President Obama: “Elliot Ness took on Al Capone back during Prohibition, oftentimes that causes even more violence.”

Bob Schieffer on CBS’s Face the Nation asks Barack Obama about the violence in Mexico and the US inability to stop the flow of guns into Mexico. The President gives a most interesting answer:

President Obama: Well, what’s happened is that President Calderon I think has been very bold and rightly has decided that it’s gotten carried away. The drug cartels have too much power, are undermining and corrupting huge segments of Mexican society. And so he has taken them on in the same way that when, you know, Elliot Ness took on Al Capone back during Prohibition, oftentimes that causes even more violence. And we’re seeing that flare up.

And what eventually happened? We found that all the Elliot Nesses in the government could never stop Americans desire to drink. We found that the battles between the Untouchables and the Bootleggers would just continue and escalate. We found that the best solution was to take the business of production and distribution of liquor from violent criminals and give it to law-abiding businessmen.

…what we have to do is to recognize that, look, this is a two-way street – as Secretary Clinton indicated – we’ve gotta reduce demand for drugs.

How do you propose to do that? You’re arresting 872,721 Americans for marijuana; more people use marijuana and there is more of it than before we ever started arresting people.

More drug treatment? You’re sentencing pot smokers to drug treatment, 37% of whom haven’t even smoked pot in the thirty days prior to treatment (some “addiction”, huh?), with greater numbers of pot smokers in treatment than ever.

Demand for marijuana is not something that needs to be eradicated; it needs to be recognized and accepted. It’s not like alcohol, tobacco, cocaine, meth, or heroin where users want to quit but cannot because of a serious physical craving, where increased funding and access to treatment will reduce demand because there is an unaddressed demand for treatment. The majority of people in treatment for marijuana are involuntary admissions from courts, not people who are desperate for marijuana treatment.

Secretary Clinton said our demand for drugs is “insatiable”; by definition that is irreducable.

Your choices are more arrests and tougher punishments, more mandated drug treatment, and/or more interdiction. Oh, there is one thing you haven’t tried, Mr. President, but I wouldn’t want you to snicker at me.