Bummer
Barack Obama turns out to be just another drug warrior.
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Another crack offender, Kenneth Harvey, is serving a life sentence for possession of more than 50 grams with intent to deliver, a crime he committed in his early 20s. Although legally required to send Harvey away for life because of two prior drug convictions (neither of which resulted in prison time), the judge who sentenced him recommended that he be granted clemency after 15 years, and an appeals court agreed. Yet Harvey, now 45, has been in prison for more than two decades. Last year USA Today reported that his family “thought when Barack Obama got elected president, they’d have a shot.”
Clarence Aaron, arrested when he was a student at Southern University in Baton Rouge with no criminal record, is serving three consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole for arranging a meeting between a childhood friend and a cocaine dealer. He has been behind bars since 1993. “There’s no reason he needs to serve more time,” says Eric Sterling. “The system is rife with these injustices. Obama’s record on clemency is shameful.”
Nor does Obama seem curious about why so many federal drug prisoners are black—more than a quarter of those sentenced in fiscal year 2010, including four-fifths of crack offenders. Sterling says the Justice Department’s Office of Civil Rights should investigate this sort of disparity, especially since federal crack cases often involve low-level dealers and small amounts of the drug. According to the U.S. Sentencing Commission, 35 percent of federal crack cases in fiscal year 2006 involved less than 25 grams. “There is a prima facie case that drug prosecutions are racially discriminatory, as a matter of pattern and practice,” Sterling says. “It demands inquiry.”
Obama the candidate agreed. “There does seem to be a racial component to some of the arrest, conviction, prosecution rates when it comes to these offenses, and that’s something I think we should take seriously,” he said during a 2007 appearance in New Hampshire. “That’s not a black or white issue; that’s an American issue. Our basic precept is equality under the law. And we’ve got to have a president and a Justice Department and a civil rights division that is willing to enforce the law equally.…If we’re going to have drug laws, it shouldn’t matter that you’re dealing them in public housing vs. a suburb, out of your mom’s backyard.”
“If we’re going to have drug laws...” Despite the implication, Kerlikowske, whose statutory mandate requires him to “take such actions as necessary to oppose any attempt to legalize” prohibited drugs, assures us that legalization “is not in the president’s vocabulary, and it’s not in mine.” Obama, by contrast, called it “an entirely legitimate topic for debate” during a YouTube town hall in January, but only after chuckling at the idea.
‘Willfully Blind’ to Science
Obama’s advocacy of a “public health” approach to drugs based on science uncorrupted by politics has amounted to even less in practice than his pre-presidency qualms about harsh, racially skewed sentences. Although he had long advocated lifting the 1988 ban on federal funding for needle exchange programs, which he said “could dramatically reduce rates of infection among drug users,” his first budget kept the ban intact. It was Congress that later removed the restriction. “As far as we know, the White House did nothing to move Congress along,” says Allan Clear, executive director of the Harm Reduction Coalition. “The general sense is that the administration is scared of syringe exchange’s political taint. You can’t say this administration is serious about a) addressing HIV to the best of its ability and b) basing its drug policies in science while it holds good public health at arm’s length.”
Yet needle exchange, which Obama at least did not actively resist, is probably the strongest aspect of his supposedly science-based drug policy. It is hard to see the scientific rationale for “zero tolerance” laws that treat a driver who smoked pot a few days ago (but who still has detectable levels of marijuana metabolites in his urine or blood) like someone who polished off a pint of bourbon right before hitting the road—a policy the Obama administration advocates in the name of “combating drugged driving.” And the administration’s demand for increased scrutiny of doctors’ painkiller prescriptions unscientifically ignores the evidence that such crackdowns discourage medically appropriate pain treatment, leaving some patients in agony to prevent others from getting high.
