Pubdate: Wed, 29 Jan 2014
Source: Washington Times (DC)
Copyright: 2014 The Washington Times, LLC.
Contact:  http://www.washingtontimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/492

THE PRESIDENT OF POT

The Stigma of Addled Stupidity Goes Up in Smoke

President Obama says smoking pot is no big deal. Not every man who 
has lived at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue has been a paragon of virtue, 
nor is perfection expected there (or anywhere else). But it's jarring 
when the president of the United States plays apologist for vice.

In an interview with The New Yorker magazine, Mr. Obama expressed 
indifference to the mainstreaming of marijuana in Colorado and 
Washington, and the inroads toward legalization pot has made in other 
states. "As has been well documented," he told the magazine, "I 
smoked pot as a kid, and I view it as a bad habit and a vice, not 
very different from the cigarettes that I smoked as a young person up 
through a big chunk of my adult life. I don't think it is more 
dangerous than alcohol."

Marijuana is an analgesic that produces euphoria - not exactly the 
mental state that compels a user to get off his duff and accomplish 
his life's goals. Today's weed is not your father's reefer. The 
modern variety is genetically modified and contains a potency that 
has nearly tripled over the past two decades. The president's own 
White House Office of Drug Control Policy says so. The new "Rocky 
Mountain high" is much loftier than the president may remember from 
his younger days.

"He's living in the past," says John P. Walters, the drug czar in the 
George W. Bush administration. Mr. Walters observes that heavy use of 
ganja typically reduces a person's IQ by 7 points. A new federal 
study finds that 6.5 percent of high school seniors get stoned daily. 
That's a brain drain the nation can't afford.

Mr. Obama is equally unfazed by the implications of transforming 
America into a stoner nation. Out-of-state buyers loading up grass to 
take home in places where the prohibition of pot is still enforced, a 
spike in the number of children winding up in the emergency room 
after ingesting their parents' marijuana-laced food, and a jump in 
auto fatalities resulting from THC-impaired driving have followed legalization.

Americans love to root for the rebel, but the president who gives a 
free pass to dope is not a freedom fighter. Mr. Obama is comfortable 
enabling his NSA spies to watch Americans playing a game of Angry 
Birds on their iPhone, read through every titillating text message 
and browse through family photos. He isn't working to get government 
to leave people alone, which may be why pollsters find it 
increasingly difficult to uncover an American who says United States 
is headed in "the right direction."

By arguing that regular ganja use is merely "a bad habit," the 
president has displayed the addled thinking for which potheads are 
known, more evidence that it's wise to get medical advice from a 
physician, not a politician.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom