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Obama Insults Online Community for Supporting Marijuana Legalization

At his Online Town Hall meeting this morning, President Obama joked about the overwhelming popularity of marijuana legalization questions on his online forum.



Well, Mr. President, if you "don't know what this says about the online audience," allow me to clue you in. We're more than just some nicknames on a computer screen. We're Americans and we have the same right as anyone else to be heard and to be treated with respect.

As nearly a million among us are arrested each year for marijuana, it should come as no surprise to you that we've come together to ask why. The reason you find us in every category of your site is because the harms of the war on drugs reach into every facet of American life. Drug prohibition destroys all it touches and there is scarcely a problem we face as a nation that couldn’t be made more manageable by ending this great war that continues to stigmatize and divide us.

You can trivialize and dismiss our argument, but you cannot silence our movement. You make us more powerful with every public forum you hold.

Update: This quote from Jack Cole at LEAP pretty much sums it up:

"Despite the president's flippant comments today, the grievous harms of marijuana prohibition are no laughing matter. Certainly, the 800,000 people arrested last year on marijuana charges find nothing funny about it, nor do the millions of Americans struggling in this sluggish economy. It would be an enormous economic stimulus if we stopped wasting so much money arresting and locking people up for nonviolent drug offenses and instead brought in new tax revenue from legal sales, just as we did when we ended alcohol prohibition 75 years ago during the Great Depression."

Uh-Oh! Medical Marijuana Raid in San Francisco

Very unsettling:

Federal drug agents raided a medical marijuana facility in San Francisco Wednesday night.

The raid occurred at Emmalyn's California Cannabis Clinic at 1597 Howard Street. DEA spokeswoman Casey McEnry told CBS 5 the documents regarding the raid are sealed, so the DEA was not able to give many details.

"The documents relating to today's enforcement operation remain under court seal. Based on our investigation we believe there are not only violations of federal law, but state law as well." [CBS]

By claiming the case involves violations of state law, DEA is able to maintain the appearance of abiding by the attorney general's pledge to respect state medical marijuana laws. We're left to wonder if that will now become their blanket justification, to be invoked each time they elect to move in on an established medical marijuana provider. No one was arrested in today's raid, so we'll likely be waiting a while to find out what the hell happened.

The skeptical interpretation is that nothing's changed, that the feds will simply be more careful with the wording they use to describe future enforcement efforts that target medical providers. A worst-case scenario would the adoption of a policy in which the full force of federal law is brought down upon any medical marijuana provider who is accused of even a minor violation of state law. Defendants facing only federal charges would have no means to contest the grounds on which they were targeted to begin with. The practical value of Obama's purported policy shift would be negligible.

However, even if that's DEA's gameplan (which wouldn’t surprise me at all), I doubt it could withstand scrutiny. The salient question of why DEA is usurping the responsibilities of state law-enforcement won't escape notice and press coverage of these events grows increasingly competent as the issue continues to boil.

Obama's position on medical marijuana owes a great deal to pure political pressure resulting from the deep unpopularity of the raids themselves. The public simply hates this and won't be satisfied with a fictitious shell-game solution that merely reframes what DEA is actually doing.

Yet Another Chance to Ask Obama About Marijuana Laws

So far, Obama's favorite thing about being president is getting to read all the marijuana-related questions on his website. If it weren't, then he'd surely have stopped inviting us to submit questions, right? He loves you. Each and every one of you.

That's why WhiteHouse.gov is now accepting your questions on the economy. It's broken down into several categories, but multiple sections are utterly dominated by marijuana reform questions. Apparently, Americans' #1 economic concern is that marijuana is illegal.

As we've done several times now, let's make damn sure the new administration sees the potency of our movement by keeping drug policy reform questions in top position. The site also encourages you to vote against questions you're less interested in, so feel free to do that too.

The point isn't that marijuana laws are necessarily the top economic issue right now, but rather that the drug war went over budget a long, long time ago. It's one bad program that needs to go immediately if we're serious about making responsible decisions in tough times. Filling our prisons with non-violent drug offenders was bad enough when we still had the money to do it. Those days are behind us and no excuses remain for the political culture that has long championed the grand fiasco that now festers before our eyes.

At this moment of grave economic uncertainty, the obligation of our leaders to justify their programs and expenditures has never been greater. Unless or until Obama can come forward and confidently defend every damn dollar that is poured into the war on drugs, these questions will continue to dominate every public forum he holds.
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