Not taking legalization seriously

Following up on Obama's pathetic answer, Radley is also galled:

reader Cory Spicer emailed this afternoon:

I am watching Obama’s “online town hall” speech and I am thoroughly disgusted.

A couple days ago he opened up a forum for users to submit and vote on questions. Several of the categories had questions relating to marijuana/drug law reform as their leading vote-getters, including the most popular overall question (in terms of both total votes and yes/no spread). So how did he react?

Well, first he answered four questions that received fewer votes. Then, before the fifth question was asked, he mentioned as a somewhat snarky aside that the marijuana question was “very popular”. The audience laughed a bit, and Obama joked about how he wasn’t “sure what that says about the online community” (this got a big laugh).

Then, he gave an unequivocal “no, I don’t believe that legalizing marijuana would help our economy”, offering no elaboration or supporting facts. The audience then gave him the heartiest round of applause for the day, and he then moved on to other, less popular questions.

I didn’t see the Town Hall, but if true, this is pretty galling. Politicians regularly dismiss legalization arguments out of hand, but can never offer a good explanation for their position. Obama’s “explanation” seems to be to laugh it off, and hope it goes away. It isn’t just stoners making the case for legalization anymore. It’s the Economist, it’s Foreign Policy, it’s a sizable cadre of respected economists, it’s the former presidents of Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia. If Obama’s going to continue the failed drug war, particularly the prohibition of marijuana, he ought to come up with a good reason why.

Steven Taylor:

I am struck by the unserious treatment of the issue by both the reporter and the President.

Given the cost of marijuana enforcement policies, the damage it does to civil liberties, the very real potential revenue from taxation, as well as legitimate questions about medical application, this is actually a very legitimate public policy question.

And to answer the Politico’s question, this isn’t about Cheech and Chong senses of humor, but is, if fact, about a real concern held by some in the US about this issue. Although, clearly, there was some self-selection bias going on here as well.

Freddie:

You know, there are actual policy consequences for the kind of “haha, the stoners came out!” attitude that President Obama, and the media, demonstrated towards the question about ending the prohibition of marijuana at the “digital town hall” event.

I was just watching MSNBC and they had some newsdouche on to talk about the event. Being members of the media, the host and the newsdouche mostly complained about how Obama was “leapfrogging” the media with the format. But the guy being interviewed took the time to snigger and laugh at the question about the reform of our marijuana laws, in much the same way Obama did. It’s not surprising. That’s the attitude of “serious” people everywhere, that advocating changing our destructive, futile, expensive and cruel marijuana laws has to demonstrate that the person so advocating is some burned-out, disaffected stoner who just wants to smoke up and tune out. You get that from the mainstream media and most of our national politicians all the time, the absolute refusal to take reforming our marijuana laws seriously. And that’s unfair, and corrosive to democracy, and has severe negative consequences for our policy.

First of all, even if everyone who supported the decriminalization of marijuana did so out of a simple desire to be able to smoke without fear of arrest, that would be a perfectly legitimate and principled stand. This is still a country where we are supposed to be allowed to live our lives in the manner that we want, provided that we don’t harm others or infringe on their own rights to self-determine. In democracy, you vote in part for politicians who support your interests, and you make political arguments for those policy positions that benefit your own self-interest. Hopefully, if everyone does that, the will of the people as a whole is done. So it’s not like there’s something disqualifying about people who just want to smoke marijuana and be left in peace by the government. And, of course, the use of the stoner meme plays on some deeply flawed assumptions and stereotypes, that everyone who smokes marijuana falls into the same (low class, trashy) groups. That’s one of the basic impediments to finding a little sanity in our drug laws, I’m afraid: the notion that anyone who uses marijuana is an unserious, unappealing person, and that anyone who advocates decriminalizing marijuana is similarly tainted.

And, of course, the basic libertarian impulse to leave people alone– still one of our greatest national features– is only a part of the reason to support reforming our marijuana laws. The other reasons are caught up in the utter failure of criminalization to prevent Americans from using marijuana, the massive financial costs of arresting and prosecuting marijuana offenders, the waste of valuable police resources on enforcing marijuana laws, the numbers of nonviolent marijuana offenders sitting in our jails and costing us public money, the increase in police corruption and misconduct that is an inevitable part of drug criminalization, and the occasional tragedy where an arrest on a marijuana possession results in the injury or death of the accused, a police officer, or both. The costs to this country from the continued criminalization of marijuana are truly massive, and the payoff is negligible. Completely independent of any acknowledgment of a right to use marijuana is the simple cost/benefit analysis which suggest that our current system is madness.

All of this rests on what is now a banal fact: that polling consistently shows broad majorities of Americans who favor serious reform of our marijuana laws. The American people are a slow moving beast, but they aren’t completely resistant to evidence and logic, and the great costs that the prohibition of marijuana inflicts on our society hasn’t gone unnoticed. So why, if reforming marijuana laws is broadly popular, is the issue still largerly relegated to the backburner politically? Why is neither party willing to make decriminalizing marijuana a major part of their policy platform? Because even smart, pragmatic politicians like Barack Obama can’t help but make jokes about a sensible question about a worthy initiative– worthy enough, at least, of discussion. We can’t get either party on board with ending a cruel and wasteful set of drug policies because supposedly neutral reporters can’t help but get a laugh out of positions that are sensible, adult, and supported by millions of Americans.

Our attitude towards issues have consequences. Every laugh and giggle at the expense of those who want our country to reexamine a disastrous set of policies makes it less likely that we will embark on a series of changes that would leave our country pragmatically improved and more free.

Daniel Larison:

Freddie’s frustration with Obama’s dismissive response to the large number of online questions about marijuana legalization is understandable, but it seems to me that legalization arguments will never gain much traction if advocates for it are constantly having to mention how they are not like the drug’s stereotypical users or regard the drug’s use as some grievous personal failing. Instead of coming across as a stronger argument, the standard “I’m in favor of legalization, and I’m the farthest thing in the world from a pot smoker!” argument ends up making the argument for legalization less compelling. This is because this kind of argument unintentionally reproduces the stigma against the drug and effectively endorses one of the key claims that supporters of criminalization make. While it is true that there are a great many practical and principled reasons why Americans of all stripes should oppose continued criminalization, for legalization to take hold as something more than a marginal issue that has the sympathies of more than relatively marginal political forces there would need to be a much larger constituency that regards criminalization as an intolerable imposition on one of their preferences.

I'm not sure Larison really has a point here. As he acknowledges it is Obama and his press secretary who marginalized the issue by laughing about it instead of providing real reasons to justify their stance. They played off the idea that only stoners care about this issue as a way to dismiss without taking it seriously, so that's why Freddie & others have to explain the untruth behind it.