It’s 1975.  Oregon has just decriminalized marijuana three years earlier, and support in 1975 for decriminalization in the state runs at about 61%.  By 1975, Alaska, California, Colorado, and Ohio have decriminalized marijuana, and six other states will soon follow.  However, in the General Social Survey*, administered by the University of Chicago, we find when asked simply “Should marijuana be made legal?”, only 21.4% of Americans in 1975 said “yes”.

So with only 4 out of 20 Americans believing in “legalization”, with only five decriminalized states, and with no such thing as medical marijuana, not only was Democrat Jimmy Carter running for president promising decriminalization, by 1977 he was standing up in front of Congress and openly calling for it:

Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself; and where they are, they should be changed. Nowhere is this more clear than in the laws against possession of marijuana in private for personal use. We can, and should, continue to discourage the use of marijuana, but this can be done without defining the smoker as a criminal. States which have already removed criminal penalties for marijuana use, like Oregon and California, have not noted any significant increase in marijuana smoking. The National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse concluded five years ago that marijuana use should be decriminalized, and I believe it is time to implement those basic recommendations.

Therefore, I support legislation amending Federal law to eliminate all Federal criminal penalties for the possession of up to one ounce of marijuana. This decriminalization is not legalization. It means only that the Federal penalty for possession would be reduced and a person would received a fine rather than a criminal penalty. Federal penalties for trafficking would remain in force and the states would remain free to adopt whatever laws they wish concerning the marijuana smoker.

Fast-forward thirty-eight three years.  It’s 2008.  Massachusetts has just decriminalized marijuana and Michigan has just legalized medical use of marijuana.  Both measures gained more votes in their state than Barack Obama did.  Michigan passed medical legalization in every single county, even those that went for John McCain.  Thirteen states now have marijuana decriminalization and thirteen states have medical marijuana.  Support for medical marijuana in recent nationwide polls ranges from 70%-80%, support for decriminalization is at 46% nationally and above 50% on the East and West coasts, and even in the General Social Survey we see almost 35% saying yes to “Should marijuana be made legal?”

So, with now 7 out of 20 Americans believing in “legalization”, with 13 decriminalized states, with 13 medical marijuana states, and with 31% of the top 100 questions concerning drug law reform and the #1 question asked by the public concerning marijuana legalization on his change.gov website, not only did Democrat Barack Obama distance himself from his 2004 call for decriminalization on the campaign trail, by December he’s standing up in front of America and supporting the continuation of marijuana prohibition.

“President-elect Obama is not in favor of the legalization of marijuana.”

Continuing the marijuana policies of Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Bush II is no kind of change I can believe in.  Somebody get Jimmy Carter (and his solar panels) back in the White House, pronto!

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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?

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