President Barack Obama continues to speak out against mass incarceration, the devastating impact of our drug policies on communities of color and his expectation that marijuana legalization will continue to spread.
Obama's comments came today during his YouTube interviews with YouTube bloggers, Bethany Mota, GloZell Green and Hank Green.
Some Obama nuggets from today's interview include this on marijuana:
"What you're seeing now is Colorado, Washington through state referenda, they're experimenting with legal marijuana," the president said in response to a question from host Hank Green.
"The position of my administration has been that we still have federal laws that classify marijuana as an illegal substance, but we're not going to spend a lot of resources trying to turn back decisions that have been made at the state level on this issue. My suspicion is that you're gonna see other states start looking at this."
Obama also addressed how we should treat people who are not violent drug offenders.
"What I am doing at the federal level," Obama responded, "is asking my Department of Justice just to examine generally how we are treating nonviolent drug offenders, because I think you're right."
"What we have done is instead of focusing on treatment -- the same way we focused, say, with tobacco or drunk driving or other problems where we treat it as public health problem -- we've treated this exclusively as a criminal problem," the president said. "I think that it's been counterproductive, and it's been devastating in a lot of minority communities. It presents the possibility at least of unequal application of the law, and that has to be changed."
President Obama and Attorney General Holder have repeatedly spoken out against the drug war and mass incarceration. Back last January President Obama made national news with an interview with the New Yorker.
"As has been well documented, 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," Obama told David Remnick.
The president expressed concern about disparities in arrests for marijuana possession. "Middle-class kids don't get locked up for smoking pot, and poor kids do," Obama said, adding that individual users shouldn't be locked up "for long stretches of jail time."
President Obama's moves coincide with Attorney General Eric Holder actions. They include:
• Calling on policymakers at all levels to find ways to reduce the number of people behind bars.
• Supporting efforts in Congress and the U.S. Sentencing Commission to reduce punitive sentencing.
• Supporting policies that made the sentences of thousands of prisoners shorter and fairer.
• Changing how the Justice Department charges people to reduce the application of draconian mandatory minimum sentencing.
• Establishing guidance allowing states to legalize and regulate marijuana with less federal interference.
• Establishing guidance to make it easier for banks to deal with state-legalized marijuana businesses.
• Promoting efforts to re-integrate formerly incarcerated individuals into society and eliminate barriers to successful re-entry.
• Supporting efforts in Congress and the U.S. Sentencing Commission to reduce punitive sentencing.
• Supporting policies that made the sentences of thousands of prisoners shorter and fairer.
• Changing how the Justice Department charges people to reduce the application of draconian mandatory minimum sentencing.
• Establishing guidance allowing states to legalize and regulate marijuana with less federal interference.
• Establishing guidance to make it easier for banks to deal with state-legalized marijuana businesses.
• Promoting efforts to re-integrate formerly incarcerated individuals into society and eliminate barriers to successful re-entry.
Incarceration is here to stay.
ReplyDeleteObama is a self-admitted, and commonly deluded dope user who still does drugs, and who still smokes cigarettes. He's hardly a credible advocate for changes to the drug laws. He's not off the dope. That's easy to see by the way he talks and thinks about dope. He acts as if dope is innocuous. He acts as if the problem is not dope, but instead, that the problem is arrest and incarceration. His drug treatment programs have been proven not to work. Drug treatment programs are a waste of money, and actually help spread drug abuse inn communities.
ReplyDeleteDope and dope money are now extensively integral to our system of elected government. And all the efforts to legalize dope have come about due to heavy lobbying investment by monied interests that want to capitalize on selling dope to young Americans. There is nothing more pernicious in our society today.
Obama's little talk does nothing and recommends nothing to address the problem. He sees the problem through a dope-deluded lens. The problem is incarceration, not dope, is his thesis. He sounds like every other loser high on dope to me.
Arresting the problem of drug abuse in the U.S. is a topic in which I would encourage in a debate. But the pro-dope advocates are all focused on legalization efforts. Make no mistake. Legalization advocates want all dope legalized. The same people who smoke pot, are the very same people who do all the other drugs. And they not only want all dope legalized, they want it to be legal to drive around stoned too. These people are completely dope-delusional. These are the same people who write posts claiming dope cures cancer, makes people better drivers, and is a cure for stupidity. Sure it is.
Colorado's Governor Hickenlooper recently came out and said, Colorado made a big mistake. No kidding. Drug use in Colorado, drug use of every type is up widely. The drug dealers are setting up shop in Colorado. Expect to see Colorado move to make marijuana illegal again soon. The citizens of Colorado are widely fed up with dope.
To address the problem of drug abuse it is important to cast a wide net, and make our communities inhospitable to drugs, drug dealers and drug users. That's the right focus. How is that done?
1) Dramatically increase the fines for drug possession of every sort.
2) Revoke the drivers licenses for those convicted of drug possession. Why should the rest of us be threatened by drug users who choose to alter the conscious state?
3) Increase drug testing for employment, and in educational settings.
4) Increase efforts to arrest and prosecute drug users in high schools and on college campuses across the country. Dope has infested American higher education for three generations now. It's time to turn the tide. Drug possession should be a reason for juvenile offender status, reform school, permanent expulsion from university, and the permanent job termination of any transportation worker, law enforcement personnel, medical personnel, educators, child care workers, or school personnel convicted drug possession.
4) Those convicted of drug possession should be publicly identified, and all forms of identification should note previous drug convictions. Drug abuse is a life-long problem.
There should be easy means for everyone, from law enforcement to landlords and neighbors, to discover who the dope using scoundrels are who have made the choice to do drugs.
Drugs are for dummies. And the dope-using dummies are dangerous in a free society. We all should know who these scoundrels are. And they should be given what they deserve, and lower status in our society. Choosing to do drugs needs to carry very real penalties to effectively control the drug problem.
If Obama would have been arrested for his admitted marijuana smoking he'd be lucky today to be sweeping the parking lot at Burger King on graveyard shift!
ReplyDeleteDerp. How long did it take you to figure that out, Obozo?
ReplyDeleteI say let all the dopers out and jail al the lying politicians!
ReplyDelete"Drugs are for dummies." does that include those that are addicted to legally prescribed prescription drugs?
ReplyDeleteDonald, your comment is a perfect summation of the effects of your lifetime of being exposed to taxpayer-supported brainwashing. Your ignorance about drugs is as profound as it is intentionally created by the people making a fortune on drug prohibition. If it were up to people like you, we could stay in the Dark Ages on this subject forever. Fortunately, this ray of light beginning to shine will not be extinguished by the likes of you.
ReplyDeleteSee? Here's a guy who writes that drug prohibition is like living in the Dark Ages. He sees his own drug use as a "ray of light beginning to shine".
ReplyDeleteWhat a dummy this guy is. His sole focus in life is dope and dope legalization. Get on this guy's bandwagon, if you must. And the guy who follows too. These guys are all the same with their completely irrational dope-is-good arguments. For deluded Tom, dope is poetically like a ray of light shining through the haze of the mess he has made of his mind, his future, and the future of all his drug culture associates that reinforce their idiocy.
Where's all your dope use leading, Tom? To jail? Into an early grave? Or into a mental health facility where you can find God and come out "clean" and qualified to be nothing more than a drug rehab counselor to a bunch of other losers high on dope?
In Maine it's incomprehensible the amount of money that is being spent and wasted, year in and year out, on fools like this guy, trying to rehabilitate them from the drug habits that completely have seized control of their thought processes.
There's an old saying in the drug crowd. Once a junky, always a junky.
Obama and this guy are like two peas in a pod on that score.
Your reply to me is more proof of the sheer depth of your brainwashing. I am not using any kind of drug: legal, illegal, prescription, or non-prescription. I have never in my life been addicted to anything. At 65, I am in fantastic health and haven't seen a doctor in years. When I'm in the outdoors I can usually fly by twenty-somethings on the trail -- going uphill. Yes, at earlier times in my life I have been personally familiar with certain "recreational" drugs, including the most dangerous of all: alcohol. I have known thousands of other persons who used some form/s of recreational drug/s. Given a choice between spending time with recreational drug users and close-minded knee-jerk controllers like you, I'll take the drug users -- they're always nicer, more interesting people.
ReplyDeleteI have spent a lifetime watching the effects of this nation's War on (some) Drugs and it has been a disaster, financially, socially, and particularly in regards to the rule of law under our Constitution. Our beloved Bill of Rights was being chipped away at under drug war rubric long before the phoney War on Terror finished killing it completely. You think you're on a mission to save this country from drugs, but I have never known a drug user who did more damage to this country than hard-core drug warriors like you.
Charlie Manson, is that YOU? How's the new wife treating ya? LoL
ReplyDeleteFace it, Bubba-Tom. Were you young today, you'd be one of those brain-damaged, addicted losers doing bath salts and Oxycontin every chance you got, literally throwing your life away.
You've forgotten what it's like to be young. Go back and read my posts again. I'm spot on. You should join the fight. The "drug war" as you call it, isn't a war at all. It's just a battle. And the only victories that can be won for the future are presaged by the battles we're willing to fight. You should be willing to fight this one with me.
Fighting this battle, keeping drug sales to the young out of the hands of the corporate greedy, reinforced by state sanction, is a battle worth fighting. At 65, you remember what the country was like when gambling was illegal. You remember what it was like before minimum wage retail workers were forced to work Sundays.
Get with the program. You've been sucked-in by the legalize dope craze that is destined to shackle all future generations with legal dope sales, if it ever gets off the ground.