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 ...
“Repeal the drug use laws, but make being under the influence of a controlled substance (or whatever the new name for them becomes) an aggravating factor in the commission of any other crime (violent or property crime alike).
Explicitly disallow drug use as a mitigating factor in other offenses.”
I personally could care less if people want to use drugs...coke, meth, pot, etc. It’s their life...if they want to end it in pain and misery, so be it.
What I have a problem with is them getting in a car and driving down the street while high, or pulling stupid stunts that jeopardize the lives of others.
Your suggestions would be a good approach.
Funny how he treats this exactly the same way he treats illegal immigration. That is, it would be funny if it weren’t...well...criminal.
Barrack Obama and the left-strong supporters of States Rights! I am amazed.
Right. Put the on public welfare and let the rest of us pay for their irresponsibility.
I don't have a problem with this conceptually. Obviously alcohol, being a drug, would be included as a substance which would be an aggrivating factor and we still need to keep the driving while intoxicated laws on the books.
However... we still need to punish people who commit crimes against people or property, and NOT allow people to use drug (or alcohol) use as an excuse.
“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.”
Translation: he wants it to be legal, but he won’t back out of the treaties that force the feds to keep it illegal, so he is taking the coward’s way out and sitting on his hands.
Why slap Obama’s name on them? They’ve been around for many years before he came along and none of the Republicans in charge did squat about them.
Is a crime still a crime if the federal government has no authority to criminalize it?
Dopers and drug users are not in jail because they use drugs.
They are in jail because criminals are dopers and drug users.
And no matter how legal you make these drugs; it still will NOT reduce the crime/poverty/unemployment rates and welfare roles that dopers and drug users are apart of.
Good luck. Most of the nanny staters are so ignorant they don’t even know where the government claims to find that authority, much less what else they claim to have authority to do based on that interpretation (such as Obamacare).
"Communities of color" sounds totally racist to me. Plenty of white people are in jail on drug charges. So does he propose to "help" black folk and leave the white guys in jail?
Whatever he proposes, taxpayers of any and all colors as well as no color at all can expect to pay for it. (We've seen that there is no problem that is so bad that Obama can't make it even worse by spending money on it.)
Only morons are going to do hard drugs so I’m all for legalization, let Darwin sort things out.
Free drugs for everyone?
Seriously speaking, the drugs that need government involvement are heroin and other opiates, methamphetamine, pharmaceutical abuse, alcohol abuse, and some other drugs of lower priority, like cocaine, synthetics, etc.
Perhaps the majority of heroin abuse began with pharmaceutical abuse, and it needs to be addressed medically, not just exchanging methadone addiction for heroin addiction. It is likely that a private organization could set up a one-week program to clean up junkies, followed by outpatient therapy. Mostly drugs that block heroins action in the body.
” Dopers and drug users are not in jail because they use drugs.
They are in jail because criminals are dopers and drug users.”
By and large, you nailed it.
Drug users will cut every corner they can to get high. That includes....
Not working
stealing so they don’t have to work
stealing at work, until they get caught
dealing drugs for big pay, with very little work involved
“...we still need to keep the driving while intoxicated laws on the books.”
Why?
If the drunk screws up, he will still get punished additionally because he was intoxicated. If he doesn’t, then who cares?
A problem made worse by drug criminalization's inflation of drug prices.
Well there you have it. Proof positive that treating drug use as a criminal problem is exactly the right thing to do. Mr Super Idiot is always wrong.
Or stealing my stuff and assaulting people...
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