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The consequences - for others. (photo: :Dar./flickr)
Details from a new book Barack Obama: The Story contains in-depth details about his frequent marijuana use as a young man. Although Obama admitted to using marijuana in his memoir Dreams From My Father, we now learn for example that Obama was a frequently indulging aficionado who was a big fan of hot boxing in cars. While Obama’s past marijuana use is treated as merely a funny anecdote, his hypocrisy on the issue of marijuana and the destruction his continued support for prohibition causes is no laughing matter.
In 2010 roughly 850,000 Americans were arrested for marijuana related offenses of which the vast majority was for possession. That means since Obama took office it is likely well over 2.5 million Americans have been arrested for marijuana. Millions arrested for committing the same basic “crime” our President often committed during his youth.
While Obama was lucky enough not to get a criminal record for his mostly harmless marijuana use, hundreds of thousands of other Americans this year were not as fortunate, especially young African American and Latino males who are disproportionally arrested at much higher rates for marijuana. Many of these young people will be burdened with a records that could permanently hurt their employment prospects and they will lose the federal support they need to attend college.
If Obama were a young man today and got arrested for his marijuana use under our currently policy, the negative consequences from such an arrest could easily have stopped him from ever becoming President. Clearly, the actual use of marijuana didn’t hurt Obama by making him less successful, but the consequences of our prohibition easily could have. But not only does Obama support maintaining this current drug policy, which is more damaging to people than the drug itself, but his administration has taken the federal war against medical marijuana to new heights.
While most of the media treats learning that Obama liked to hog the joint as a humorous but meaningless little story, it should be a huge scandal that Obama continues supporting a policy which ruins the lives of so many for doing something Obama did frequently.
With public opinion moving against marijuana prohibition so quickly, Obama should be forced to give a better explanation for why he thinks it is okay to waste billions every year punishing so many for doing exactly what he once did.
24 Comments
Obogart! I should have guessed.
well I am sure his answer would be he has seen the error of his ways, and how the hell do we expect the 3 letter agencies, teh bankers, and the prison complex to function if we made it legal?
Apparently smoking maryjane when you are young…
Doesn’t stop a person from becoming a corrupt politician and a fraud when they grow up.
I wonder how much his campaign is collecting from The Private Prison lobby to keep POT illegal and their bank accounts full? Its all about $$ with Barry, he’s a GOP wannabe no matter what he says.
Yep to the first 4 comments. I’m sure if the wh does comment it will be nothing to see here and if you don’t move on you’re under arrest.
i keep hearing about “what if he had been aresseted”… what if he just wanted some bullshit $8 hour job and was required to sumbit his bodily fluids to some corporate entity. it s not just about the law.
some one mentioned the prison industry… yes…. but there is also a TESTING industry. pot is really all those tests are good at finding and its stacked against you. not to mention many current perscription drugs make people crazy.
then there is the “recovery” industry. young people can be forced into “programs” by parents or adults may face MANDATORY involvemnet either because of a bad test or part of some probabtion. And seriously. we all know pot isnt actually addictive. you might want that joint bad but you arent gonna get wacked out if you miss a bowl…
both the recovery and testing industries have historically been run bu righties. things are geared to put free money in their pockets.
Those are the two industries I really see as foes – well i have issues with the “recovery” industry regardless – the prisons can always find news ways of getting people incarcerated.
Just once – once – I would like to hear someone explain why marijuana is so much more harmful than alcohol that it has to be prohibited.
“While Obama was lucky enough not to get a criminal record for his mostly harmless marijuana use, hundreds of thousands of other Americans this year were not as fortunate, especially young African American and Latino males who are disproportionally arrested at much higher rates for marijuana. Many of these young people will be burdened with a records that could permanently hurt their employment prospects and they will lose the federal support they need to attend college.”
This is just one of the many issues that bo seems not to connect and/or care about with the black community. I just can’t wrap my head around why so many African-Americans in my community support this house negro!
I also suspect that PhARMA has something to do with this. I suspect that we’ll hear (maybe soon, maybe years from now) that Obama cut some deal with PhARMA to keep the heat on medical marijuana until the drug companies could come up with some acceptable pill. Obama is owned by everyone and couldn’t care less about the citizens who elected him or the future of the serfs.
> nothing as half-assed but dangerous as a ‘reformed MJ smoker cum prohibitionist xian’ (see b.clinton&b.obama)
- except maybe a ‘dry drunk xian’ (see gwbush)
Obama does not care what the people think. He knows he will be given the presidency because he has done nothing but drop to his knees anytime the elite said “drop”. He has put out for the elite like a gumball machine.
