Why Obama Really Might Decriminalize Marijuana

[grace]

Why Obama Really Might Decriminalize Marijuana

By John H. Richardson

23 December 2008

Esquire

http://www.esquire.com/the-side/richardson...lization-122308

 

Turns out, with several drug-war veterans close to the president-elect's ear, insiders think reform could come in Obama's second term -- or sooner

 

Famously, Franklin Delano Roosevelt saved the United States banking system during the first seven days of his first term.

 

And what did he do on the eighth day? "I think this would be a good time for beer," he said.

 

Congress had already repealed Prohibition, pending ratification from the states. But the people needed a lift, and legalizing beer would create a million jobs. And lo, booze was back. Two days after the bill passed, Milwaukee brewers hired six hundred people and paid their first $10 million in taxes. Soon the auto industry was tooling up the first $12 million worth of delivery trucks, and brewers were pouring tens of millions into new plants.

 

"Roosevelt's move to legalize beer had the effect he intended," says Adam Cohen, author of Nothing To Fear, a thrilling new history of FDR's first hundred days. "It was, one journalist observed, 'like a stick of dynamite into a log jam.'"

 

Many in the marijuana world are now hoping for something similar from Barack Obama. After all, the president-elect said in 2004 that the war on drugs had been "an utter failure" and that America should decriminalize pot:

 

In July, Obama told Rolling Stone that he believed in "shifting the paradigm" to a public-health approach: "I would start with nonviolent, first-time drug offenders. The notion that we are imposing felonies on them or sending them to prison, where they are getting advanced degrees in criminality, instead of thinking about ways like drug courts that can get them back on track in their lives -- it's expensive, it's counterproductive, and it doesn't make sense."

 

Meanwhile, economists have been making the beer argument. In a paper titled "Budgetary Implications of Marijuana Prohibition," Dr. Jeffrey Miron of Harvard argues that legalized marijuana would generate between $10 and $14 billion in savings and taxes every year -- conclusions endorsed by 300 top economists, including Milton "Free Market" Friedman himself.

 

And two weeks ago, when the Obama team asked the public to vote on the top problems facing America, this was the public's No. 1 question: "Will you consider legalizing marijuana so that the government can regulate it, tax it, put age limits on it, and create millions of new jobs and a billion dollar industry right here in the U.S.?"

 

But alas, the answer from Camp Obama was -- as it has been for years -- a flat one-liner: "President-elect Obama is not in favor of the legalization of marijuana." And at least two of Obama's top people are drug-war supporters: Rahm Emanuel has been a long-time enemy of reform, and Joe Biden is a drug-war mainstay who helped create the position of "drug czar."

 

Meanwhile, in 2007, the last year for which statistics are available, 782,000 Americans were arrested for marijuana-related crimes (90 percent of them for possession), with approximately 60,000 to 85,000 of them serving sentences in jail or prison. It's the continuation of an unnecessary stream of suffering that now has taught generations of Americans just how capricious their government can be. The irony is that the preference for "decriminalization" over legalization actually supports the continued existence of criminal drug mafias.

 

Nevertheless, the marijuana community is guardedly optimistic. "Reformers will probably be disappointed that Obama is not going to go as far as they want, but we're probably not going to continue this mindless path of prohibition," NORML executive director Allen St. Pierre tells me.

 

Some of Obama's biggest financial donors are friends of the legalization movement, St. Pierre notes. "Frankly, George Soros, Peter Lewis, and John Sperling -- this triumvirate of billionaires -- if those three men, who put up $50 to $60 million to get Democrats and Obama elected, can't pick up the phone and actually get a one-to-one meeting on where this drug policy is going, then maybe it's true that when you give money, you don't expect favors."

 

Another member of that moneyed group: Marsha Rosenbaum, the former head of the San Francisco office of the Drug Policy Alliance, who quit last year to become a fundraiser for Obama and "bundled" an impressive $204,000 for his campaign. She said that based on what she hears from inside the transition team, she expects Obama to play it very safe. "He said at one point that he's not going to use any political capital with this -- that's a concern," Rosenbaum tells me. And the Path to Change will probably have to pass through the Valley of Studies and Reports. "I'm hoping that what the administration will do," she says, "is something this country hasn't done since 1971, which is to undertake a presidential commission to look at drug policy, convene a group of blue-ribbon experts to look at the issue, and make recommendations."

 

But ultimately, Rosenbaum remains confident that those recommendations would call for an end to the drug war. "Once everything settles down in the second term, we have a shot at seeing some real reform."

