# Why Obama Really Might Decriminalize Marijuana



## kwflatbed (Dec 29, 2004)

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.

By John H. Richardson

*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Congress had already repealed Prohibition, pending ratification from the states.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


----------



## Killjoy (Jun 23, 2003)

> Why Obama Really Might Decriminalize Marijuana


Because he wants a stoned-out-of-their-minds population even more dependent on the "nanny-nation" to provide for them as they sit in their government-owned apartments getting high and eating nachos. The comparison of marijuana to alcohol is, as Delta says, like "comparing apples to moonrocks".


----------



## NoSoupForYou (Sep 14, 2007)

but...but...you can die from alcohol and nobody ever dies from weed therefore it's completely and totally harmless!!!!! :HS: Idiot sheep and stoners will be willed into believing whatever they want.


----------



## Goose (Dec 1, 2004)

All the stoners would get high and forget to pay their taxes...we can throw the tax benefit right out the window. ;-)


----------



## fra444 (Nov 23, 2008)

Taxes????? What taxes?! They will all be on SSDI because they suffer from an adiction, and worse that that it was an addiction that the state and their leming voters made possible!!


----------



## blujay42 (Jan 7, 2009)

Stoners pay taxes and have jobs, saying otherwise is unrealistic/unfair. That said there are definitely idiots who do what you accuse and I really hate them and stay far far away from them.

If you ARE on government aid and buying pot your priorities are wrong and you'll probably find a way to fuck up and be societal dead weight anyway.

It's all about balance... If you put pot first it'll fuck you up. Just like most other drugs no?


----------



## NewEngland2007 (Dec 31, 2005)

Gotta love how potheads can't discuss just that drug, they always start braying with "yeah but alcohol, yeah but other drugs" and never present arguments with any validity.


----------



## Guest (Jan 8, 2009)

Not all pot smokers are hippy stoners sitting on their couch waiting for their dealers to show up with the next bag. There are federally sponsored marijuana users that receive 300 or more rolled joints from the government every month.

http://www.feloniousramblings.com/2...ate-irv-rosenfeld-preaching-to-the-choir.html

Now the average stoner that you guys think of, does not compare to people that use it for other reasons. Cancer patients use it to subdo the painful and debilitating effects of chemo. Aids patients use it to get their appetite back.

The normal giggling stoner isn't one of these people, neither are the chain smoking marlboro men or the person that downs a bottle of vodka or pops vicodins for a kick. All these people need to get off the streets and into effective programs to get them off the addiction.

"yeah but alcohol, yeah but other drugs".....yeah yeah yeah. Yeah alcohol kills hundreds of thousands of americans a year, as does tobacco usage and most hippy gigling stoners will say weed never killed anyone. Its true, that cannabis is just not toxic enough it can not kill you. The direct side effects of weed smoking is usually chronic brochitis, short term memmory loss and impacts your motor skills. The inderect side effects is now Johnny potsmoker thinks he's a bird and can fly. So he jumps off the roof. Or johnny just had a fat blunt and want doritos. So he goes to the mall high, driving his car and runs over a nun.

There are real life consequences for going around high all the time. I feel that regulation, taxation and control thru goverment not prohibiting but careful control is a better course of action than building more prisons and treat addiction as an addiction, not as a crime.

I'm sure I'm going to get blasted now, so....


----------



## kwflatbed (Dec 29, 2004)

Caleb Ragnarok said:


> Not all pot smokers are hippy stoners sitting on their couch waiting for their dealers to show up with the next bag. There are federally sponsored marijuana users that receive 300 or more rolled joints from the government every month.
> 
> http://www.feloniousramblings.com/2...ate-irv-rosenfeld-preaching-to-the-choir.html
> 
> ...


Who the hell do you think ends up supporting the IDIOTS ?

WE THE PEOPLE who are stuck with the medical and treatment bills
for them.

Medical marijuana has its place for cronic ailments just like all other
medications.

Just because Obama is a pot smoker he is not going to change the world.


----------



## Guest (Jan 8, 2009)

Agreed! 
Are not opiums and anphedamines used in medicine? 
Are they not also abused on the streets?

We also support those idiots that shoot up in the corner or start a meth lab. 

But with the laws they way they are now and the classification of cannabis, it makes legal medical usage harder and harder to establish. A federal set of laws allowing cannabis to be administered(pill form, inhalant, etc) for diseases is needed. Morphin and amphetamines are critical for some patients after illness or surgery. 
Morphine addiction withdrawl is a painful process, and people do directly die from this drug. Yet we don't demonize and prohibition opiates in medicine.


----------



## HousingCop (May 14, 2004)

*I see it this way....... There are people who push and there are people who pull and there are people who ride in the wagon of life. When there are too many people in the wagon (ie Gov't assistance / welfare / SSI / name your program) the wagon slows down and stops. We're pretty near the point where there's no forward progress any more. Stoners make up a disproportionate amount of the wagon riders and no matter how they paint it, marijuana is a gateway drug to harder narcotics. *

*If the stoners they think they can pay the simple $100 fine every time I catch them, go ahead. I have plenty of ink. Once they realize they are $400+ in the hole, they'll start to move some weight to try to pay off the fine and I'll be there with my 1 oz scale and handcuffs. .......every move you make, I'll be watching you....... QQ *



> Yet we don't demonize and prohibition opiates in medicine.


*Caleb, these narcotics are proscribed by TRAINED MEDICAL PROFESSIONALS to be used on a temporary basis until the pain subsides. Doled out by TRAINED MEDICAL PROFESSIONALS in a pharmacy and if the instructions are followed, all goes well. Not homegrown in somebodys attic and fertalized or mixed with God knows what. You wanna smoke somebody's body waste, or some fermaldehyde, feel free. I just hope you've got a spare Benjamin to give to my city. *


----------



## Guest (Jan 8, 2009)

HousingCop said:


> *no matter how they paint it, marijuana is a gateway drug to harder narcotics. *


The first three drugs that are usually tried by almost the entire population is caffeine, tobacco and alcohol followed by marijuana. Does that not make caffeine, tobacco or alcohol not gateway drugs too? Do you not also see your caffeine junkies twitching away at starbucks, or that chain smoker at work that can't go 20 minutes without 3 cigarettes? Or what about the wino or drunk that wakes up to Irish coffees and two martini lunches or a liquid supper?



HousingCop said:


> *Caleb, these narcotics are proscribed by TRAINED MEDICAL PROFESSIONALS to be used on a temporary basis until the pain subsides. Doled out by TRAINED MEDICAL PROFESSIONALS in a pharmacy and if the instructions are followed, all goes well. Not homegrown in somebodys attic and fertalized or mixed with God knows what. *


I agree totally. Why handcuff the physicians hands with needless and baseless accusations about the medicinal usage of an herb? There are respected doctors that do advocate cannabis for treatments. And the patients are becoming criminals to get the medication they would need for pain relief or such. Good people, grandma for her glocoma has a reefer's peanut butter cup. Good people, Mary has lymphoma and terrible chemo nausea. Not the waste-oids or r-tards.

I'd hope that these people needing it for medical reasons could get some controlled and argiculturally sound cannabis instead of....*homegrown in somebodys attic and fertalized or mixed with God knows what.*


----------

