As a gay recovering alcoholic, Michael Botticelli is not your father’s drug czar.
He’s not a cop, a military general or a governor, like drug czars of the past. His specialty is treatment; he rose to prominence as the head of the Massachusetts Bureau of Substance Abuse Services.
And Botticelli, who’s served as the acting drug czar since last March, has been in recovery for more than a quarter century, after a 1988 drunken-driving accident left him handcuffed to a hospital bed.
On Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted unanimously to approve President Barack Obama’s recommendation to make Botticelli, 57, officially the nation’s seventh drug czar, a big jump for a man who had various part-time jobs in the 1990s, including one as a Pottery Barn supervisor.
The full Senate still must vote on whether to approve Botticelli for the job, formally called the director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy.
Like Gil Kerlikowske, the former Seattle police chief whom he’d replace, Botticelli finds himself in the middle of the nation’s pot wars.
Those who support marijuana legalization note Botticelli’s opposition and say he should back off and take a cue from the president, who’s made it clear that he’s comfortable allowing states to experiment with selling pot.
Legalization opponents, meanwhile, say Botticelli talks tough but should be doing more to get the Justice Department and Obama to enforce the federal law that criminalizes marijuana.
Tom Angell, chairman of Marijuana Majority, a pro-legalization group, said Botticelli was “clearly in a tough place,” with states moving quickly to legalize marijuana and polls showing most Americans supporting an end to criminal penalties.
“His best bet, and probably preference, would be to just shut up about the issue,” Angell said. “Unluckily for him, though, people keep asking him about it.”
Responding to questions from senators in a written statement, Botticelli said marijuana posed serious health risks and that he was concerned about the cross-border trafficking of the drug outside Colorado, where its use is legal under state law.
Botticelli, a New York native, said the drug czar’s office was leading an effort to monitor marijuana use in the country and examine its effects. But he said the Obama administration “is committed to enforcement” of the Controlled Substances Act, which bans the sale of marijuana and puts it in the same category as drugs such as heroin and LSD.
“Under U.S. federal law, marijuana remains a Schedule I drug under the CSA, subject to a high level of control, with criminal penalties for its illegal distribution and sale,” Botticelli said in his written answers.
Many members of Congress, including Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, an Iowa Republican, complain that the Obama administration has sent too many mixed messages on the subject.
Most recently, Obama said last month that while marijuana was classified as illegal at the federal level, “we’re not going to spend a lot of resources trying to turn back decisions that have been made at the state level.” He predicted more states will consider legalizing recreational marijuana, as voters in Colorado, Washington state, Alaska and Oregon have already done.
Vivek Murthy, the new U.S. surgeon general, joined the debate Wednesday, telling CBS-TV in an interview that preliminary data shows marijuana “can be helpful” with some medical conditions and symptoms. Twenty-three states have laws allowing marijuana to be used for medical purposes
John Walters, who served as drug czar under President George W. Bush, said in an email exchange that Botticelli “is under a gag order from his political bosses” and knows he’d never win White House backing if he came out too forcefully against marijuana.
“Would you take seriously an official responsible for civil rights policy who quietly said violating civil rights is bad but then did not enforce the civil rights laws?” Walters asked.
Botticelli became acting drug czar after Obama moved Kerlikowske to a new job as commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Critics had urged the president not to appoint another drug czar, saying the office had become irrelevant. They argued that it lacks much of the political clout of past years, hit by budget cuts and no longer a Cabinet-level position since Obama became president in 2009.
“No doubt it has never been at a lower place,” said Allen St. Pierre, executive director of The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, a pro-legalization group. “Today it’s largely off reformers’ radar screens, including mine.”
Botticelli appeared before the Judiciary Committee last fall, but the panel didn’t vote, leaving his confirmation for the new Congress. The committee approved his nomination Thursday with no debate.
Grassley asked for a unanimous voice vote, saying Botticelli had been “very responsive” to questions the committee had posed last fall.
In one question, Grassley noted that more young people now perceive marijuana as a lower-risk drug, and he asked Botticelli whether Obama had contributed to that by allowing states to legalize recreational marijuana.
Botticelli said surveys had shown the perception of marijuana’s harm on the decline since 2005. That’s when Bush was still in the White House.
Botticelli won support from a long list of organizations, including the American Medical Association, the American Society of Addiction Medicine, the Major County Sheriffs’ Association and the Partnership for Drug-Free Kids.
As the new drug czar, Botticelli said, he wants to focus on more treatment and prevention efforts and to do more to fight heroin and prescription drug abuse.
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