Obama on Pot (Joe)

Over at Hullabaloo, Dday posts a video of President Obama' s recent town hall, in which the President "responds" to a question about the economic consequences of marijuana legalization.  (I would embed the video here, but I'm not internet-savvy enough to pull that off.)  Basically, Obama says that he's answering a bunch of questions based on the online votes the questions received -- he's apologizing for even taking this question.  But because 3.5 million people voted, and this was one of the most popular questions, well, he's got to address the question of whether legalization would improve the economy or create jobs -- but not before smirking and making the smart-aleck remark, "I don't know what this says about the online audience."  After the audience laughs, he again notes how popular the question was, then asserts, "The answer is, no, I don't think that is a good strategy to grow our economy."  Obama and the audience then share another laugh, the audience applauds, and he presumably moves on to important, serious, non-hippie questions.  Dday remarks:

There are two issues here. First, legalization actually does deserve a serious response. You don't have to agree with it - I'm not certain that I do - but you ought to engage with it. The war on drugs has utterly failed, so it's not like the status quo is any less silly. But the second issue is even more damaging. Obama's Administration wants to bypass the media filter and open the tools of communication to a much larger community. And then a non-Village approved question gets asked and he snickers about it? For a real community interaction to work there has to be a certain level of respect, and that was apparently sorely lacking.

In a subsequent post Digby adds:

But I think this speaks to the deeper problem of our government's approach to dealing with drugs everywhere. When Obama and his very enthusiastic audience laughed and applauded his condescension, it was sadly obvious that administration is as irrational and anti-intellectual on that issue as the Bush administration was on science during its eight years. It's a dangerous attitude considering what's happening south of the border right now. We need rationality more than ever right now.

I agree, of course.  This is extremely disappointing behavior.  First, Is it really necessary to insult liberals?  It would have been better to simply not address the question at all.  He's "our" President and he's taking shots at us, making us out to be the lunatic fringe?

Second, the question deserves a serious answer.  I'm a realist enough not to have ever expected the 2009 U.S. President to support legalization.  But isn't Obama supposed to be an intellectual, rational leader, the likes of whom we haven't seen in this country in many years?  And given the utter failure of the war on drugs, the recent and ongoing major problems that Mexican drug cartels have posed for the U.S., the relative harmlessness of marijuana's effects on users, and the high as opposed to a condescending, out-of-hand dismissal -- is clearly called for.  economic and social costs of prosecution and incarceration, a rational conversation -- (And last I checked, there is a real push in California for legalization legislation, backed up by real popularly elected legislators and everything, not just us wacko activist bloggers on the internet.)

Look, a real discussion doesn't have to result in the conclusion that marijuana should be legalized, or even that it should be quasi-legalized only as a prescription medication.  Data are inconclusive, albeit mainly because the federal government has consistently made performing scientific research in this country close to impossible.  There would have been plausible arguments for Obama to make which indicate that legalization wouldn't be a good move -- perhaps even on purely economic grounds.  Sadly, that's not how Obama approached this.  Instead he sounded exactly like President Bush and administration officials sounded countless times during the W. years, when mocking science, or opposition to torture.

Update:

Comments

[Ruchira]

Okay Joe, I embedded the video for you.

I think Obama is talking a bit too much in public nowadays and is therefore making some unexpected gaffes. He is normally more thoughtful. The marijuana legalization question should have been dealt with more seriously, I agree. But what did you expect him to say? He probably is personally in favor of legalization or at least, for loosening the standards of criminalization of pot. But there is no public consensus on this yet. And I suspect he didn't want to come out on either side of the debate because he thinks that it is not high enough on his priority list to spend his political capital on. So he sniggered. I was on the other hand, very impressed with Hillary Clinton's boldness in blaming the demand for illegal drugs in America as the main cause of fueling drug related violence in Mexico. She was also forthright in pointing to the sale of assault weapons in the US which helps arm the drug lords to their teeth. In this endless and unwinnable tug of war, it was good to hear someone take responsibility for our own life style rather than always blame another country for their lawlessness.

[Joe]

Thanks! :)

Now that I think of it, he actually could have ducked the question respectfully. "There is a lack of evidence for the view that legalization will help the economy." If he wanted to take it a step further and oppose legalization (which is where I'd place his demeanor, rather than coming down in the neutral column), he could add, "Use would increase, further straining our healthcare system, and increased police activity would be necessary for DUI-type offenses." To come down very strongly, add something about it being a gateway drug and the costs of other drugs, and maybe also something about moral opposition.

I think there are costs to expressing a Bushian attitude to serious questions (and possibly to unserious questions) that go beyond the legalization question, although this also leperizes the legalization issue by painting it as beyond the pale.

[Dean C. Rowan]

But Ruchira, he did come out on a side of the debate, in two respects. First, he unambiguously responded that legalization "is not a good way to grow the economy," and second, as you suggest, he relegates the question to a position low on his list. The pot legalization question is, to me, like the abortion question, a non-question. I cannot fathom how these issues are at all debatable, really, in the real world. The controversy is surreal, as if we were arguing over the course of US history had George Washington been born a horse. (See National Lampoon's high school history textbook parody.)

Yes, Obama's response was "realist," i.e., politically astute but chicken-shit. Ah, well. Who'm I to talk? I'm as quietist as they come. But hey, Joe, who says he was insulting only liberals? You don't think conservatives and libertarians light up now and then?

[Joe]

True enough, Dean.

Actually, it looks like twelve states have medical marijuana programs (not the same thing as full legalization, but close enough for this point): Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington. Conservative states with libertarian streaks are represented -- Alaska and Montana. Most of the liberal states are there, although Massachusetts is missing. The interesting ones are the purple states: Colorado, Maryland, Michigan, Nevada. This seems to suggest that Obama's attitude is out of the mainstream here.

(I still think legalization is seen as a liberal issue, though, especially when responded to as Obama did, with the pot-smoking-hippie stereotype implicit in his derision.)

[Ruchira]

But Obama himself used to be the "pot-smoking-hippie" type himself. So that's not the reason for his derision. It is probably more due to the fact that Tim Geithner and Larry Summers have not told him that legalizing pot makes economic sense.

Drug legalization is not solely a liberal issue. Some libertarians may be even more passionate on this matter.

Here is more on the issue and a related You Tube video.

[Dean C. Rowan]

And here's the Dead doing Casey Jones. Take that, Geithner and Summers!

[Justin]

i think that marijuana is the best solution to the recession all all of the economic problems that the world is facing today not only will it's sale create massive amounts of revenue, it will create many jobs for people.