Posted on 01/28/2015 10:52:45 AM PST by balch3
President Barack Obama continues to speak out against mass incarceration, the devastating impact of our drug policies on communities of color and his expectation that marijuana legalization will continue to spread.
Obama's comments came today during his YouTube interviews with YouTube bloggers, Bethany Mota, GloZell Green and Hank Green.
Some Obama nuggets from today's interview include this on marijuana:
"What you're seeing now is Colorado, Washington through state referenda, they're experimenting with legal marijuana," the president said in response to a question from host 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."
Obama also addressed how we should treat people who are not violent drug offenders.
"What I am doing at the federal level," Obama responded, "is asking my Department of Justice just to examine generally how we are treating nonviolent drug offenders, because I think you're right."
"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," the president 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."
(Excerpt) Read more at huffingtonpost.com ...
No, it isn't funny. You are once again trying to mislead people by omitting information critical to a correct understanding. You and I hashed out the contradictions in your source for this claim once before. But here you are again, pushing it some more even though it's been debunked.
Drug usage was *NOT* declining, it was going up after the civil war.
Which would not exist, if drugs were freely and legally available.
Do you really want to defend the black market, or would you take away their profit motive through capitalism?
Right now Prohibition is a monopoly creator! Forbidding free market competition! Only a free market will cause competition! Supply and demand will take care of the rest.
The issue is NOT 'communities of color' - it's BLACKS and ILLEGALS. Blacks and illegals ARE the criminal problem.
That is the road to hell right there. Libertarians never recognize the harm caused because it usually happens much later, like the bullet that kills a man forty years after it hits him. Libertarians never see a proximate cause because the consequences are generally distant in time from the initiating event.
Introducing someone to drugs *IS* harming them, or is at least close enough to be regarded as reckless endangerment. Some people can try drugs and do not get addicted, others do. It is, in fact, a genetic crap shoot as to whether any given person will be swallowed up by a drug when others will reject it.
It is just as much of a failure as the war on murder. Anyone thinking that "success" is the total elimination of all drug use is irrational. Like murder, it can only be kept down to a low level (using current methodology) but it cannot be eliminated.
The "War on Drugs" is not an actual war, it is a holding action. So far it has successfully held drug addiction down to 2% of the population for over 100 years.
In China, drug addiction had risen to 50% in a 60-70 year period.
The negative effects produced by such things pale in comparison to the negative effects produced by drugs. Like it or not, severity is a significant factor in deciding what to ban or legalize.
You misspelled the word "Dodged".
> Government has managed not to tax into existence any significant black market in alcohol - nor, except for a few liberal east coast cities, in tobacco.
In the past, yeah maybe but things are changing quickly. Things are not the way they used to be.
That is because we never HAD a war on drugs, thanks to the leftists, and cowardly politicians. We had wrist slapping.
When you get the ZOT this time, you won’t get a third chance.
I wish he would get the ZOT. Virtually all he does is get on here and push drug legalization using the same rehashed nonsense arguments.
Obama is being cynical. If “traditional” conservatives hate it, he loves it, just out of spite. He is not trying to be any kind of systematic or principled libertarian here. Libertarians should fear greeks even when they seem to bear gifts.
You haven't whupped anyone in debate, because you don't debate. You simply chant a mantra like a lunatic Hare Krishna. You also waste freepers time reading your pro-drug drivel instead of discussion more important and more substantial issues.
The ascendency of your pro-pot mindset is simply another system of the evil rot pervading our society, and as I have said before, is exactly like Homosexuality.
All this stuff comes out in a society which is in decline. Drugs, Perverts, Kooks and nuts of every size and flavor. You are just another one.
> Legalized drugs will kill a nation.
Well isn’t that the leftist’s intent?
But as usual, you are *IMPLYING* that the legalization of pot had something to do with the decrease in traffic fatalities. This is what you do. You make implications without getting the facts straight about what really happened.
That not everything is going bad in Colorado is irrelevant to the point. Those things directly attributable to marijuana appear to be going bad.
Don't recall that one
You mean to say that you missed a pot article? You must be slipping. I don't even make a point to look for them, but like queerness, you can't avoid seeing them flaunting their weirdity.
> When drugs are legalized, drug usage increases following a logistical growth pattern.
Drugged sheeple are complacent, lethargic, and too tied to fight back. Soros and his mini-Me know this.
You've pointed out that the DEA's conclusion contradicted its data - which impugns only the DEA's ability to draw conclusions, not its data.
Drug usage was *NOT* declining, it was going up after the civil war.
So you keep claiming although the only available numbers say the opposite.
And yet you keep coming around ...
Yeah, like in China where the Capitalistic enterprise ran by the British East India company wrecked China's economy and demographics by spreading poisonous death and misery throughout the nation for Fun and Profit!
I can just see pharmaceutical companies racing to produce ever more addicting substances which they can manufacture at low costs and thereby gain control of their markets. Why they could make Ketracel white into a reality!
Note the drug pump in his neck? Good ole Capitalism!
No, that's your functional illiteracy at work again.
"Not because of any epidemic of cocaine addiction (whatever nanny-staters of the day may have claimed).
"epidemic" and "cocaine addiction" are separate yet related topics. If you want to combine the statement, that's fine by me.
But you have yet to answer the question...
If cocaine isn't a harmful/addictive or deleterious substance, why remove it from Coca Cola?
Maybe you'll answer this one?
If morphine isn't a harmful/addictive or deleterious substance, why remove it from so-called "soothing syrups"?
Maybe you'll answer this one?
If heroin isn't a harmful/addictive or deleterious substance, why remove it from "analgesics"?
At risk of being accused of being a nanny stater, could it possibly be that these substances were in fact harmful/addictive and deleterious?
If they weren't and were legitimate medicinal products, why not continue to use them?
They were, afterall, legal. This is what your one trick pony is all about, isn't it? Re-legalizing these types of substances.
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