Obama's Crackdown on Marijuana

[eridani]

http://rsnorg.org/opinion2/277-75/14939-focus-obamas-crackdown-on-marijuana

Of all the unfathomable quirks - and I am being very kind, it being the holiday season and all - of the Obama Administration, its unfathomable rigidity on the topic of marijuana makes less sense than any of the others. The squishiness elsewhere on civil liberties is understandable in the context that America simply will not elect a president who campaigns on a platform of appearing to weaken the office. The crushing of whistle-blowers - and the revolting confinement of Bradley Manning - at least can be understood in that same context. (We have committed ourselves, one way or another, to voting for a president based somewhat on his more authoritarian impulses since the country elected Andy Jackson. The last president to get elected based on promises to maintain the office within its prescribed constitutional limits was James Madison, who helped define those limits in the first place.) The occasionally mushiness on corporate malfeasance is a demonstration that the president's populism has very clearly defined - and, to be entirely fair, very clearly explained - limits. All of these can be understood generally - which is not the same thing as being excused - by the fact that we elect human beings to be our president and that we have certain expectations of those humans and that office which are darker than others, and which we don't talk about among ourselves very often.

But the relentless busting of chops on ganja doesn't fit into any of those categories. If nothing else, the results in Colorado and in Washington state - and, to a lesser extent, in Massachusetts - indicate that the political salience of the "war on drugs," as applied to marijuana, at least, almost has completely evaporated. It can be argued that there is no more political risk to the president of changing his policy on marijuana now than there was in his "evolving" on gay marriage last year. In both cases, the people out in the states are out ahead of the national politics of the issue.

But, as we learn in today's New York Times, in a story by national-treasure Charlie Savage, rather than avail itself of the freedom to maneuver it was granted by the results of statewide referenda last month, the administration instead is reacting to those results by getting even tougher.

[factsarenotfair]

1. Well, I have one theory.

I read David Maraniss's book about Obama and it reports that Obama's mother confronted him about being a lazy, pot-smoking bum (paraphrased) and told him he needed to straighten out and get serious about life (also paraphrased). Maybe he feels that marijuana keeps people from achieving things. I hate to think that he has been told that he needs to keep the War on Drugs going so that the prison profiteers can continue to make money.

[msongs]

2. maybe pot smokers don't care about about using drones to murder people nt