The clearest indication of Obama’s readiness to sacrifice scientific integrity in the service of prohibitionist orthodoxy is the administration’s position on the medical benefits of marijuana. Eight days before Obama took office, the DEA rejected a petition from University of Massachusetts at Amherst plant scientist Lyle Craker, who wanted permission to grow marijuana for research purposes. The request was far from frivolous: The DEA licenses private producers of other controlled substances, such as MDMA and psilocybin, for scientific use but has always made an exception for marijuana, which can be legally grown only at a University of Mississippi farm that is operated under contract with the National Institute on Drug Abuse, an agency that is more interested in the hazards posed by cannabis than its potential benefits. Craker, backed by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), argued that the DEA should allow competition with the government’s pot farm to facilitate research by increasing the quality and variety of cannabis available to scientists. In 2007 DEA Administrative Law Judge Mary Ellen Bittner agreed. But on January 12, 2009, acting DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart overrode Bittner and denied Craker’s petition.
The incoming administration did not challenge Leonhart’s decision, and a year later Obama appointed her to head the DEA. Last March the ACLU filed a brief asking Leonhart to reconsider. “The government claims that marijuana offers no medical benefit to patients, and yet the government is simultaneously cutting off access to research material for scientific studies that seek to determine what medical benefit marijuana might have,” it said. “The result is that the federal government remains willfully blind to the possibility of scientific results that do not match its political preconceptions.” The ACLU argued that the government’s obstruction of research that could demonstrate marijuana’s therapeutic benefits contradicts Obama’s professed commitment to sound science.
Leonhart further illustrated the marijuana exception to that commitment in July, when she officially rejected a nine-year-old petition in which Americans for Safe Access, which supports the right of patients to use cannabis for medical purposes, asked the DEA to remove the plant from Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act, the law’s most restrictive category. Schedule I is supposedly reserved for drugs that have “a high potential for abuse,” “no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States,” and no “accepted safety for use under medical supervision.” Marijuana is much safer than many less restricted drugs, it has clear medical applications, and no one seriously contends it has a higher “potential for abuse” than, say, cocaine, morphine, or methamphetamine, all of which are on Schedule II. The DEA’s marijuana decisions show politics continues to trump science under a president who promised the opposite.
Raids in a Time of Tolerance
Unwilling to wait for an outbreak of scientific integrity at the DEA, voters or legislators in 16 states and the District of Columbia have taken it upon themselves to legalize the medical use of marijuana. While running for president, Obama repeatedly suggested he was cool with that. Campaigning in New Hampshire during the summer of 2007, he said raiding patients who use marijuana as a medicine “makes no sense” and is “really not a good use of Justice Department resources.” In a March 2008 interview with southern Oregon’s Mail Tribune, he went further, saying, “I’m not going to be using Justice Department resources to try to circumvent state laws on this issue.” Two months later, when another Oregon paper, Willamette Week, asked Obama whether he would “stop the DEA’s raids on Oregon medical marijuana growers,” he replied, “I would, because I think our federal agents have better things to do.”
Critics of the war on drugs were therefore puzzled that DEA raids on medical marijuana providers continued after Obama took office in 2009, even as the White House reaffirmed that “federal resources should not be used to circumvent state laws.” That February The Washington Times reported that Obama planned to suspend the raids after he “nominates someone to take charge of DEA, which is still run by Bush administration holdovers.” We know how that worked out: He picked Leonhart, the Bush administration holdover who had been the agency’s deputy administrator since March 2004 and its acting administrator since November 2007. Prior to that, Leonhart oversaw medical marijuana raids as the special agent in charge of the DEA’s Los Angeles office.
In theory, Leonhart still had to answer to her boss, Attorney General Holder, who claimed to be implementing Obama’s promise to stop harassing state-sanctioned medical marijuana suppliers. “The policy is to go after those people who violate both federal and state law,” Holder declared during a March 2009 session with reporters in Washington. “Given the limited resources that we have,” he said during a visit to Albuquerque three months later, the Justice Department would focus on “large traffickers,” not “organizations that are [distributing marijuana] in a way that is consistent with state law.”
Editor's Note: We invite comments and request that they be civil and on-topic. We do not moderate or assume any responsibility for comments, which are owned by the readers who post them. Comments do not represent the views of Reason.com or Reason Foundation. We reserve the right to delete any comment for any reason at any time.
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I would guess that Obama wants to avoid a Mike Dukakis like Willie Horton ad in the 2012 campaign.
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Heck, that would be the least of his problems. More people support easing up on the Drug War than support death panel"socialized medicine" that accelerates costs, strips people of coverage and enriches Big-whatever
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I have an article up at American Thinker The Democrat's 2012 Victory Plan
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It is about how Ken Burn's movie "Prohibition" will change the election dynamic.
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You gotta be kidding me. A 100% tie-dyed in the wool Lefty wants big Nanny government to completely rule over people's lives, including what they put in their body.
You don't say.
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And the other team is any better? The whole mess is so deep in the pockets of prisons, prison guard unions, and pharma that there will never be any meaningful change.
Like Bill Hicks said, they show the newly elected president the movie of the Kennedy assassination from the grassy knoll, and the first question out of their mouth is when do we bomb .
The culture war is over, and freedom lost.
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ah yes, bill hicks. of COURSE obama is acting like a fuckstick drug warrior because they "threatened him" with assassination
jesus christ.
obama is acting like a drug warrior because he is a statist asshole.
that's reality
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"And the other team is any better?"
The problem is the assuption in Reason circles that the Left side should be better on the drug issue. However, goven the left's nannny tendencies elsewhere, it does not make sense why Reason thinks this is so, other than they often take liberal politicians pronouncements at face value.
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'they often take liberal politicians pronouncements at face value.'
Like the era of big guv'mint is over? LMAO -
this
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"It would be going too far to say that Obama has been faking it all these years, that he does not really care about the injustices perpetrated in the name of protecting Americans from the drugs they want." Why, exactly,would it be going to far to say His Royal Hopeyness does care about the injustice of the drug war? I'm not following the logic. Obviously, if Obama cared about it, he would do something about it instead of ramping up the persecution of medical marijuana providers. You know why Obama scares me even more than that imbecile Dubya? It's because he has this slick veneer of compassion and sanity and puts a pretty face on the undercurrent of jackbooted, brown shirted, fascistic inclinations.
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he has this slick veneer of compassion and sanity
It's only slick if one is gullible and hasn't payed attention to the activities of Team Red for the past 40 years. His "slickness" is composed of the same tired salespitches progressives have used, in one way or another, for 200 years.
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Yeah. Reason certainly doesn't have a problem questioning the motives of every other politician in the world.
They are just beta male white guys. They can't quite bring themselves to be hard on the first black President.
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In the end, Obama turned out to be just another drug warrior.
Yeah, Sullum's pullin' his punches there.
If you've noticed, Jacob tends to be the least (or nearly the least) hyperbolic writer on the staff. Given how easy it would be for critics to say "Well, what do you expect from the pot smokin' so-and-so?", it's easy to understand why.
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Yes, the other team is better because they don't lie about ending the war on drugs and they don't believe the fed. government should be in control of EVERYTHING.
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yes, to go all pj again, republicans are at least semi-honest about being statist dickheads before they take office and begin being statist dickheads.
dems have been ardent (to put it mildly) drug warriors. clinton was a perfect example. i was a cop when he was in office, and man did the grant money for drug shit explode when he took office.
federal grant money to clarify. the record is clear. dems (at least on the national level) are AWFUL on the WOD
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"dems (at least on the national level) are AWFUL on the WOD"
Even if they were good on the WOD, who would want to live in a Dem controlled country where you had to satisfy your munchies with carrot sticks?
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Would you rather have a 6% tax on Cheetos or six months in Chino?
(Yes, I know the best answer is "neither")
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I already pay an 8.5% tax on Cheetos.
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that is barbaric.
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"the govt will get my cheetos when it takes them from my cold, orange stained fingers"
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ROFLMAO! Funniest comment in a long time!