Of course, Romney would do the same thing. Romney and his laughable comment, “Corporations are people, my friend” was Romney’s way of signalling the elite that he’s cheap fun date too. But Obama has particular appeal as he controls the neo liberals by rendering them voiceless since he is a Dem. Of course he’s not really a Dem any more than the Penguin, I mean Joe Lieberman, is.
Obama will be chosen by the OnePercent elite in 2012,the same way that CoverGirl chose Cheryl Tiegs. He’s been safeguarding their product and keeping fraud and theft covered like a true kneeling servant of the Kings, Goldman Sachs and their Partners.
Blatant hypocrisy is a form of power. It is drinking water and spitting it in the hot desert while your slaves drop and die from lack of water. Obama is an elite. He behaves like an elite. He is with the banker cabal 100 per cent. He is gargling and enjoying the water while you die of thirst. He flexes his ego-muscle on the People he clearly has contempt of.
We do not remotely have a government for the people any longer. It is only through the illusion of the lie that the elections exist at all. Now, we have royalty that takes and kills on a whim. And taking young people with their whole lives in front of them and shitting all over their future and forcing them into labor gulags for corporations is exactly what the Nazis did to the Jews and others they saw fit to use like cattle in Labor camps for “mein Indistrie”. Marijuana a useful excuse. If there was no such thing as drugs, they would have probably used sugar and then sold candy underground. Same kind of thing. Make no mistake, this is exactly what this is about. This is nothing more than a legalized form of human slavery.
We should change the conversation and start using the language of slavery and immoral incarceration. We need to file law suits against the practice and we need to demand that Obama steps down as he is a confessed felon parading as a President.
We have lost our country. It is not *going* to happen, it has. Obama is traitor. Fight it or accept it. Elections and any part of that process is a red herring for fools. Obama is the poster child of this fool’s errand.
“Hypocrisy in the defense of inconsistency is not a vice” — Barack Goldwater.
And yall don’t forget. The elite and elite controlled Obama White House would rather spend money on incarcerating kids into slavery and knocking them out of the sustaining work place for life than extending health care for millions living without, or paying Social Security etc.
So grandma starves while Johnny works for one cent an hour and the government pays his slave owners more money than anyone receives in any kind program, safety net, benefit, or most jobs known to the American people and all on the taxpayers’ dime.
Wake up. This is the behavior of evil and morally bankrupt, cold blooded tyrants.
I’m sure he didn’t inhale, so it’s all OK.
I’m sure it was nothing more than a gesture of bipartisanship.
The mere fact that Obysmal is abysmal is hardly surprising. His whole life has been ‘alright for me, but not for thee’.
“I just can’t wrap my head around why so many African-Americans in my community support this house negro.”
Answer: Because he’s black and a symbol.
There are millions of people who vote against their own self interest and they’re called republicans.
And now we have a new wave of people who will vote against their own self interest by voting for obama.
Vote third party. Send a message that we’ve had it with the uniparty.
Yep, “the first black president” is a glorified overseer for slavery 2012.
As long as people will vote for the Democrat “no matter what,” the Democrat will not care what people think. This goes for Obama’s anti-pot policies or anything you care to name.
Hey textynn@ 11 ,Excellent truth peddling .I would only add that marijuana,as Citizens United ,are sucker bait for the weak-minded and squeamish .Same goes for drug safety,which was insinuated into the masses psyche in the Seventies without them even realizing vice was no longer the drug war raison d’etre..Even the ACLU has been duped into believing drone surveillance is justified for criminal wrongdoing .With the big-net criminality of drugs ,we are all suspects of such wrongdoing ,This alone can now be used to disappear activists under the Bush/obama initiatives .
Ha! No kidding.
Oh fuck yes .vote third party .I gave Paul 2-bits for service rendered when he became the first national voice to denounce the drug war and capital punishment as Jim Crow while proposing they both be eliminated completely .So much for Black/progressive leadership .
And this is why he’s lost my vote. Absolutely.
The Pothead-in-Chief? How much more could they screw this place up with that moniker? It’d be an improvement for everyone if that whole bunch in Washington spent more time stoned. What a bust this country has become for anything resembling sensible drug policy. Or economic policy. Or a whole list of stuff we can’t get right for some reason. And it has nothing to do with pot consumption. Period.