The President Forgets To Lie About Marijuana, And Prohibitionists Are Outraged

[n2doc]

Prohibitionists were outraged by President Obama’s recent observation that marijuana is safer than alcohol—not because it is not true but because it contradicts the central myth underlying public support for the war on drugs. According to that myth, certain psychoactive substances are so dangerous that they cannot be tolerated, and the government has scientifically identified them. In reality, the distinctions drawn by our drug laws are arbitrary, and marijuana is the clearest illustration of that fact.

“As has been well documented,” Obama told The New Yorker’s David Remnick in an interview published on Sunday, “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.” When Remnick pressed him to say whether marijuana is in fact less dangerous than alcohol, the president said yes, “in terms of its impact on the individual consumer.”

Judging from survey data, that is not a very controversial position. According to a recent CNN poll, 87 percent of Americans think marijuana is no more dangerous than alcohol, and 73 percent say it is less dangerous. Yet Obama’s statement does seem inconsistent with his administration’s stubborn defense of marijuana’s placement on Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act, a category supposedly reserved for drugs with a high abuse potential that have no recognized medical value and cannot be used safely, even under a doctor’s supervision.

The administration concedes that chemicals in marijuana have medical utility, but it argues that they should be taken in isolation, not by smoking, vaporizing, or ingesting the plant. The administration also maintains that marijuana’s popularity as a recreational intoxicant demonstrates its high potential for abuse—if you define abuse to include all nonmedical use, as the government does.

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http://www.forbes.com/sites/jacobsullum/2014/01/24/the-president-forgets-to-lie-about-marijuana-and-prohibitionists-are-outraged/

[Jesus Malverde]

1. I don't think it was an accident.

Holders bank statement days later was no accident either.

[Cha]

4. Thank you.

[Warpy]

2. He told the truth and prohibitionists are allergic to it

To hell with the lot of them. Their way doesn't work.

[mucifer]

3. This was President Obama's pattern around marriage equality and that's going pretty well.

[Cha]

5. ..

:

[Dawson Leery]

7. +1

[dballance]

6. I think he sees the battle is over.

Prohibition lost again. The thought of a new tax revenue stream without the need to raise taxes is winning. Not to mention not needing to fund prisons and courts for nonviolent offenders.

If not outright legalization, decriminalisation will prevail pretty quickly.

[pscot]

8. Obama is impressive

when he does his own thinking. I hope we see more of it.