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u would know
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Throughout his public life as an author, law professor
Obama was never a professor. Stop reinforcing the lie just because you voted for this fool.
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Thank you. It drives me crazy when peole give this fool credit he doesn't deserve. .... OH wait, does that make me racist? Like I give a shit.
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Marijuana, marijuana, marijuana, marijuana, sure I'm all for legalizing marijuana. . .
But what I really want to legalize is LSD and other psychedelics/entheogens.
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Freedom is hard.
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Why would I want to try to stop people from taking LSD? And, because we can't really stop them, why would I want to try to "interdict" drugs being produced in other countries to fulfill our demand?
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you need to see the movie called wild in the streets
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This.
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Hey, Sullum, why don't you Reason nitwits reprint the 2008 roundtable with "libertarian" authors like the incomprehensible John Scalzi gushing about how Ooooobama will be so libertarian and stop the WOD?
Go ahead. Reprint it. Just for kicks.
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Why do they need to reprint it? Somebody will post a link to it at least once a month, and has for the past 3 years.
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I know Obama wants to pass a terrible heathcare law and is going to want to spend us into bankruptcy.
But he is going to close GUITMO, get us out of Iraq and Afghanistan, repeal the patriot act and do something about the War on Drugs.
And it is not like any of that other stuff will get through Congress anyway.
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What Sullum, do you get paid by the word? Now you know why some people don't subscribe to your magazine, it's a bunch of rehash of what anyone who would read Reason has already heard or read ad nauseam.
How about a drug warrior article ripping the shreds out of assholes like Santorum, Perry, Romney, and every right of the aisle hack. They're the ones who need to be exposed for their "small government tendencies" except when it comes to the drug war. I wish there would be a question in one of the debates for the repubs to explain the difference wrt the commerce clause as it pertains to obamacare and the controlled substance act. That would be interesting. Or quote them Thomas' dissent in Raich but don't tell them it's with regard to drugs and watch them support the statement. Now that would be entertaining. Drug war, terror war, obese war, poverty war, wtf? -
So that lets a sitting President who claimed to be better during his campaign off the hook?
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Obama's not going to win or lose on the drug war for crying out loud. But at least make the big government repubs squirm to support a war that obviously is doing more harm than good, costs way to much money, distorts everybody's idea of individual freedom and causes massive unintended consequences. Wait a minute, that sounds like Iraq, Aphganistan, Libya, and every other country we have troops. But anyway the tea party debate would be a good place to start the exposure of the big gov repubs.
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Have fun. In the mean time, Reason should continue to shame Obama for being a complete fraud who is anything has made the drug war worse by ending any idea that there is any dissent about it among the two parties.
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Paul (and Johnson, if they ever let him debate) might just make them squirm over the WoD.
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They already got a piece on Romney. Having been subjected to Straight in the 80's, The article doesn't even begin to cover the shit that happened in there.
http://reason.com/archives/200.....-and-teens
I will never vote for than person.
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When Bill Clinton took office in January 1993, the violent crack epidemic of the late 1980s was already subsiding, the prison population-local, state and federal-was about 1.3 million. When Clinton left office, that number had ballooned to over 2 million, becoming highest rate of incarceration-as well as the highest total number behind bars-in a democratic state in the history of the whole planet.
“(12) shall ensure that no Federal funds appropriated to the Office of National Drug Control Policy shall be expended for any study or contract relating to the legalization (for a medical use or any other use) of a substance listed in schedule I of section 202 of the Controlled Substances Act (21 U.S.C. 812) and take such actions as necessary to oppose any attempt to legalize the use of a substance (in any form) that–
(A) is listed in schedule I of section 202 of the Controlled Substances Act (21 U.S.C. 812); and
(B) has not been approved for use for medical purposes by the Food and Drug Administration;”It was Joe Biden (yes our current Democrat VP) who authored this act, who wrote those words and then pushed this abhorrent law (which created ONDCP, the position of “drug czar” and the mandate to lie thru their teeth) thru congress.
