Obama Says Treating Drug Use As a Criminal Problem Is "Counterproductive"

Huffington Post ^ | jan 22, 2015 | Tony Newman

[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."

[Gunslingr3]

The defense clause.

Can you cite the article and clause, I'm not familiar with the 'defense clause' you mention.

Are you one of the 'living document' liberals that believes the Constitution means whatever you want it to mean to thus allow whatever you want the government to do? Funny how this 'chemical weapon production' interpretation didn't occur to anyone before bothering to pass the 18th amendment to empower the government to outlaw the neurotoxic psychoactive drug ethyl alcohol.

I guess they weren't as clever as you.

[KoRn]

I agree. Crystal Meth is nothing but poison, and is as good example as any of a substance that shouldn’t be permitted, for MANY reasons.

Even manufacturing it is an EXTREME hazard. It’s a danger to anyone near where it’s being made, and the byproducts are a serious environmental hazard. I don’t believe that substance has any place in our society. I wonder how in the hell anyone even discovered it as a recreational ‘drug’ in the first place. It’s incredibly addictive, and LITERALLY destroys the people that ingest it in the worst physical ways.

[KoRn]

"Drugs are not victimless crimes. I have known and seen far too many people hurt by that sh*t."

They did it to themselves, and it would have happened whether the drugs were legal or not. The only difference is it was probably more costly to them, because it was illegal, given the expensive black market for whatever they were on. Many people get VERY addicted to prescription medications.

[rawcatslyentist]

>"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. "

You speak sarcastically, yet it is reality.

Morphine replaced opium, and heroin replaced morphine. It has happened already, and will happen again and again.

What's your point in persecuting cannabis users? Just like murdering, stealing, and enslaving lazy people? How does that stop the globalists?

At least cannabis users can be self sufficient. As stupid, and lazy as they are even they can figure out how to put a seed in the ground.

[servantboy777]

>>What you aren’t grasping<<

That gave me quite the belly laugh. What are you, the shell answer man? lol

[tacticalogic]

Why do you think it's appropriate to use such ASININE statements such as that? Anybody who is induced to using drugs is a victim. The criminal is the person who supplied and/or induced them to try it.

You read the title of the article, right?

[webstersII]

So how long do you want your child locked up?

There are no exceptions in your war on drugs, no mercy for those caught, no matter the circumstances. If they are caught it doesn’t matter where they got it.

I guess you’ll want to throw the book at them, huh? Otherwise you would be a hypocrite.

[SunkenCiv]

"I should know! Besides being a druggie, I'm also the picture in the dictionary under the term 'counterproductive'!"

[aces]

yep its sad what has been going on, people in jail for doing what the government allows via depression, anxiety meds, kicked God’s creation in the teeth as well as God’s children in the name of man knows best?

do we see any place where man knows best about anything over our creator Lord..nah..Man Don’t know a thing..

but Man Knows how to rob the hell out of everybody in the name of big pharma..and some fake rightiousness to boot..

[ConservingFreedom]

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.

The 400,000 addict number

One number can't establish a rise. And your one number agrees with the DEA numbers I've been citing.

You don't have any good numbers

As you've said, "Till someone presents an argument that there are better figures, I will have no choice but to use what is available." What's available, from the DEA, says that addiction was low and declining in post-Civil War America: "In 1880 [...] there were over 400,000 opium addicts in the U.S. [...] By 1900, about one American in 200 was either a cocaine or opium addict." (http://web.archive.org/web/20110529221013/http://www.justice.gov/dea/demand/speakout/06so.htm) 400,000 in a population of 50M is one in 125 - ergo, between 1880 and 1900 addiction declined. [underlined omitted by DiogenesLamp]

You can keep quoting me out of context all you want,

ROTFL! As shown by the link I keep providing and you omitted, the only difference is that when you posted those words they served the argument you were making but now they don't - tough.

but you still don't have any good numbers. *MY* numbers

You don't have numbers but only a single number - which can't establish the rise you claimed. And your number agrees with the corresponding one from the DEA that I cite.

are good because they have provenance . We know where they came from and how and why they got recorded.

Provenance is ideal - but in its absence, "those are the figures being put out by the people who make it their job to come up with such figures." "Till someone presents an argument that there are better figures, I will have no choice but to use what is available."

[SZonian]

Yep and krokodil is another...

[ConservingFreedom]

Alcohol and tobacco are regulated to the point of exagerration

And other drugs should be regulated to a comparable degree: no DUI, no sale to minors, no public intoxication, etc.

...those aren’t my windmills.

I'm not saying you need to man the ramparts - I'm just noting that one who wants to be taken seriously in decrying "substances that are harmful/addictive and deleterious" must at least acknowledge that alcohol and tobacco fit those criteria (as many Drug Warriors won't do).

So essentially, if I understand your argument, any and all drugs should be legalized regardless of their effects?

Yes, I know of no drug whose effects are such that its use is in and of itself a violation of others' rights.

I wonder why pharmaceutical companies would create “non-habit forming” pharmaceuticals?

Because patients genrally don't want to form habits.

If we return to not having options as a result of costs and the market and the only options I then have are the opiate based or none at all...what then? [Besides not crashing on my bike.]

As an adult, that's your decision to make - not everyone has the same pain threshold nor the same susceptibility to addiction.

See the last paragraph. Does the Dr’s. statement make him a nanny stater?

http://prescription-drug-abuse.com/drug-abuse-articles/non-habit-forming-painkiller-hit-the-market/

To qualify as a nanny stater one must invoke the power of the state, which the doctor does not appear to have done.

[ConservingFreedom]

Back in the Jimmy years, his Surgeon General maintained that cocaine was a great recreational drug, no addiction, no side effects, lots of benefits!

I can't find any evidence for any surgeon general having said that - are you sure you aren't thinking of Slick Willy's surgeon general Joycelyn Elders and her call for studying the legalization of drugs?

[SZonian]

"...patients genrally don't want to form habits."

Just a polite way of saying "addiction".

[Kenny Bunk]

Please, in re any evidence for any surgeon general having said that - are you sure you aren't thinking of Slick Willy's surgeon general Joycelyn Elders....
Please forgive me, I am trying to forget both those eras!

Carter and Cocaine, Peter Bourne

[ConservingFreedom]

Even manufacturing it is an EXTREME hazard. It’s a danger to anyone near where it’s being made, and the byproducts are a serious environmental hazard.

These are problems only because it's made by criminals in ways and places chosen for law enforcement5 avoidance rather than public safety - all due to the War on Drugs.

I wonder how in the hell anyone even discovered it as a recreational ‘drug’ in the first place.

Being more potent than other drugs it's comparatively easier to hide - which is a relevant criterion due, again, to the War on Drugs.

I'd like to see meth gone - but that can only happen if demand is reduced, which can only happen if we abandon our counterproductive War on less harmful drugs like marijuana and thus make higher the disincentive wall between them and meth.

[KoRn]

Quite true! If people could easily and more cheaply obtain other less harmful drugs like Marijuana, or other ‘organic’ substances, they wouldn’t have a desire to do something terrible and toxic like Crystal Meth.

[ConservingFreedom]

Peter Bourne definitely whitewashed cocaine - which is the flip side of, say, John Walters' demonizing pot. Give adults unspun facts and let them make their own decisions.

[ConservingFreedom]

FYI, in another drug thread DiogenesLamp said, "Reliable or not, those are the figures being put out by the people who make it their job to come up with such figures. No doubt they are a statistical extrapolation. Till someone presents an argument that there are better figures, I will have no choice but to use what is available."

[Kenny Bunk]

whitewashed cocaine

Got it!