Obama Changes View On Marijuana (Again)

If you are confused about just where President Obama stands on the issue of marijuana, you can be excused for that -- because the president has had several different positions on the matter. When he was running for the Senate, Barack Obama came out in favor of the decriminalization of marijuana. He held this position for several years, and even as late as January of 2008 (beginning his quest for the presidency) this position was repeated.

Evidently though, Mr. Obama and his campaign aides began to fear that being in favor of decriminalizing marijuana could cost him some votes. At the time, he was in a very close race with Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination. He changed his position -- and now said he was against the decriminalization of marijuana. He moderated that stance a bit by saying, if elected, he would stop the federal governments war on medical marijuana stores and users in the states where that was legal.

Unfortunately, he did not keep that campaign promise after becoming president. Instead of stopping the raids on legal medical marijuana distributors, his administration actually increased the number of raids -- and devised new ways to attack medical marijuana (such as going after landlords who rented or leased space to the providers & threatening to seize their property).

But this ridiculous war on marijuana did not stop the march toward legalization. More and more Americans began to realize that their federal government had been lying to them about marijuana for decades -- realizing that marijuana did have many real medical uses, and that it was not the dangerous drug the government had been telling them that it was (being far less harmful than many legal drugs). And as citizen views changed, so did the laws in many states.

 Currently, there are twenty states (and the District of Columbia) that have legalized the medical use of marijuana -- and there are four more states that have legislation pending to legalize medical marijuana (Minnesota, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania). And two states have gone even further. In the last election, Washington and Colorado citizens voted to legalize the sale and possession of small amounts of marijuana to adults for recreational use.

This created a dilemma for the Obama administration. Do they attack the new laws of Colorado and Washington -- pitting the federal government against the majority of citizens in those states? Do they continue a policy of attacking medical marijuana in nearly half of the states in the Union (again pitting themselves against the will of the majority in those states)? Is there even much hope to stem the rising tide of public opinion favoring the legalization (or at least the decriminalization) of marijuana?

After considering these questions for several months, President Obama has again changed his mind on marijuana. The Obama administration has decided to stop its ridiculous war on the medical marijuana states -- and to leave the states of Washington and Colorado alone in their efforts to institute reasonable rules for the possession, sale, and use of recreational marijuana. This was announced in a press conference last Thursday by the Department of Justice. They did however, in a face-saving effort, say there were eight things that might require federal intervention:

1. Distribution of marijuana to minors.

2. Revenue from sale of marijuana going to criminal enterprises.

3. The diversion of marijuana from states where it is legal to states where it is not.

4. State-authorized marijuana activity being used as a cover to traffic other illegal drugs.

5. Violence and use of firearms in the cultivation and distribution of marijuana.

6. "Drugged driving" or exacerbation of other health consequences associated with marijuana.

7. Growing of marijuana on public lands.

8. Possession and/or use of marijuana on federal government property.

This represents a welcome moderating of the federal government's attitude toward marijuana. It is not enough though. All the federal laws making marijuana sale, possession, and use should be overturned. But that seems to be a battle that must be fought on a state-by-state basis, since the politicians in the federal government don't have the foresight or courage to deal with this issue in any reasonable way. And that will happen. Now that Washington and Colorado have broken the ice on marijuana legalization, more states will follow their lead in the coming months and years -- and as the number of states increases, the federal government will be forced to reconsider the ridiculous national laws on marijuana.

But for now, this new stance of the Obama administration is good. I just hope he will keep this promise in a much better manner than he did his promise in 2008 to stop the war on medical marijuana.