity that Aeschylus isn’t around to write a play about McCaffrey.
