Pubdate: Tue, 11 Dec 2012
Source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (PA)
Copyright: 2012 PG Publishing Co., Inc.
Contact: http://drugsense.org/url/pm4R4dI4
Website: http://www.post-gazette.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/341
Author: Tony Norman

WILL OBAMA LET THE REEFER MADNESS GO ON?

In The New York Times last week, Charlie Savage reported that the 
Obama administration has begun debating the pros and cons of moving 
against two states that legalized marijuana the same day he was 
returned to office by the voters last month.

"Senior White House and Justice Department officials are considering 
plans for legal action against Colorado and Washington that could 
undermine voter-approved initiatives to legalize the recreational use 
of marijuana in those states, according to several people familiar 
with the deliberations," Mr. Savage wrote.

As David Maraniss noted in his recent bio "Barack Obama: The Story," 
our president as a teenager inhaled cannabis with brio, along with 
his prep school buddies in the "Choom Gang." There's no word on 
whether Mr. Obama is one of Mr. Savage's high-level sources for the 
story. One would hope that a sheepish sense of self-awareness would 
prompt the president to abstain from any discussions in which a 
continuation of the status quo on drug policy is contemplated.

How could the average citizen not get a serious case of the munchies 
just thinking about a cloud of cognitive dissonance and the hypocrisy 
seeping like smoke from under closed doors at the Obama White House 
whenever drug policy comes up?

Just when Democrats were beginning to believe President Obama was 
finally prepared to govern as a pragmatic progressive during his 
second term, unmistakable signs that he's willing to continue the 
four-decade-long, trillion-dollar boondoggle known as the War on 
Drugs are already manifesting themselves.

"One option is for federal prosecutors to bring some cases against 
low-level marijuana users of the sort they until now have rarely 
bothered with, waiting for a defendant to make a motion to dismiss 
the case because the drug is now legal in that state," Mr. Savage 
wrote. "The [DOJ] could then obtain a court ruling that federal law 
trumps the state one."

By even contemplating a ramping up of the draconian drug policies of 
his first term, Mr. Obama is poised to turn the contact high 
engendered by his historic trouncing of Mitt Romney and the Tea Party 
into the shortest post-election "buzz" in history.

According to Mr. Savage's piece, the Obama White House is feeling the 
heat from the usual stakeholders in the $20-billion-a-year drug 
prohibition racket. Law enforcement is "alarmed at the prospect that 
marijuana users in both states could get used to flouting federal law openly."

No doubt. The entire federal drug war apparatus has a lot to lose if 
marijuana is removed from the list of drugs covered under the federal 
Controlled Substances Act. How long will it be until logic and 
constitutional consistency dictate a similar loosening of the 
prohibition against "harder" drugs? Decriminalizing and legalizing 
marijuana takes billions out of the hands of feckless bureaucrats.

All of the police powers that the local, state and federal government 
have accumulated since President Richard Nixon fired the first salvo 
in the War on Drugs are directly threatened by the public's weariness 
with this farcical, losing campaign. The drug war and the criminal 
enterprises it created are directly and indirectly responsible for 
the incarceration of the majority of the country's 2 million prisoners.

As Mr. Savage points out, navigating the politics of how to respond 
to marijuana laws in Washington and Colorado isn't easy for the Obama 
administration "because marijuana legalization is popular among 
liberal Democrats who just turned out to re-elect him."

If Mr. Obama's Justice Department is stupid enough to prosecute 
citizens in Washington and Colorado for smoking grass, it will make 
it impossible for a lot of young folks to turn out for the Democrats 
in 2014 and 2016. The coalition that worked so well for Mr. Obama in 
2008 and 2012 will splinter as disenchanted voters drift toward the 
relative "sanity" of the Libertarian Party.

If the Republicans were truly interested in winning another national 
election, they'll embrace social libertarianism -- including gay 
marriage -- and run to Mr. Obama's left on the drug war.

Democrats must be smoking something if they imagine they can throw 
their own voters in jail and still count on their support down the road.

The first Republican presidential candidate to announce that he (or 
she) has had enough of drug task forces, "reefer madness," expanded 
police surveillance powers and the budget-crushing growth of private 
and public prison networks will win the GOP nomination and, perhaps 
the presidency. What a long, strange trip that will be.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom