Why Obama Really Might Decriminalize Marijuana

Esquire
Tuesday, December 23, 2008

The stoner community is clamoring to say it: “Yes we cannabis!” Turns out, with several drug-war veterans close to the president-elect’s ear, insiders think reform could come in Obama’s second term — or sooner.

Famously, Franklin Delano Roosevelt saved the United States banking system during the first seven days of his first term.

And what did he do on the eighth day? “I think this would be a good time for beer,” he said.

Congress had already repealed Prohibition, pending ratification from the states. But the people needed a lift, and legalizing beer would create a million jobs. And lo, booze was back. Two days after the bill passed, Milwaukee brewers hired six hundred people and paid their first $10 million in taxes. Soon the auto industry was tooling up the first $12 million worth of delivery trucks, and brewers were pouring tens of millions into new plants.

“Roosevelt’s move to legalize beer had the effect he intended,” says Adam Cohen, author of Nothing To Fear, a thrilling new history of FDR’s first hundred days. “It was, one journalist observed, ‘like a stick of dynamite into a log jam.’”

Many in the marijuana world are now hoping for something similar from Barack Obama. After all, the president-elect said in 2004 that the war on drugs had been “an utter failure” and that America should decriminalize pot:
In July, Obama told Rolling Stone that he believed in "shifting the paradigm" to a public-health approach: "I would start with nonviolent, first-time drug offenders. The notion that we are imposing felonies on them or sending them to prison, where they are getting advanced degrees in criminality, instead of thinking about ways like drug courts that can get them back on track in their lives -- it's expensive, it's counterproductive, and it doesn't make sense."

Meanwhile, economists have been making the beer argument. In a paper titled "Budgetary Implications of Marijuana Prohibition," Dr. Jeffrey Miron of Harvard argues that legalized marijuana would generate between $10 and $14 billion in savings and taxes every year -- conclusions endorsed by 300 top economists, including Milton "Free Market" Friedman himself.

And two weeks ago, when the Obama team asked the public to vote on the top problems facing America, this was the public's No. 1 question: "Will you consider legalizing marijuana so that the government can regulate it, tax it, put age limits on it, and create millions of new jobs and a billion dollar industry right here in the U.S.?"

But alas, the answer from Camp Obama was -- as it has been for years -- a flat one-liner: "President-elect Obama is not in favor of the legalization of marijuana." And at least two of Obama's top people are drug-war supporters: Rahm Emanuel has been a long-time enemy of reform, and Joe Biden is a drug-war mainstay who helped create the position of "drug czar."

Meanwhile, in 2007, the last year for which statistics are available, 782,000 Americans were arrested for marijuana-related crimes (90 percent of them for possession), with approximately 60,000 to 85,000 of them serving sentences in jail or prison. It's the continuation of an unnecessary stream of suffering that now has taught generations of Americans just how capricious their government can be. The irony is that the preference for "decriminalization" over legalization actually supports the continued existence of criminal drug mafias.

Nevertheless, the marijuana community is guardedly optimistic. "Reformers will probably be disappointed that Obama is not going to go as far as they want, but we're probably not going to continue this mindless path of prohibition," NORML executive director Allen St. Pierre tells me.

Some of Obama's biggest financial donors are friends of the legalization movement, St. Pierre notes. "Frankly, George Soros, Peter Lewis, and John Sperling -- this triumvirate of billionaires -- if those three men, who put up $50 to $60 million to get Democrats and Obama elected, can't pick up the phone and actually get a one-to-one meeting on where this drug policy is going, then maybe it's true that when you give money, you don't expect favors."

Another member of that moneyed group: Marsha Rosenbaum, the former head of the San Francisco office of the Drug Policy Alliance, who quit last year to become a fundraiser for Obama and "bundled" an impressive $204,000 for his campaign. She said that based on what she hears from inside the transition team, she expects Obama to play it very safe. "He said at one point that he's not going to use any political capital with this -- that's a concern," Rosenbaum tells me. And the Path to Change will probably have to pass through the Valley of Studies and Reports. "I'm hoping that what the administration will do," she says, "is something this country hasn't done since 1971, which is to undertake a presidential commission to look at drug policy, convene a group of blue-ribbon experts to look at the issue, and make recommendations."

But ultimately, Rosenbaum remains confident that those recommendations would call for an end to the drug war. "Once everything settles down in the second term, we have a shot at seeing some real reform."

Still, a certain paranoia prevails. Rumors about Obama's choice for drug czar have lingered on Republican Congressman Jim Ramstad. "He's been a standard anti-drug warrior for the whole time he's been in Congress," says St. Pierre. Another possibility is Atlanta police chief Richard Pennington, who raises fears in the legalization community of more of the same law-enforcement model. Another prospect stirring the bong waters is Dr. Don Vereen, the chief drug policy thinker on the transition team. "He's really a believer in prohibition and he can excite an audience," says Rosenbaum, who says a friend on the transition team refused to hint at final contenders for the drug czar pick. "I'm joking with him, 'I'm going to have to open up the New York Times for this, aren't I?'" His answer: "We're going to send out smoke signals."

http://www.esquire.com/the-side/richardson-report/obama-marijuana-legalization-122308

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQr9ezr8UeA&eurl=http://www.esquire.com/the-side/richardson-report/obama-marijuana-legalization-122308&feature=player_embedded

I don't see it happening in that way. Beer has been criminalized only a short time before, in the grand scheme of things. So the structure was there to get it going again.

I don't think legalizing weed will resurect that many jobs.

On the other hand, from my experience of knowing people that do pot, I doesn't bother me if it is legalized. Most people high on weed seem LESS likely to decide it's time to get in their cars and drive around.

Studies done in controled prison settings (how they got permission to do these studies wasn't explained in my education classes) have shown that pot doesn't make you slower or dumber.

The study did show that for a person to score the best on tests, they have to take the tests in the same condition as they studied. So if they study high, they will perform the best while also high. If people study with a snack and a coffee or a soda, they test better while snacking, or drinking coffee and soda. The people who were tested while high didn't not have the over all lower scores either.

That it is a 'gateway' drug still seems to be the biggest argument against it. Now there are pot smokers that never move on to other drugs, but people who do other drugs often say they started with pot AND alcohol. And often starts at home with the alcohol before the pot use starts.

So I don't really think the arguement holds true. I think there are OTHER forces at work here when middle school age children start drinking heavily at home. If they look at that, they may start to find the real roots of a lot of drug use.

NOT all drug use. Some people don't start until much older. But I think the majority of it looks back to the above paragraph.

I don't think a horrible epidemic of drug abuse is going to start with the legalization of pot.


I think people who use it will find it easier to do so. I think you may get some people more willing to just TRY it.

I think you also find more people discovering that they, like me, get sick when around it. The smell gives me a MASSIVE headache. This sensitivity is actually a bit more common than people realize.

Very interesting...

I personally don't induldge, however, I would love to see it decrimialized and reap the rewards of the tax revenue.

I think in just the area of hundreds of millions saved in arrest, prosecution and incarceration costs makes this worth it. As a bonus, it takes the pot out of the hands of criminals and puts that revenue in our red lined budgets.

I agree with that.

Do you have any idea how long it takes to cite or arrest someone for possession of pot? And then you have to test and book the pot? It's absurd. A total waste of time and money. Decriminalize it already.

I think in just the area of hundreds of millions saved in arrest, prosecution and incarceration costs makes this worth it. As a bonus, it takes the pot out of the hands of criminals and puts that revenue in our red lined budgets.

Agreed!


I would love to see it decrimialized and reap the rewards of the tax revenue.


Agreed!


Do you have any idea how long it takes to cite or arrest someone for possession of pot? And then you have to test and book the pot? It's absurd. A total waste of time and money. Decriminalize it already.


Agreed!

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The old arguments just don't hold water. All the people I have known to use pot were able to buy it any time they wanted it and at any cost, they were professionals who didn't miss a day at work and you would never know they smoked at all.

Personally, as someone else said, it gives me a horrid splitting headache. Tried it a couple of times in my younger days and both times it gave me a headache, just as some herbs you buy in the health food store do, so that was it for me.

I think I would rather see people smoking than doing crack and meth and other things that completely destroy thier minds and bodies. You are always going to have people that abuse things, no matter what you legalize.

It always sits at about 20% of the population who tend to imbide chemicals.

yep

not only will it create farming jobs. it will save money big time

imo (which does not mean much) all victimless crime should be legalized and taxed (thus making it truly victimless. not only will it save billions for the justice dept, the tax on it woul raise billions. if you set aside 20% for treatment center for those that need it, the system would still be billions ahead. not to mention the money and lives saved on collateral crime. i would much rather have a few junkies (that would probably be a junkie anyway than keep having so many drive by shooting of innocent victims. lets take away the profitability for the criminal element, thus reducing the crime committed to get money to buy the product or service, which is udsed to build organized crime organizations.

but hey

what do i know

Evidently more than the DEA and every President we've had since Nixon.

i think it goes back further than that, at one time it all used to be legal and it was a safer place, the concern over illegals smoking pot and scaring the locals started a lot of the anti drug cuture. pot is not truly illegal the feds require a tax stamp to sell it and they do not issue said stamps. so basically all they really have to do is issue the stamps (wonder who would get them) [like we dont know] i wll see if i can find the link again for the info i read on this again.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1937_Marijuana_Tax_Act

will look some more but there is a start

this is a dif one but it hits it a little



Between 1915 and 1937, 30 states outlawed the use of marijuana. The reason for the majority of this is best summed up by the words of one Texas legislator, “All Mexicans are crazy and this stuff (marijuana) is what makes them crazy.” Some states outlawed marijuana because they were afraid that heroin addiction would lead to marijuana use. I think that is pretty funny.


http://www.yodasworld.org/id341.html

It was Nixon who started the "WAR" on drugs. He got his lying little greasy behind on the T.V. and made comments along the lines of "Public Enemy No. #1" and all that crap. Lets face it though, he equated potheads of the period with "People who don't like Nixon".

Just as I suspected...more dumbing down the society. Sad...very sad. That people actually agree with these pathetic excuses.

they did change the laws in 1970 as well. nixion is proof positive of the keep them look at point a so the govt (and those in it) can do whatever they want at points x y and z.

it is easy to just make a statement, now back up your point with legitimate proof of how it would dumb down society. (the no child left behind is doing that pretty good on its own).

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what is sad is those that would rather have the murder and death of innocent people, than let someone do what they want. thus in the process letting the organized crime outlets flourish while poisoning those that are doing it anyway. many do things just because of the thrill and ecitement of doing something they are not supposed to do. funny thing is before 1914 it was all legal and the country was a much better place, people helped each other and were concerned about their neighbors. this get on yer high horse attitude of telling others you can not do something because it is not good for you creates animosity obviously. that is a real improvement.

Give me one good legitimate reason why cannabis should be illegal?

Overdose deaths/NONE
Violent potheads/NOPE
Helps the terminally ill/Affirmative
dozens of alternative uses including a more potent ethanol/YEP
Better for you than Alcohol, which already went through it's own disastrous prohibition/Check

I'm not even a user, so I sure hope you have a good reason to come with that vague negative post.
Weed doesn't dumb down society, T.V. and No Child Left behind does.

you left out the military

remember the general you posted

Not to mention Thimerosol, Asparteme and Flouride.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6HESjH-Zsg

shows how much money the gov makes off the restriction (and yes, it isn't a good idea to do it anyway. More dumbing down is right.)

But, becasue it is so profitable to the gov. in court and fines, don't think O will do anything. BB