Obama's Patronizing Response to the Deathly Serious Issue of Marijuana Prohibition

On March 26, 2009, President Obama held an online town hall to answer questions which had been submitted on the White House website over the preceding days. He should be applauded for this move, which has the potential to allow divergent voices in to the President's world, access to which has generally been restricted to a select few news outlets.

One of the President's answers during this event, however, to a highly popular question which was posed in many different ways, was, to say the least, insulting. The question was why we continue to maintain our complete prohibition on marijuana. Some of the questions addressed the issue from a humanitarian perspective:

"As a person with Multiple Sclerosis, I have many other MS friends who use marijuana just to feel some relief from their bodies. When can pressure be placed to reclassify Cannabis from a Schedule 1 drug (no medical benefit) to Schedule 5?"

Others from an economic and pragmatic perspective:

"Why is marijuana still illegal? Cigarettes and alcohol are far more harmful, and with the taxes put on the legal distribution of marijuana the US could make millions"

"Has the administration given any thought to legalizing marijuana, as a cash crop to fuel the economy? Why not make available, regulate, and tax something that that about 10 million Americans use regularly and is less harmful than tobacco or alcohol."

Some pointed out that the country had an analogous experience with alcohol prohibition:

"Growing up I have noticed many around me always talk about legalization of marijuana, and I always thought, why not put a tax stamp on it. If marijuana was legalized it could really change a lot of things. America had the same problem with Alcohol."

This is an issue which has been around for a long time, and has rarely been addressed by mainstream politicians, at least when they were in a position to do something about it. Often, it is treated as a triviality, a serious cause only for stoned college kids. Bill Clinton expressed support for decriminalization when he no longer had to worry about reelection. Michael Bloomberg admitted to using marijuana and enjoying it, as has President Obama.

Now, however, perhaps more than at any other time, the seriousness of this issue is abundantly clear. Illegal marijuana cultivation is harming our environment. Marijuana prohibition is preventing people from accessing a medicine that has in some cases proven superior to those legally available for people suffering from serious illness. The U.S. prision population, bolstered by non-violent drug offenders, now comprises a quarter of the world's total prison population. Finally, violence fueled by criminal drug cartels, supported in part by the cultivation of illegal marijuana, has killed countless people in the United States and Mexico, and has prompted the Secretary of State to promise millions of dollars in additional aid, largely for military style weapons, on top of the billions already committed. All of this, to prevent people from using a drug which has never been known to kill anyone. For comparison, acetaminophen(the active ingredient in Tylenol), kills around 450 people a year.

So, in light of all of these sobering facts, one could expect a similarly sober response from the President. Here it is:

THE PRESIDENT: Three point five million people voted. I have to say that there was one question that was voted on that ranked fairly high and that was whether legalizing marijuana would improve the economy -- (laughter) -- and job creation. And I don't know what this says about the online audience -- (laughter) -- but I just want -- I don't want people to think that -- this was a fairly popular question; we want to make sure that it was answered. The answer is, no, I don't think that is a good strategy -- (laughter) -- to grow our economy. (Applause.)

So -- all right.

DR. BERNSTEIN: Thank you for clearing that up.

Imagine if he had given such a response to any other question of such importance. Consider the following hypothetical response:

Three point five million people voted. I have to say that there was one question that was voted on that ranked fairly high and that was whether giving returning veterans access to services that would help them reintegrate into their communities -- (laughter) -- and obtain jobs would be a good idea. And I don't know what this says about the online audience -- (laughter) -- but I just want -- I don't want people to think that -- this was a fairly popular question; we want to make sure that it was answered. The answer is, no, I don't think that is a good strategy -- (laughter). (Applause.)

Make no mistake. This answer is no more insulting than the one he gave about marijuana prohibition. Most of us have the luxury of treating the issue as a joke. Others, like those with spouses, children, or siblings in prison for marijuana related crimes, those suffering from ailments for which there is no equally effective treatment, and those living in areas where drug cartels are active who have been killed or lost loved ones in drug related violence, do not.

President Obama is, of course, entitled to his opinion on this issue, but those people suffering as a result of this country's, and now this President's, policies on marijuana, are entitled to a cogent answer to their questions, and an explanation as to why making it somewhat harder for people to smoke marijuana is worth so much money, so many lives, and so much suffering.

Update:

The inappropriateness of Obama's response to this question was not entirely overlooked in the media: Andrew Sullivan posted the following in the Daily Dish:

I'm tired of having the Prohibition issue treated as if it's trivial or a joke. It is neither. It is about freedom and it's deadly serious. As for your online audience, Mr president, have you forgotten who got you elected?

However, the treatment of this issue as a triviality seems by and large to have been continued. The New York Times spent more time discussing who voted for the question to be asked than on the substance, or lack thereof, of the answer, while a Los Angeles Times Blog offered the following:

Though some of us expected Obama to sidestep the politically sensitive topic, he chose instead to take it head on.

The questions posted regarding Marijuana, at least the better ones, did not just ask whether or not President Obama thought it should be legalized, so his saying that he doesn't was not an answer, but an evasion. The questions instead were, by and large, of the form "Given X, why Y?" where X could represent the people who have been or will be killed in drug related violence, the people who are or will suffer because they can't obtain medicinal marijuana, the people who are or will be or have family members be imprisoned for non-violent marijuana-related crimes, or the billions of dollars spent in the furtherance of prohibition. Y, of course, represents keeping marijuana illegal. So, Obama was given the question "Given X, why Y" His answer? "Y"

The Blagojevich/Burris Dispute and the Honor System of Government

I have thought about starting a blog to share my observations on current events on a number of occasions, generally when I had a strong reaction to something in the news(or something that should have been), but I always stumbled across a blogger or editorial writer expressing sentiments that were essentially the same as mine, and forgot about it. At this point, to my knowledge, no one has quite hit on what is, in my view, the fundamental issue in the current dispute over the seating of Senator-Select Roland Burris.

