President Obama,
I was very dismayed by your flippant response today to an online question about drug legalization. Laughing it off as a joke is an insult to the millions of your constituents who want drug policy reform, and displays either a staggering ignorance of the issue or a stubborn unwillingness to admit the truth.
President Obama,
I was very dismayed by your flippant response today to an online question about drug legalization. Laughing it off as a joke is an insult to the millions of your constituents who want drug policy reform, and displays either a staggering ignorance of the issue or a stubborn unwillingness to admit the truth.
As a confessed recreational drug user yourself, you must realize that criminalization is an insane solution to the problem of drug use and abuse. Consider what would have happened if a Honolulu police officer had caught you smoking marijuana in your youth. Rather than a career in academia and public service, you could have faced a prison sentence, social alienation, and possibly even coerced psychiatric treatment. One thing is for sure: you would not be President of the United States.
It's no secret that drug use is rampant in adult American society. Public figures from George W. Bush to Snoop Dogg to Rush Limbaugh to Michael Phelps are known illegal drug users. Why is it illegal at all? Criminalization is a relic of the counter-counter-culture backlash of the Nixon years, a policy that was unfortunately perpetuated by every President since, wreaking incalculable damage upon millions of Americans, most of them lower-class and many of them minorities.
Legalizing drugs would curtail the immense, multi-billion-dollar budget of the DEA, free up overtaxed court resources, and end the horror of incarceration for the millions of ordinary Americans who, like you yourself, have done nothing wrong save choosing to use recreational drugs.
Furthermore, legalization provides an immediate solution to an issue you referenced in your news conference Tuesday: it would totally destroy the cartels that are currently waging war against the Mexican and American governments, not to mention the gangs that make the streets of American cities dangerous. Alcohol prohibition in the 1920s facilitated a surge in organized crime across America; similarly, the prohibition of other recreational drugs such as marijuana and crack has enabled gang leaders and cartel bosses to make huge profits, pumping money and thus power into the hands of violent criminals.
Finally, the war on drugs is built on a system of hypocrisy. Alcohol and tobacco, well-known to be dangerous drugs, are available in every gas station, regulated and taxed. You yourself consume both, as do I. Meanwhile, users of other drugs are branded as criminals and thrown in jail. Why are these two drugs legal when so many others, including relatively safe ones such as marijuana, are not? Alcohol and tobacco companies have exerted a great deal of influence on federal drug policy. I implore you to base our drug policy on science rather than lobbyists' donations, as you have recently done with our stem cell research policy.
There is no doubt that drugs do pose a threat to our society. Abuse of alcohol, meth, heroin, tobacco, crack, and cocaine have destroyed bodies, minds, lives, and families across our nation. But many Americans, like you, Mr. President, consume recreational drugs including alcohol, caffeine, nicotine, and marijuana and go on to lead successful, happy, productive lives. Our drug policy should focus on rehabilitation for those in need, not pointless punitive sentencing of otherwise law-abiding drug users. We must stop conflating use with abuse.
This is not a joke. When you simply laugh off a suggestion that marijuana, indisputably one of the safest drugs in the world, should be legalized, you perpetuate a senseless double standard and display the draconian, Nixonian attitude that Americans have suffered under for the past thirty years. End the violence, fear, and economic hardship caused by the drug war. End the drug war. You promised us change, Mr. President, and we call for it now.