Law & Politics

Obama Predicts More States Will Legalize Cannabis, Source: http://thenationalmarijuananews.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/barack-obama-weed-elite-daily.jpgMany have become well aware of Obama’s history with weed in his youth. While his stance on the issue of legalization in the past has been less than sympathetic, he has recently made statements predicting a bright future for the legalization movement in the U.S.

“What you’re seeing now is Colorado, Washington, through state referenda, they’re experimenting with legal marijuana,” says Obama said in an interview with 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.”

So it is still the federal policy of the Obama administration to prohibit cannabis use, but they’re not going to interfere with state legislation. Indeed with all of the legalizations and relaxed restrictions on cannabis that occurred during his tenure, it is clear that Obama’s administration has encouraged less centralized federal restriction on cannabis and letting states do their own thing. That’s a policy both Republicans who believe in ‘less government control’ and ‘pot-smoking hippie’ liberals can get behind.

Obama also engaged discussion with the prison problem in our country due to mandatory minimum sentencing charges for minor drug offenses. “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,” Obama 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.”

Cannabis use is still illegal under federal law, however. But the Department of Justice has relaxed its policy on states that have legalized weed. Attorney General Eric Holder told the governors of Washington and Colorado that the Department of Justice will allow for the states to go on implementing policy of legal use of cannabis. Although this comes with the caveat that the Department of Justice reserves the right to file a preemption lawsuit at a later time, because state governments are still under the ever-looming ominous power of the federal government and the Controlled Substances Act.

In light of Obama’s recent statements, Kevin Sabet, co-founder of anti-legalization group Smart Approaches to Marijuana, is quite displeased, saying Obama has taken “two steps back for the legalization movement.” “What is interesting to me is that the president did not take the opportunity to endorse legalization — though he could have,” he continued, “The president is right that we need a balanced public health and public safety strategy for drugs. Indeed, as he says, we need to focus on treatment. Legalization advocates would rather just focus on letting people use drugs.”

But hey, if the naysayers are becoming this tolerant, it marks a changing climate in the national attitude and policy towards cannabis. Let’s hope we continue to see relaxed policy implemented against cannabis for the rest of Obama’s term, and in the administrations to come.