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

greengummybear

greengummybear

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Huffington Post said:
Obama Says Treating Drug Use As a Criminal Problem Is "Counterproductive"
Posted: 01/22/2015 8:11 pm EST Updated: 01/22/2015 8:59 pm EST
Tony Newman


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."

President Obama and Attorney General Holder have repeatedly spoken out against the drug war and mass incarceration. Back last January President Obama made national news with an interview with the New Yorker.

"As has been well documented, I smoked pot as a kid, and I view it as a bad habit and a vice, not very different from the cigarettes that I smoked as a young person up through a big chunk of my adult life. I don't think it is more dangerous than alcohol," Obama told David Remnick.

The president expressed concern about disparities in arrests for marijuana possession. "Middle-class kids don't get locked up for smoking pot, and poor kids do," Obama said, adding that individual users shouldn't be locked up "for long stretches of jail time."

President Obama's moves coincide with Attorney General Eric Holder actions. They include:

• Calling on policymakers at all levels to find ways to reduce the number of people behind bars.
• Supporting efforts in Congress and the U.S. Sentencing Commission to reduce punitive sentencing.
• Supporting policies that made the sentences of thousands of prisoners shorter and fairer.
• Changing how the Justice Department charges people to reduce the application of draconian mandatory minimum sentencing.
• Establishing guidance allowing states to legalize and regulate marijuana with less federal interference.
• Establishing guidance to make it easier for banks to deal with state-legalized marijuana businesses.
• Promoting efforts to re-integrate formerly incarcerated individuals into society and eliminate barriers to successful re-entry.
• Working to end the "school-to-prison pipeline", including working with the Departments of Education to scale back "zero tolerance" school discipline policies.
• Advocating for the restoration of voting rights for the formerly incarcerated.
• Urging federal law enforcement agencies to identify, train and equip personnel who may interact with a victim of a heroin overdose with the overdose-reversal drug naloxone.

Let's hope that President Obama goes out swinging and helps end our nation's longest, failed war.
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tony-newman/obama-says-treating-drug_b_6528174.html
 
A call for movement in a positive direction. Now lets see if any of it actually happens and how long it will take.
 
neversickanymore said:
Did they fix it yet... ROFL of course not..
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Reading between the lines it's clear that Obama isn't going to do anything to challenge the status quo directly. He is going to nibble around the edges and lay the ground work for future change. Like any sustained massive war the rollback is going to be slow. But the great news is that we are rolling it back. When I first came to bluelight in 2005 this was considered impossible. We have made so much progress in 10 years that it is very heartening. When was the last time you saw a politician go full on drug warrior in public for political gain? It doesn't happen anymore.
 
It seems like anyway you slice it 2016 is going to be a throwback.

People can say what they want with Obama, my personal feelings are that he was in a position to do so much, but took baby steps instead of leaps.

I sincerely doubt that any of the presidential hopeful's would even have the balls to say, "I agree with you".

I also doubt that we would have had so much success with the cannabis movement with a republican president.
Mitt Romney went drug warrior in his 2012 run, he was straight up against cannabis too.
 
crimsonjunk said:
Reading between the lines it's clear that Obama isn't going to do anything to challenge the status quo directly. He is going to nibble around the edges and lay the ground work for future change. Like any sustained massive war the rollback is going to be slow. But the great news is that we are rolling it back. When I first came to bluelight in 2005 this was considered impossible. We have made so much progress in 10 years that it is very heartening. When was the last time you saw a politician go full on drug warrior in public for political gain? It doesn't happen anymore.
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They may not be outspoken proponents of the drug war anymore, but politicians are bought and paid for. The significant loby of LE, prisson workers, big pharma, etc is what is preventing the needed changes.

The shift in public opinion is great. The citizen lead initiatives are amazing and have caused major change. But there are entire industries that are protecting their sick interests whith hard loby.

We need to get through that if things are going to really change.
 
