Pubdate: Wed, 22 Jan 2014
Source: Wall Street Journal (US)
Copyright: 2014 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.wsj.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/487

THE PRESIDENT INHALES

He ought to change federal drug law rather than refuse to enforce
it.

To the delight of dorm rooms everywhere, President Obama has all but
endorsed marijuana legalization. "We should not be locking up kids or
individual users for long stretches of jail time when some of the
folks who are writing those laws have probably done the same thing,"
he told the New Yorker magazine. Let's try to see through this
political haze.

Mr. Obama also muses to an admiring David Remnick that while pot is "a
bad habit and a vice" and not something he would encourage his
daughters to try, "I don't think it is more dangerous than alcohol."
He called the Colorado and Washington legalization experiments
"important for society," while offering no comment on the federal
Controlled Substances Act that he has an obligation to enforce equally
across the country.

Marijuana remains a Schedule I substance under that 1970 law, meaning
that it has a high risk of abuse. "No more dangerous than alcohol" is
still dangerous, given the destructiveness of alcohol-related disease
and social ills like drunk driving. There's an industry related to
mitigating alcohol problems, after all.

We tolerate drinking because most adults use alcohol responsibly, and
by all means let's have a debate about cannabis given how much of the
country has already legalized it under the false flag of "medical"
marijuana. But an honest debate would not whitewash pot's risks.

A growing body of medical research shows that the psychoactive
substance in marijuana may cause permanent cognitive damage when used
by adolescents, such as impaired memory and learning. The drug can
trigger psychotic episodes, especially among vulnerable late
adolescents, and the price decreases and social normalization of
recreational use will increase the number of underage potheads.

"Middle-class kids don't get locked up for smoking pot, and poor kids
do," Mr. Obama added. Actually, almost nobody gets locked up for pot.
Americans collectively smoke for three billion days a year and use has
increased 38% since 2007, according to a Rand Corp. analysis of
federal health survey data, yet there were merely about 750,000
marijuana-related "arrests" in the U.S. in 2012. In the official FBI
statistics that can mean anything from a ticket or summons to a full
booking.

Very few people are incarcerated for simple possession, which makes up
about 88% of arrests. There are currently about 40,000 state and
federal prisoners serving time for marijuana-related convictions, and
most have violent criminal histories. Most judges must be persuaded
that someone is a true danger to society to sentence prison for mere
drug use.

Mr. Obama is also kidding himself if he thinks drug legalization will
be a boon to the poor. His own history of drug use is well known, but
most users aren't the privileged students of the Punahou School. Like
all human vices, the misery of addiction is always worse for those who
lack the resources and family support of the affluent.

Mr. Obama is now the President, not a stoned teenager riffing with his
Choom Gang, and he might have set a better example. Parents trying to
teach their kids to make better choices than getting high are at a
disadvantage when the person in charge of upholding the law says
breaking the law is no big deal.

If the President believes that marijuana prohibition is an injustice,
he has an obligation to propose his own legislative reforms, instead
of unilaterally suspending the enforcement of federal drug laws that
don't fit his political agenda. Why not start with the State of the
Union address? Whatever Mr. Obama's personal views on marijuana, his
picking and choosing from the U.S. code is far more corrosive to the
rule of law and trust in government. 
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MAP posted-by: Jo-D