I received an email as part of a blast that went out to several people in the activist community. It was commenting on a Boston Herald piece about Ethan Nadelmann’s comments on the Oaksterdam Raids:
And most important for activist leaders: “Nadelmann said the big question was whether the crackdown that began last fall was orchestrated by the Obama administration or by local federal officials.”
Ethan Nadelmann is a smart guy. Hopefully Cali activists don’t go blaming Obama right away without knowing who actually authorized this hit…I mean, raid…against a political leader. Oh wait…Russ Belville already did…
I’m sorry, what did I do? You mean my “buck stops here” comments? My odd belief that the Chief Executive of the Executive Branch has some say-so over the actions of Executive Branch departments like Justice and Treasury?
Loading ...Well, yeah. Sorry, you don’t get to brush away President Obama’s complicity in this. To wit:
- If he knows US Attys are doing this and authorized it explicitly – he is to blame.
- If he knows US Attys are doing this but didn’t authorize it explicitly – he is unable to control his own executive departments and is to blame.
- If he doesn’t know US Attys are doing this – he is willfully ignorant on the issue and is to blame.
Me and Dr. Mitch Earleywine at the 2008 NORML Conference, when I still had the audacity to hope for change. I still have that hat, though I've almost burned it three times.
The “Stockholm Syndrome” some Obama supporters are engaged in baffles me – and I was one of his most die-hard supporters! I was a political talk radio host backing him when Hillary was the juggernaut and taking plenty of “you’re a sexist” heat for it. I spoke for him at an “Artists for Obama” rally in Portland that is still on YouTube. I drove from Portland to Denver to blog the Democratic Convention just to be there for the historic moment.
So what will it take (besides the continued rendition, warrantless wiretaps, failure to prosecute Wall Street, caving on public option healthcare, authorizing drone assassinations, extending millionaire tax cuts, fill in the rest of the non-marijuana disappointments) to convince you Obama is not any sort of friend to the marijuana movement?
I truly had that hope for change. I heard him in 2004 say “the war on drugs is an utter failure and we need to re-think and decriminalize our marijuana laws, but I am not for legalization.”
I heard him say in 2008 that going after providers in medical marijuana states was not a wise use of federal resources because we have “terrorism” and other things to worry about.
I heard his Attorney General talk about what Obama promised in the campaign was now federal policy.
Good enough for Dubya, good enough for Obama
And then I watched as he nominated George W. Bush’s DEA Administrator to keep her job. A woman who referred to the slaughter of Mexicans by drug violence as a “signpost of success” in our fight against the drug gangs (not “cartels”… cartels cooperate with, not murder, each other).
“Our view is that the violence we have been seeing is a signpost of the success our very courageous Mexican counterparts are having,” said Michele Leonhart, acting DEA administrator. “The cartels are acting out like caged animals, because they are caged animals.”
The president is laughing at just about half of America these days
I watched as Rasmussen’s and Gallup’s polls shot up five and six percentage points, respectively, in support of legalization during Obama’s term, to the point where now, for the first time in history, more Americans support legalizing marijuana than support maintaining prohibition.
But when soliciting federal policy advice online on nine separate occasions, the issue of marijuana legalization is blatantly ignored, unless it is being laughed at.
During the president’s time in office, marijuana arrests of healthy people have remained steady and raids of providers of marijuana for sick people have skyrocketed. And this former marijuana smoker who “inhaled, frequently, that was the point” has either ignored that and let it happen or is actively directing the persecution of my people!
Continue reading “Is it right to blame President Obama for medical marijuana crackdown?”