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highest total number behind bars-in a democratic state in the history of the whole planet
Ireland belches, farts and laughs at you, before falling down while spewing vomit.
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yet is too drunk to realize that the US still has the highest total number behind bars-in a democratic state in the history of the whole planet
why is Ireland so fucking stupid?
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Tommy Chong on Joe Biden: "Biden comes off as a liberal democrat, but he's the one who authored the bill that put me in jail. He wrote the law against shipping drug paraphernalia through the mail -- which could be anything from a pipe to a clip or cigarette papers."
Tommy Chong did 9 months in federal prison for selling water pipes!?! Selling WATER PIPES, in the land of the free!!!
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Were any of the dissenters in Gonzales v. Raich appointed by democrats?
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Let's see, dissents by Sandra O, Rehnquist, and of course Thomas.
So that would be no.
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No, but 4 of the 6 in favor of the government were republican appointees and 2 of the a-holes are still there.
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There is zero chance that a democrat would ever appoint someone like Thomas so I'll take my chances with republicans, especially if they can elect someone like Perry who doesn't like the Feds stepping on the states. Not saying Perry supports legalization but he certainly sounds like someone who would appoint someone like Thomas.
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Right.
Cos a guy who can brag about executing 234 people without a single second thought or doubt is the person I want in charge of the Federal machinery of *ahem* justice.
Or perhaps not.
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Yeah, I guess you would send them to bed without dinner. moron.
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No, asshat. Should a person attempt to commit a crime against my family, person, or property, they would find themselves met with rapidly applied deadly force.
But the question is not what I would do. The question is what we want the government to do in our name; the same judicial system that has far too frequently wrongly convicted and imprisoned people on poorly constructed, flimsy, or falsified evidence.
And when a politician can boast of executions and state that the process never even gave him pause, I am concerned, as should be any rational being.
So take your ad hominem and shove it, fuckstick. I choose not to side with the jackbooted thugs.
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No, asshat. Should a person attempt to commit a crime against my family, person, or property, they would find themselves met with rapidly applied deadly force.
But the question is not what I would do. The question is what we want the government to do in our name; the same judicial system that has far too frequently wrongly convicted and imprisoned people on poorly constructed, flimsy, or falsified evidence.
And when a politician can boast of executions and state that the process never even gave him pause, I am concerned, as should be any rational being.
So take your ad hominem and shove it, fuckstick. I choose not to side with the jackbooted thugs.
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We get it JohnD you're a conservative not a libertarian so why are you on this thread?
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Corporate greed and individual bigotry have accelerated us towards a situation where all the usual peaceful and democratic methods needed to reverse the acute damage done by prohibition no longer function as envisaged by the Founding Fathers of our once great and free nation. Such a political impasse coupled with great economic tribulation is precisely that which throughout history has invariably ignited violent revolution.
In order to avert what will surely be a far more violent situation than we are all presently experiencing, there appears to be just one last avenue left to us - Jury Nullification.
Jury Nullification is a constitutional doctrine that allows juries to acquit defendants who are technically guilty, but who don’t deserve punishment. All non-violent drug offenders, be they users, dealers or importers, fall into this category. If you believe that prohibition is a dangerous and counter-productive policy, then you don’t have to help to apply it. Under the Constitution, when it comes to acquittals, you, the juror, have the last word!
The idea that jurors should judge the law, as well as the facts, is a proud and vital component of American history.
The most shining example of Jury Nullification occurred during the shameful period in US history when slavery was legal. People who helped slaves escape were committing a federal crime - violation of the Fugitive Slave Act. Jurors would often acquit, even when the defendants admitted their guilt. Legal historians credit these cases with advancing the abolition of slavery.
No amount of money, police powers, weaponry, wishful thinking or pseudo-science will make our streets safer; only an end to prohibition can do that. How much longer are you willing to foolishly risk your own survival by continuing to ignore the obvious, historically confirmed solution? - When called for Jury Service concerning any non-violent prohibition-related offense, it is your moral and civic duty to VOTE TO ACQUIT!
