As a person who is in recovery, I know first hand what happens with addiction and recovery. Addiction can strike anyone, and the consequences can be severe. However, even the worst of the raging alcoholics can have sudden realizations. These realizations can transform into an opportunity to change, so that an addict can rehabilitate him or herself into a person fighting their disease, rather than succumbing to its devastation. In Alcoholics Anonymous, they call such realizations, "a moment of clarity."

The Office of National Drug Control Policy has had such a moment, one year ago, with their press release advocating harm reduction as the appropriate response to prescription drug abuse. No where in this press release is a call for harsh laws against the users and dealers of prescription medications, no where is there a call for mandatory testing, of invasive searches, of seizures. It is a reasonable response that they are advocating for. This moment of clarity was repeated last month with another press release advocating education as the solution, not incarceration or surveillance.

Unfortunately, it also appears to be just a moment of clarity in the ONDCP's ongoing addiction to the drug war. Just last week, they were back to their old habits, a complete relapse. I should qualify: relapses for addicts tend to result in amplification of the addiction and its negative aspects. For some alcoholics, when they relapse, they have psychotic breaks.

ONDCP has shown the same behavior, accusing doctors of "politicizing" the medical marijuana debate. Paranoid delusions often have projection as part and parcel to the delusions. A political entity is accusing a medical entity of politicizing something. Sounds like the pot calling the porcelain black.

At this point, the ONDCP is rejecting:

what lay people say about marijuana's benefits from their personal experience;
the absence of any fatalities, ever, as a direct result of marijuana use;
the paradox of synthetic THC as schedule III, meaning THC does have medical value;
the will of the people in 12 different states;
the statements and analysis of thousands of researchers; and, now
the statements and analysis of thousands of doctors,

all of whom are saying that marijuana is a useful medicine. That's millions of people, saying we need to look at the medical side of things. Rather than accepting this, the ONDCP has apparently gone paranoid-schizophrenic, convinced it's all a conspiracy against them, now including the 124,000 doctors from the American College of Physicians as part of the plot.

At what point do we recognize when someone is being clearly unreasonable, not because they don't have the capacity to understand, but because their addictions are speaking for them? Can we find a way to help the ONDCP, and the rest of the country, out of this crazy addiction to the drug war?