This Putin shill must be on drugs to make a silly statement such as "he was surprised to find out that California has lax pot laws and that it would be a disaster if California voters further legalize the plant."

Pot grows wild along the roads and in the public parks of Russia, from one end to the other. I've lived in Russia and mostly, the people ignore the plant. Ditto poppies that are a popular Russian garden flower.

Chances are that Putin's shill has a cut of the action and doesn't want his fellow citizens to know the options.

or wants to keep drugs illegal to protect the interests of the Russian regime.
Drug Prohibition has been an obvious and dismal failure and has diverted huge untrackable amounts of money to drug cartels and shadow governments.
If legalization "breaks out" then all that illegal money drys up and goes above board and is siphoned by competition in the light of the marketplace.

America's 35 year intensified War on Drugs (and on us) has not only not stemmed the tide of drugs in this country, it has spawned a huge penal system that permeats our society and generates vast amounts of money for law enforcement yet I see kids selling drugs in my middle class suburban neighborhood right at the gas station. The supply of drugs not only has not diminished on bit in 35 years, the price for most of it has gone down or has remained steady for that period. We all know a "kid" in the mail room who can get us a bag if we want one and my kid sees it all the time and so we have foreign "Dignitarys" trying to tell us to stay the course on the Drug War because...because why? It's not working. It's only because they have something to be gained from keeping it off the market.

Bad policy takes time to manifest itself as a great mistake. It only took 13 years for booze but the Drug War makes the bad old 1930s look like a black & white cartoon. Our inner cities are no man's lands. Populations of what would be entire towns have been killed in the last couple of years and we are to believe this will be stopped in the future? This isn't Leg's Diamond with a Tommy Gun people, wake up.

It's time to end the Prohibition. It hasn't worked, it CAN'T work since market forces are stronger than any government. It will never work. Time to change the strategy. Divert the resources to education and treatment. I have friends who want to get clean but can't find a bed in a facility. But there is a bed in the jail for them. How's that working? Tear down the enforcement cartels and the drug cartels will follow.

It's going to happen anyway. It's better we do it ourselves than to eventually capitulate to the goths at the gate.

wal

And we should care what Russia thinks and change our laws so as not to offend.

Just as Arizona should change their laws so as not to offend Mexico.

Americans have lost their country.

When you get KGB coming to California to advise against something,
you know you are doing something right. Yes on 19, no to unconstitutional prohibition.

A New Economic Foundation,
Renewable Energy and the Social Contract

We have an opportunity to create a new economic foundation based on renewable natural resources, yielding thousands of green jobs, producing a sustainable replacement for oil and the restoration of social consent and confidence in the body politic. All of that and more made manifest by a stroke of the pen, simply by properly classifying hemp as the medicine and beneficial resource that over 100,000,000 Americans already know it is. Hemp, cannabis is good.

The social benefit of a rational hemp policy would be to restore social consent and confidence in the body politic. Currently, over 100,000,000 Americans have used marijuana and have decided that it is a good thing, not dangerous and should be free, not used to ruin peoples lives by arrest, confiscation and disenfranchisement. Thinking people do their own research and many times conclude that the laws against marijuana are arbitrary, unjust, wrong and that the only people who support them are either uninformed or their jobs depend upon the mandatory acceptance of marijuana prohibition. This is the true silent majority, citizens who think that the marijuana laws are irrational and are afraid of persecution and discrimination if they express their opinions publicly.

Industrial hemp production could provide a domestic and renewable source of fuel, fiber and jobs. Hemp can be grown, produced and processed all across the land by thousands of urban farmers using land, lots, parks and public lands lying fallow and unused. These green jobs are about the growing, harvesting and processing of locally grown organics for food and fuel and could constitute the bedrock of a truly independent economy, intrinsically secure, renewable and stable, sustainable and most importantly doable.

The benefits of a rational hemp policy are financial, social and moral.
The economic impact of is three fold; first is the creation of Jobs based on a sustainable, clean source of fuel, fiber and medicine, estimated at over One Trillion dollars. Good jobs that produce energy and tax revenue that is
The second is the savings to taxpayers by eliminating the money spent on law enforcement, the courts and prisons, estimated at over 8 billion a year. The third is the cost to individuals and families who are criminalized by a system that encourages law enforcement to arrest people, fine them, confiscate their property, and disenfranchise them from the vote, healthcare, professional licenses and credit. This cost is measured in the billions of dollars. All totaled the war on marijuana and the lost opportunities to develop hemp; combined with the needless suffering of those persecuted is over 2 Trillion dollars a year.
The moral benefit is simple; the truth will set us free.

We need to decriminalize marijuana and repel the effects of the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act to restore the production, development and use of the most sustainable, renewable natural resource recorded in history. Hemp production can replace the use of oil as a fuel quickly, efficiently and at low cost. Hemp is a renewable crop that can be grown on land not used for food, improving the land and providing a carbon neutral source of fuel. Hemp production and processing will create jobs all across the land while providing a local and domestic source of energy.
The use of marijuana for medical purposes is the oldest and most universally documented use of any substance in medical history. 13 states have decided that marijuana is a beneficial plant and it is time allow and encourage the use and investigation of medical marijuana and industrial hemp.