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Well, yeah, nullification has lots of libertarian supporters. I, for one, would never vote to convict anyone of a non-violent drug offense - or any other offense based on a non-crime. You know, malum prohibitum.
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Yeah, it's all the Corpurashun's fault.
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Most cases go nowhere near a jury-- the Public Defender tells the accused to cop to a lesser charge, or else. The true nature of the American criminal justice system is out of the sight and mind of much of the public. But I agree with your sentiments.
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how many run-of-the-mill drug users and drug dealers know of this, though? An EXTREMELY low number of drug cases actually go to jury trial. Someone gets busted they usually just think they are fucked and make whatever plea deal they have to. Very few people besides libertarians and lawyers know about jury nullification. I actually had a Business Law professor thank me for mentioning jury nullification on a school thread but go on to say that he couldn't be on a jury wherever he was from (Texas maybe?) because he was a lawyer.
Also, at 28, I have never even been summoned for jury duty.
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drugs make girls like me.
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Very good article, jersey wholesaler thank you for your sharing, I learned a lot of things.Good Luck!
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Obama co-sponsored that stupid Combat Meth Act? The act that makes my wife take 2 trips a week to CVS for Claritan to keep her family of 5 hayfever sufferers from sneezing their brains out? You know, they recently busted a meth factory in Mexico that employed hundreds of employees that was supplied by literally boat loads of precursor chemicals supplied by India and China.
Just another reason why I hate Obama.
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Traitor
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He has no will. Lobotomy.
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The idea of being able to create a set of safe harbors for recreational drugs is a fantasy. The regulatory and bureaucratic apparatus that is set in place by the medical-industrial complex will not stand for the creation of something that will expose the rational inconsistency of its very existence.
How, if you are able to purchase pot or any other hallucinogen in an uncontrolled market free of the threat of prosecution, can you justify making someone go and kiss the ring of a doctor before trying a medication for overactive bladder? It makes no sense, and if they allow such a scenario, they know their goose is cooked.
This whole mess began with physician licensing and it will have to end there as well. If you want the regime to fall, cut it off at the root.
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Who uses pot or hallucinogens for an overactive bladder?
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mushrooms cure migraines, pass it on
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There was a news story here in Sydney, Australia that Obama is flying in for a visit. 58 of the first 60 comments told him to fuck off and stay in America.
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I knew I liked those Aussies
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+1
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thanx
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IMHO: At some point in 2010 Mr. Obama realized there was no way in Hades that he had a prayer of winning re-election based on his pathetic performance as POTUS. Mr. Obama found the support he hopes will win him a second term, but the quid pro quo required that he throw drug law reform under the bus. For the short time in 2008 when he was acting POTUS, all of 2009 and for perhaps the first half of 2010 while certainly not likely to be mistaken for a legalizer he most certainly wasn't a drug warrior either. It's pretty obvious to me he sold out, and abandoning drug law reform was at least part of the price he agreed to pay in return for a chance of re-election.
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Fuck Obama
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On the subject of "needing more evidence" about cannabis before making it legally available, the AMA certainly agreed:
http://www.time.com/time/magaz.....37,00.html
Please notice that the article linked above was published in Time Magazine more than 43 years ago on June 28, 1968.
As everyone knows, the motto of the Know Nothing prohibitionist is to "never let the facts get in the way of disseminating an effective piece of hysterical rhetoric." Of course the truth is that with over 22,000 peer reviewed studies cannabis is the most researched plant in history. How many more decades should we allow the government to use the "needs more study" canard? Even presuming the assertion true doesn't there come a time when the people should insist that the government actually engage in promoting these "needed" research studies?
