Mar 26 2009
President Obama Answered Question About Legalizing Marijuana at Internet Town Hall Meeting Today
President Obama had an internet town hall meeting today. I tuned in and was impressed to see the newest version of the FDR fireside Chats. There were almost 100,000 questions submitted and over three and a half million votes from all over the country to decide what Americans want to talk with their president about. In case you missed it but are interested you can go to whitehouse.gov to read their blog entry about the town hall meeting which even has a full transcript if you want detail.
One of the questions that hit home for us here in California was about legalizing marijuana to create revenue. Last month Democratic State Assemblyman, Tom Ammiano, introduced a bill that would legalize pot and allow the State of California to regulate and tax its sale. His thought was that it would bring billions of dollars to our cash strapped state. President Obama didn’t agree with that theory.
Courtesy of YouTube here is his response to the question about legalizing marijuana:
I respect Obama he is a talented politician, President Obama seems to posse’s insightful, reasonable judgment on many issues, although in the case of marijuana prohibition laws I find Obama’s choice to answer with mocking humor to be lacking. Smoking marijuana is an easy thing to laugh about, it seems there is something about being stoned that brings a smile to people’s faces, however marijuana prohibition is not a joke. We should not be making jokes as millions of Americans are arrested for being caught on the wrong side of moral politicking, we should not laugh as we spend over 30 billion dollars a year going after Americans for smoking weed, we should not giggle and poke fun as we watch billions of dollars in tax revenue slip through our fingers each year, and should we not be jolly as thousands of people are murdered by cartels profiting from America’s moral hypocrisy. I believe there are profound latent consequences in prohibition that are not even factored in to our assessments of the effects of illegality, such as how we view the rule of law and the role of law enforcement in the community, the divisiveness between users and non users, the stigma of mental shock of incarceration. I say pot prohibition is no joke it has real costs paid for in real lives. Freedom is achieved in a country by placing responsibility in the hands of the citizen and not by the state legally enforcing morality.
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