People joke about how wonderful the world would be without lawyer. IMO the world would be much better off if we just killed all the lobbyists. Since when does that "profession" promote democracy as opposed to making it into something of a farce?
 
neversickanymore said:
They may not be outspoken proponents of the drug war anymore, but politicians are bought and paid for. The significant loby of LE, prisson workers, big pharma, etc is what is preventing the needed changes.

The shift in public opinion is great. The citizen lead initiatives are amazing and have caused major change. But there are entire industries that are protecting their sick interests whith hard loby.

We need to get through that if things are going to really change.
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Oh no doubt the road ahead is going to be a long one still. But we are winning slowly but surely. The next step is to hire lobbyists of our own. That will come through increased funding to groups such as MAPS, SSDP, ect.
 
IMHO.. loby should be called by its rightful name.. bribery. It should be imidiatly made illegal. If it were within a decade things would dramatically change for the better.
 
neversickanymore said:
A call for movement in a positive direction. Now lets see if any of it actually happens and how long it will take.
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It was a good move, time will tell. Recognizing the problem is the first step after all. Besides, not too many leaders doing anything anyway.
 
Before it was "say no to drugs". I guess that did not work either..
Better late than never imo.
 
Erikmen said:
Before it was "say no to drugs". I guess that did not work either..
Better late than never imo.
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Probably.

My sarcasm just indicates my belief that Obama has always known this, and has just been waiting to actually begin his job as POTUS.
 
Say no to drugs was silly right wing drug war propaganda that never worked… and actually made things worse..
 
If Obama thinks treating drug use as a criminal problem is 'counterproductive,' then why doesn't he get off his hands and do something about it while he is still President?
 
It's such a sticky subject politically that most won't go near it. I'd be really surprised to see someone take a comprehensive, educated stance on the the multiple issues that revolve around the drug war. Abortion, gay marriage, and other issues that shouldn't even be politically relevant in this day and age get more press time. Pot is headed in the right direction though, and I feel encouraged by how far we have come on that front. Even some LE is coming around and I think the general public is too. Families of incarcerated persons are becoming a significant part of the population. I do wish more leaders would step up to the plate but I also think we are making some progress.
 
Captain.Heroin said:
Probably.

My sarcasm just indicates my belief that Obama has always known this, and has just been waiting to actually begin his job as POTUS.
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I think allot of people don't take into consideration that as the first somewhat black president that everything he does reflects on black people and future black candidates. If he were to actually have done the things he promised he would have looked like that chapelle show skit about the black president.
That being said I still wish he would have put more heart into his job instead of playing the game. I was really hoping for him to get gangsta after the last election. Oh well....
 
I am still very optimistic that 2016 will be an outstanding and memorable year for drug war / drug policy reform in the United States of America.

Yes, I agree that President Obama has been more of a disappointment than a boon to the dramatic rollback of this decades old, fundamentally contradicted oppression of the 'street drug' using minority. The man comes across as incredibly passive in times when swift action is expected from most Americans. Yet perhaps the reason he's like this - other than wanting to play golf - is due to the fact that 'quick fixes' have historically caused America more problems and less success, but I digress.

Again though, if we manage to avoid annihilating each other by way of a third world war, I see 2016 as a big year for significant change. And I truly hope that it will come to pass, because I'm tired of being treated like a criminal because my intoxicant of choice is not Ethyl Alcohol, Nicotine, or Caffeine. And I'm tired of being branded a criminal and thrown into a correctional facility among rapists, murderers, and pedophiles when I have not victimized anyone other than perhaps myself. And I'm saddened to witness so many others meet the same fate when they have not victimized anyone either.

These 'street drugs' have also the potential to be treatments for several chronic and severe illnesses - if only they weren't Schedule I, which makes them a royal pain in the ass to obtain a government permission slip to study.

By choosing to wage this war on a minority group of people who never intended to harm another living soul, Uncle Sam has shot himself in the foot, and continues to do so with each passing year as more and more tax payer money is drained on a lost cause, and as more hoodwinked Americans wake up and realize they've been fooled by a government which considers them a joke (shame on them).
 
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