A similar example of stonewalling is the claim that we can't re-legalize cannabis because we haven't got a "breathalyzer" equivalent. Just throw out the fact that there are in fact blood tests that can be used for determining present cannabis use, and consider that the first time I heard that lame excuse was in 1977 when it seemed a sure thing that Jimmy Carter was going to push through legislation which would result in the decriminalization of petty possession of cannabis at the Federal level. That was 34 years ago. Once again, how many decades do the Know Nothings get to use that particular fraud without actually promoting its demise? The United States of America dispatched Messrs. Hitler, Mussolini, and Hirohito along with their "Axis of Evil" in 3 years and 9 months. The end of World War II was brought about in large part by the research of the Manhattan Project which successfully invented and deployed the atom bomb in less than 3 years and 9 months. But we're to believe that our scientists are too stupid to be able to develop a "cannabis breathalyzer" in a time frame that's a little more than 9 times the length of World War II? I can just see the Church Lady scowling with disapproval, and hear her saying, "isn't that con-veeee-nient?"
When do people stop allowing themselves to be scammed by this stripe of nonsense propaganda produced by the Federal government and promoted by the Know Nothing prohibitionists?
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Back in the early 20th century when Congress was debating whether to ban cannabis, a representative from the AMA testified in opposition to the move, saying it would have a chilling effect on medical research into the herb, which was already showing benefits for people with muscle spasms and other ailments. Congress not only ignored his advice but also recorded that the AMA fully agreed with the effort to ban cannabis. Ryan Grim's book on the history of drugs in America examines this in detail.
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The congress and the president,,,any president,will never end the WoD.
Too many people with a voice,money=voice,the people that make the campaign contributions are paying about 10% of what the WoD is costing the American people to keep America ""Drug Free".
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If I was a drug lord, I'd be making campaign contributions/bribes to keep the WoD going. Why would I cut my own throat by destroying business?
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Understand. The WoD gives the Nanny State power. Using it, the police are now kicking down doors, shooting innocents - and getting away with it. It allows the closest we've ever come to a home grown Gestapo. Why would you believe that any power mad, statist, beltway troglodyte is going to legalize drugs? That would take a powerful club out of their hands.
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There's too much graft to be had in banning drugs. And why should our elitist lefty aristocracy care about making marijuana available to the dirty stupid masses when they can get whatever recreational drugs they want by virtue of being above the law. Our hypocritical socialist rulers actually believe that they must control you for your own good, for example; the efforts to ban food that they believe is unhealthy, while partaking of it themselves.
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What's really scary about all of the is that perhaps Obama really wanted to decriminalize and DEA/Justice/FDA simply won't let him?
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I knew Obummer would be a travesty but if he decriminalized Pot,I could have lived with his folly.
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"It would be going too far to say that Obama has been faking it all these years, that he does not really care about the injustices perpetrated in the name of protecting Americans from the drugs they want."
Oh really, Jacob? Exactly what has this man done during his nearly three years in office that would cause you to give him such a benefit of the doubt...or to claim that it "goes too far" to suggest that he did not mean something he said on the campaign trail?
Remember all the debates being on C-SPAN?
Remember being able to keep your current health insurance plan if you like it?
Remember closing Guantanamo and leaving Iraq "the day I take office?
et cetera, et cetera....
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Good job on glossing over the fact that the dispensaries being targeted are violating California law.
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I disagree. With 99% of all Comments. Ron Paul is probably the only sincere candidate on MJ. The rest are politicians.
As for Obama he gave his Hands off approach from March 2009 till December 2010. During, that time there has been expolsion of marijuana distributed in California...more importantly across the United States. This has everything with interstate commerce and nothing to do with his promise. If you send weed from California to NYC and do in BULK on regular basis ....yeah the White House will have to crack down.
It not just about one person, one dispenary, one county, one anything. Rather the whole system is corrupt from the core.
Sometimes you have tare down an entire house, in order to build a better one. That's what is going to happen in California and all states who had program established more than 4 years ago.
I'd still vote for Obama cause doing the "right" thing, may not always seem like the right thing.
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Mo police, mo power fo me, mo money, suckas!