The Gift of Obama

[RainDog]

http://marijuana.com/news/2014/06/keith-stroup-the-gift-from-obama/

From Keith Stroup, founder of NORML. I can only post 4 graphs here, so please read the link, which is far more comprehensive than this excerpt.

...Perhaps because I have lived in Washington, DC for 48 years and have seen too many administrations come and go, I did not expect Obama to do anything significant to advance marijuana legalization during his first term. Controversial policy changes generally come, if at all, during a president’s second term, when he faces no future elections, and is sometimes willing to risk some of his personal popularity to embrace a policy on principle.

That appears to be precisely what has occurred with Obama.

Stroup goes on to discuss legislative changes at the state level and the Obama administration's response.

...In other words, President Obama has given the legalization movement 2-3 years to demonstrate that we can legalize, regulate and tax marijuana in a responsible manner, without the fear of federal interference – a sort of free-zone until the end of his second term. That is an incredible gift, and should allow us to demonstrate that legalization works better than prohibition for everyone; law-enforcement as well as consumers, and that it will raise a significant new stream of badly-needed revenue for the states. If we succeed, it is hard to imagine the next administration, whether Republican or Democrat, will have the political support required to attempt to roll-back our progress at the state level.

Of course, we eventually need to change federal law so we do not have to rely on the deferential discretion of the Department of Justice for these innovative new state laws to be implemented. At the end of alcohol prohibition, the government ended federal prohibition and allowed the various states to adopt whatever alcohol policy they wanted; they could keep alcohol illegal, or experiment with different models of legalization – that is the goal we should have for ending marijuana prohibition.

Stroup notes that, now, the onus is upon those who support reforms of marijuana laws to act responsibly in those states and cities that have made it possible to demonstrate just such self-regulation - which has been the point all along.

[RainDog]

1. kick, even tho it's not rude pundit post related n/t