Jacob Sullum : Obama on Drugs – Townhall.com
Last week, voters in Massachusetts approved a ballot initiative that eliminates criminal penalties for possessing up to an ounce of marijuana, replacing them with a $100 civil fine. Michigan, meanwhile, became the 13th state to allow the medical use of cannabis.Yet President-elect Barack Obama has retreated from his support for marijuana decriminalization, and his position on medical marijuana remains ambiguous. His reticence on these issues suggests he may disappoint those who hope the Obama administration will move drug policy in a less punitive, more tolerant direction.
One cause for that hope: Obama has been more candid about his own youthful drug use than any president in U.S. history. Although he portrays his pot smoking and cocaine snorting as behavior he regrets, it would be hard for him to justify harsh treatment of drug users when he himself escaped punishment for the same actions and clearly is better off than he would have been had he been arrested.
Obama’s position on medical marijuana is clearer but still fuzzy around the edges. He has promised to stop the Drug Enforcement Administration’s raids on patients and the growers who supply them in states that allow medical use of marijuana.
The main danger with Obama is that his history of drug use, instead of making him more open to reform, will make him anxious to show he’s tough on drugs. Something like that seems to have happened with Bill Clinton, who bragged about ever-escalating drug war budgets and threatened doctors who recommended marijuana to their patients with jail, trampling the First Amendment in his rush to prove his anti-drug bona fides.
“We are going to continue to find ways within the administration to fight legalization and the notion of legalization,” a key Clinton drug policy adviser said in defense of this unconstitutional policy, which ultimately was overturned by a federal appeals court. “We’re against the message that [California's medical marijuana initiative] sends to children.”
Who was this zealous drug warrior, eager to forcibly suppress “the notion of legalization” in the name of protecting children? Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s chief of staff.
So President-Elect Obama has Clinton’s drug war bulldog, Rahm Emanuel, as his chief of staff, and Joe “mandatory minimums” Biden as his Vice President. Have their positions changed in the past fifteen years? Will Obama be Jimmy Carter and move us toward the sane policy of federal decriminalization and medical marijuana, or will he be Bill Clinton and arrest three times more cannabis consumers than his predecessor and unconstitutionally try to squash medical marijuana?
legalize it!
DON’T WORRY FOLKS. BY THE TIME OBAMA GETS DONE WITH US HIS DRUG USE WILL BE THE LEAST OF OUR PROBLEMS.
The “notion of legalization” needs to be promulgated with great vigor.
http://www.change.gov/page/s/yourvision
I told ‘em about “my vision” as a glaucoma patient in California who foresees an end to DEA raids on my medicinal herb providers.
Give ‘em Hell!
All I know is that I spent a good bit of money that I usually reserve for recreational purposes supporting this campaign, and I’ll be damned if I don’t at the very least get some answers. I mean come on, if the guy can smoke and still become president, doesn’t that show that Cannabis isn’t the demon weed that many people make it out to be? Sure it’s not the best thing in the world for you, but neither is a double 1/4 pounder with like 1.1 grams of sodium, or the fried chicken dinners most of the area Clergymen around here eat every Sunday, don’t harm the temple my pasty, white, Irish @$$.
Obama and Biden have launched a website called http://www.change.gov/ where you could tell them your “vision” for this country. If they are who they say they are, the voices of many may not be ignored so easily. Leave them your opinions on all the benefits this country stands to gain by just changing this simple law.
http://www.change.gov/page/s/yourvision
Can Obama fire Walters? That idiot has to go.
Although I “hope” for a “change” I don’t think much will come in the way of drug policy reform. Obama has other priorities to spend his political capital on. I think the most we can hope for in his first two years is an executive order stopping DEA raids on medical marijuana patients, growers, and dispensaries. Other than administrative policy for agencies like DEA and the Justice Dept. Obama really doesn’t have the power to change things without the approval of a very divided congress.