Watching the cable news networks, the views I see repeated generally follow one of two lines of reasoning. The first usually starts with a reference to Powell v. McCormack, 395 U.S. 486, where the United States Supreme Court established that both houses of Congress are "without authority to exclude any person, duly elected by his constituents, who meets all the requirements for membership expressly prescribed in the Constitution." 395 U.S. at 522. It then procedes to point out that the Constitution empowers states to allow their governors to make temporary appointments in lieu of immediate special elections, as was done in Illinois, and that the governor has made such an appointment. Finally, it concludes that Burris, who is acknowleged to have met the Constitutional requirements to be a Senator, must be seated.

The second common perspective on this points out that the Constitution allows the senate to evaluate the qualifications of its members, and that Burris can be prevented from taking his Senate seat for a long period of time by having a prolonged review process, but not explicitly excluding him. It then concludes that he can be excluded using this technique, simply by prolonging the evaluation of his qualifications until a special election is held.

These views, as far as they go, are probably correct, however this dispute highlights a more fundamental issue in our system of government: It relies on the honor system. Under the Constitution, Burris is clearly entitled to the Illinois Senate seat, yet almost as clearly, he can be prevented from taking that seat by a procedure allowed by that same document. The Constitution was groundbreaking, and is brilliant, in many respects, but it does not anticipate intentional efforts to thwart its provisions by playing them against each other, instead relying on those sworn to uphold it to respect the intentions of its creators.

To illustrate this point, consider the following scenario:

Assume that the Democrats have won 67 seats in the U.S. Senate as well as a two-thirds majority in the House. The Majority leader, as his first order of business, announces that anyone who has expressed open support for President George W. Bush has demonstrated such excessively poor judgment, that they are not fit to serve in any government office. This is, I believe, true, and I'd love to see Harry Reid make such an announcement. Now, however, assume that he goes on to call for the expulsion of all Republicans from the Senate, and after a straight party-line vote, they are expelled. Now, there being only 67 Senators, assume that the Majority leader procedes to expel any insufficiently loyal Democrats, achievable with only 45 votes. Assume that the same procedure is followed in the House. At this point, the governors of the states represented by the expelled Senators would likely be arranging elections or making appointments, but our fictional majority leader would likely express doubt that the Senate would have time to evaluate the qualifications of any new Senators in the near future, there being Senate trials for at least four newly impeached U.S. Supreme Court Justices to conduct.

Obviously, this is not a plausible scenario, but it is arguably a constitutional one. The reason it is implausible is that the victories achieved through such maneuvers would be short-lived, as public outcry would drive those involved from office in the next election, and more importantly, everyone understands that this scenario is not what is contemplated by the constitution, even if it does technically allow for it. This is why Presidents and Supreme Court Justices are not routinely impeached, and Presidential nominations are generally not filibustered.

In my view, there has been something of a breakdown of this honor system in recent years, as party leaders put political considerations and public opinion ahead of adhering to the spirit of the constitution. The impeachment of President Bill Clinton can be seen as such a violation of the spirit of the Constitution, as it was essentially a partisan effort to find some technical crime on which to base impeachment proceedings. In my view, the failure to impeach the current President Bush is such a failure. There have been entire books written indexing the numerous impeachable offenses for which evidence of Bush's guilt exists, and yet the Democratic leadership opted to forego impeachment, presumably because it was better politically to have a criminal president from the opposing party to point to than to initiate a contentious impeachment proceeding where the Democrats would be cast as attempting to take away the president's ability to keep America safe from terrorists. The president's refusal to pursue indictments againt members of his administration who ignored subpoenas from Congress is another clear example.

The announcement by Harry Reid prior to Mr. Burris' appointment that any appointment by Governor Blagojevich would be unacceptable is clealry such a failure, as is the ongoing efforts to block him from serving. It is true that the Senate could probably prevent him from ever being seated by stating an intention to evaluate his credentials prior to doing so, and then putting off the evaluation. It could also make a determination that he is not qualified because he is not an Illinois resident, not a U.S. citizen, or not over thirty years of age. The Constitution vests the power to judge the qualifications of Senators in the Senate, and it could be argued that such a determination would not be reviewable by the Supreme Court. Either way, the Senate would be intentionally thwarting the clear provisions of the Constitution each senator swears to uphold, in an ironic effort to show that they are honest and honorable people who do not tolerate the kind of corruption Governor Blagojevich is accussed of.

I can only assume that Harry Reid and the Democratic leadership did not believe that Governor Blagojevich would make a senate appointment after having been arrested for trying to sell the vacant senate seat. The Governor's decision to do so is arguably another example of an action that thwarts the spirit of the Constitution while adhering to its technical language, as the founding fathers certainly did not contemplate the auctioning off of vacant senate seats by corrupt governors. Now, however, it is time for the Senate to admit that Blagojevich called their bluff, and seat Mr. Burris. To do otherwise would set a precedent for excluding legally appointed(or elected) Senators or Representatives, when the majority does not like the appointor or the selectee. In this case, the appointee is disliked because of pending corruption charges, in the next, it may be due to an unpopular view held by the selectee.