Hemp production was the economic foundation of colonial America because it was readily grown and used for over 25,000 different purposes; Hemp was grown for sails, rope, oil for lamps, clothing and high quality paper. The Declaration of Independence was drafted on hemp paper by Thomas Jefferson, an advocate of hemp for commerce, medicine and recreation. George Washington was one of the largest hemp growers in the colonies and the renewable income produced by this plant sustained our first president and his family before, during and after the revolution. It is fair to say that the spirit to be free and independent was made possible by the ability of our fore fathers to be economically independent and free. Hemp production was the backbone of liberty, freedom and economic independence for colonial America and could once again be the keystone of a renewable, sustainable and yes, Independent economy.

Afghanistan produced 10% of world supply of heroin before the US invasion. Now they produce 90%. This is of course either by design or just coincidence.

COINCIDENCE! COINCIDENCE! COINCIDENCE!
Ill inform the easter bunny about it.

I always find it fascinating to watch the flow of the article go from marijuana, to "drugs", and then to heroin, nearly equating them all.
Bill Bennett does it all the time when he's interviewed.
He starts out simply by talking about something like Prop 19 and marijuana legalisation.
He then changes his language to talk about "legalising drugs" and then cites some statistic about overall drug use, excluding alcohol of course, but which includes cannabis, heroin, cocaine, crystal meth, etc, but never going into detail on the studies he talks about. He doesn't differentiate between any of them.

So they equate marijuana with everything else, as if the effects for all are the same, which is obviously untrue.

So thanks, but no thanks to Mr. Ivanov, but also to Mr. Keating, for writing this rubbish.

Look at the studies done in Portugal after they decriminalized drug use dumby. No statistically significant increase in drug use since it was decriminalized. Several fold increase in numbers if those being treated for addiction. There countless anthropological studies that show that legalization has much more social benefits than cost. Do some research dumby before you go saying ignorant things like there like more people will die on the roads because of an increase in marijuana use. Which has been shown will not happen if it occurs. Not too mention all the studies disproving the "gateway" drug myth and the simple fact that if used by responsible adults it is exponentially better than alcohol but you seem ok with those social costs. Even more fundamental than that is any organization of people telling a responsible adult what they can or can not do with their bodies is a 19th century hangover. You can not legislate morality and you cannot change human nature! Rationality and logical thought will prevail in the end (78% of my generation favor it) but in the mean time I have to admit I am sick and tired of the broad based ignorance of those who oppose legalization of cannabinoids and othe narcotics. Do some reading, have a good think, and maybe you can wake up to the reality of our modern world.

Viktor met with the Sheriff in Lost Angeles to discuss heroin in Afghanistan. How very telling. I see the worldwide drug cartels are upset about the possibility that marijuana will be legalized. Viktor should just stick to what Russia knows best - hookers like Anna Chapman who are now the face of the KGB. Perhaps Anna can run into Afghanistan and stop the heroin trade.

In the meantime, stay tuned for my You Tube video proving that I can grow a mar.i.ju.ana plant for $25. You have to add in the DEA's salary to get it to $4,000 a pound.

It would be refreshing if people would get off whatever they're taking causing these delusions. Viktor looks frightening and should have run for Governor of La La Land. He looks like he could take on the Mexican Cartel single handed and the Russians have Polonium which should do the trick.

The only options here are that he's trying to ensure that legalization passes (for whatever reason) by tarring its already pretty idiotic foes with his association, or that he is so genuinely divorced from reality that he thinks a KGB pedigree appeals to American voters.

Hanlon's razor would suggest the latter.

America is sinking under the growing burden of tolerance that will prevail to destroy us unless we can man up to reverse our destruction.
Innocence is convinced to leave the door open at all times so that she may prove herself tolerant of whomever may need warmth and comfort.
To socally approve any previously unapproved practices (including homsexuality) suggests a wholesomenss to the unsavory convention where none ever existed before and where none exists still. We lack critical thinking skills and it's a disaster!
God help us!

... we do not need Putin's Drug Czar to push his ultra right-wing opinions on us. He can just go back to drinking himself into his nightly stupor with his high-quality vodka and beat his wife and kids and keep his cauliflower nose out of our affairs.

I wonder if he's been to CA ever. Almost everyone there is a (substitute your own word) head of some kind, as the press tells us.

Wants to make sure he gets his share of the Russian Drug Profits so he tries to bash the competition.
Viktor Ivanov - Sucks Ass!

Legalization is good for business if its true, free and open market. Its also a very good way to lose your mind. If God wanted a nation to separate a persons soul from their mind, you would market it to a nation's young.
Potheads will make very good slaves, wage-slaves and deadheads for the super-state masters to impose confiscatory tax schemes. One world currency and potheads will make one world slavery work well.
I always wondered why people, living off the state like the average college professor promotes mind-numbing drugs. They want all these potheads to work to pay for the retirement of AFSCME union slugs.
Legalize Pot, Drug the slaves.