 

Still, a certain paranoia prevails. Rumors about Obama's choice for drug czar have lingered on Republican Congressman Jim Ramstad. "He's been a standard anti-drug warrior for the whole time he's been in Congress," says St. Pierre. Another possibility is Atlanta police chief Richard Pennington, who raises fears in the legalization community of more of the same law-enforcement model. Another prospect stirring the pothead waters is Dr. Don Vereen, the chief drug policy thinker on the transition team. "He's really a believer in prohibition and he can excite an audience," says Rosenbaum, who says a friend on the transition team refused to hint at final contenders for the drug czar pick. "I'm joking with him, 'I'm going to have to open up the New York Times for this, aren't I?'" His answer: "We're going to send out smoke signals."

 

Wall Street: Historical Fact vs. Fiction

You can read my review of that new FDR book, Nothing to Fear, in the new issue of Esquire, but believe me, you can't flip a page in that book without coming across some horrifying parallel between 1932 and 2008. Did you know, for example, that in the last days of his administration, Herbert Hoover tried to save the banking system? He set up an outfit called the Reconstruction Finance Corporation and instructed it to give billions to "troubled banks, mortgage companies and other financial institutions." Unfortunately, Hoover turned over the R.F.C. to a banker named Charles Dawes who was best known for fighting against extending "the dole" to hungry veterans of World War I. "It was, as a result, embarrassing when it came out that a bank owned by Dawes' family had received a $90 million R.F.C. loan," Cohen writes. "Critics joked that R.F.C. stood for 'Relief For Charlie,' and argued that Dawes' double standard proved that the Hoover administration cared only about the wealthy."

[Naycha]

Articles like this give me a little hope that cannabis will be legalised in the U.S, and that Australia will follow like the sheep that it is.

 

I wish Australia would just grow some balls and stand up for humanity.

[Wayne Smith]

Thats exactly how I feel Naycha. Australians want legalisation and I think the Legalise Cannabis Party of Queensland has a serious shot at winning the state election. The support is there. Its just a matter of getting the Party registered in time and finding enough ballsy people prepared to stand as candidates. I can get 500 members just around Dalby. However, they need to be the kind of staunch supporters who are prepared to confirm their membership if the QEC contact them.

 

I'm still working on completing the membership application form while double checking the whole time that I haven't given the opposition parties any reason to lock me up like they did Pauline Hanson. This country is so overregulated it makes my head spin. Down the track we'll probably have to ask would be candidates to pay the $250 electoral commission fee themselves. Sometimes I really begin to doubt that we actually live in a democracy when new parties are so difficult to organise. Combined with a preferential voting system seemingly designed to keep everyone but Labor and the LNP out of office, it can be quite disheartening.

 

But I'll do my best to have things rolling by election time. Once registered the party will appear in the government gazette and be announced in the courier mail which should help a little with advertising our presence to the general public. Hopefully some volunteers will step forward to offer some help too.

 

I'm just an organiser trying to get this off the ground. I have no political aspirations or career plans. Money doesn't interest me and I certainly have no wish to be the star of the show. I've been feverishly emailing celebrities who might act as spokespeople for this grassroots organisation and become the face of cannabis legalisation in Australia. It's a long road ahead.

Edited January 8, 2009 by Wayne Smith

[konflikt]

i seen a clip on you tube where obama says he disagrees with marijuana laws as they stand at the moment and is open to decriminalising marijuana for medical use....that would be a good starting point if nothing else

[SukonmiSkunk]

geez.. who would have thought a bunch of pot heads could save the failing economy?...

[Rocker]

Good luck Wayne Smith.

 

I'll wait and see with President Obama.

 

In my world Australia is much the same after Howard went. All the pollies that come and go have never made much difference to my life.

The hard attitude to cannabis is coming from both sides of politics anyway.

[duckyduckduck]

I think this is a very special kind of 'hope'.

 

So long as Rep. Byrd is in congress this will never happen.

[Wayne Smith]

I don't know who will end up leading the LCP or what deals it mind end up making with other parties in terms of preferences and such. Hopefully it will hold together as a political entity and not sell out its fundamental principles. Once we have 500 registered members the group will have to vote for official leaders and staff willing to dedicate a little of their time to administering the organisation. Basically sending off quarterly reports to ECQ and that sort of thing.

[Nooby]

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=wQr9ezr8UeA

 

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=cpBzQI_7ez8

 

 

hmmmm

[jabez]

The Americans are finally waking up

 

They have anti-prohibition organizations popping up everywhere, one of the most prominent is LEAP (law enforcement against prohibition), which has ten thousand members, Mexico is on the verge of collapse cause of violent drug cartels (who supply illegal drugs to the biggest illegal drug market in the world, the US), America is in the middle of huge reccession and they are looking everywhere to cut wasteful spending and 13 states have legal medical cannabis.

 

Yep, this is the closest we have ever been to victory.

Edited January 22, 2009 by jabez