I totally with Mr. Ivanov on keeping pot illegal. I grew up in mostly black and hispanic nieghborhoods where many use that junk. It infuriates me how the liberals talk from their "holier than thou" thrones in the sky. They never experience the hell that THEY created for us. Always insisting that "whitey" is the cause of all problems, so the only escape to to smoke pot and leave it all to them. I have two family members who did time for both distributing and use of it. Both of them were saved by doing time in prison. It helped them change their attitude on both the use of it. They both agree that pot is not good for you. It makes you a weak person, vunerable to being taken for a ride that you would regret going on.

wow, drug stories really produce alot of comments. Though I appreciate his opinion, this Drug czar is almost too much of a typical caricature of an ex-KGB Russian to be taken seriously. Blaming the U.S., using lots of veeery convenient numbers and "facts", and being a little too gruff to denote any real deep intelligence on the matter. from the article at least, he seems to be looking at the world through a made in the USSR straw.

What a picture.

This guy is clearly on prescription pain killers but hasn't found the right dosage.

I would normally slam this guy until I thought, "what's the big deal?" Hey, I'm flattered that this former spy is concerned enough to make a trip here out of concern for our psychiatric well being.

This wouldn't have happened 30 years ago. Heck, they would have let us get stoned and invaded our sorry butts.

It's like the speed limit, raise it, lower it, raise it, see what impact it has. With all the pot being smuggled across the border and all the death it leaves in its wake, I hardly believe that legalizing pot is going to do nearly as much harm.

The poor chumps that are doing or have done time for a few plants and bag got to be thinking ... WTF?

I hope they got him laid in L.A. and shared a doobie with him before he went home.

So, Ivanov the Terrible says "They say, 'What does God do when he wants to punish a person? He deprives him of his mind.'" Talk about a psychiatric deviation... There is NO psychiatric deviation that has caused more suffering than THE FIRST, the MOST PRIMITIVE, the MOST PATHETIC psychiatric deviation of the sort generated by fear/superstition-based metaphysics - the belief in ridiculous sky-gods and their punishment or reward in an afterlife, karma, etc. How can we be expected to take ANYONE who believes that nonsense seriously? We can not...

I think it's great he wants to help California defeat drug use.

I'm surprised he said he wasn't familiar with the problem.

As a former KGB agent, I'd like to know what he thinks of the view back then that communists were using drugs, the sexual revolution, and peace movement as tools to defeat the US.

Some of the comments here show how profound the ignorance is surrounding illegal drugs and especially in regards to cannabis. It demonstrates how the lack of education about drugs can lead people to believe something as patently illogical as linking the use of cannabis to becoming a "mindless slave" or being "a weak person". Would you say that using alcohol would do the same? Most likely not, since you at least know that there are many successful and accomplished people who drink. There are also drunks on the streets begging change and drunks on corporate boards. There are people who drink moderately at all stations of life. The same is true for cannabis smokers. Carl Sagan was mentioned by an earlier commenter as one, but we shouldn't forget Richard Branson (a strong advocate of legalization), Ted Turner, Michael Phelps, and even a trio of U.S. presidents who have had a few tokes. I am from the state that has a governor who used to smoke weed after intense iron pumping sessions to relax his muscles. I'll be watching another user pitch the first game of the World Series this week for the SF Giants.

The effects of cannabis are generally much milder than alcohol, which can and does kill thousands directly each year through overdose. You can overdose on vodka Viktor, but it is impossible to do so with marijuana. Furthermore, equating heroin with cannabis is ridiculous. Just as crazy as equating chewing coca leaves with freebasing cocaine. Or drinking coffee with methamphetamine. It is only through ignorance that such comparisons would be made. Which just shows the need for true education about the effects of drugs (the good, the bad and the ugly). Humans have used intoxicants since the dawn of time; we need to allow for that basic truth and not make criminals out of mere users. Law enforcement should be used to combat real threats, including those that will arise from the use and production of truly dangerous drugs such as heroin and methamphetamine. Treatment should be widely available because it is much cheaper and beneficial to society and the individual than our current alternative, which is prison.

Alright. So I've been drug free my entire life, Straightedge since i was 14. Im now 26 years old, yep still straightedge. And let me tell you what, pot is gotta be as natural as a bear taking a shit in the woods. A couple of friends of mine are habitual users of marijiana and the only harm they can do to anyone is to themselves. They dont drive when they are high, they just consume a bit extra when it comes to their food intake and even that is only in the initial stages of smoking. I remember when I first started hanging out with them ( i grew up with these kids mind you). They would get high and eat everything in sight. Now its more of a recreational thing for them. They never forced it on me, but they knew better than to even try and do something like that. Now alcohol on the other hand? which half of you people who are opposed to marijuana but probably drink like fish on the weekends or get wasted with your chronies; has killed several of my friends in the past decade. Never had any of my friends day from pot smoke. How many of you know people who have died because of alcohol related accidents though? Lets use our heads for a change. Thats all im saying.

THEY don't want drugs legalized, tatil that's for sure. Those resources would be put to better use in education and treatment. But legalization will sinema also defund the murderous drug cartels and the terrorist organizations that gain their tutune son financing (and buy their weapons and political influence) from the dis beyazlatma sale of drugs