On Jimmy Fallon some night last week, he opened a joke with “There’s talk that [Obama plans to put pot legalization on the table closer to the election].” He actually used the words “There’s talk.”
Has anyone else heard this rumor elsewhere? Perhaps a cite?
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I will go on the record right now and say that I’ll eat my shoes if this turns out to be true.
Got the munchies already?
Duuuuude.
It was probably a setup for a joke, not an actual discussion of Obama’s campaign platform. I have not heard anybody say Obama will propose legalizing marijuana and I think it’s very unlikely. A google search turns up pages and pages of people complaining that his administration has been enforcing federal marijuana laws and not cutting medical marijuana dispensaries any slack. I can imagine them proposing looser federal regulations but not full-on legalization. Even adopting a different policy (leaving state laws alone when they contradict the federal ones) might create big problems for them .
Rahm Emanuel made big news last week with throwing his support behind decriminalizing pot in Chicago (you’d just get a ticket for holding under a certain amount). Perhaps that was what was being referred to?
Here is a cite http://elitedaily.com/elite/2012/report-barack-obamas-secret-weapon-2012-election-legalizing-marijuana/
It is just a ploy to get younger voters motivated to go to the polls like they did in 2008. You will notice that there are no actual administration members quoted in the article so that if Obama is re-elected it will be really easy to do nothing and no one can be blamed.
During the '08 election campaign he scored points (with me) when he promised that under his administration the DEA would not be wasting time going after dispensarys or med marijuana patients. That turned out to be a lie. Fool me once. . .
That’s a cite about people speculating what Obama might gain from the proposal politically, not a cite that the administration is considering the idea.
Yes, it was hard not to notice that. If the administration were putting out a trial balloon, you’d see quotes sourced to ‘people close to the decision’ and 'senior administration officials and things of that type. This story doesn’t say what you are indicating it does.
I saw on I think The Daily Show that a lot of STATES are putting pot laws on the ballot, and it’s basically being seen as a way to get young people out to vote. TDS compared it to glut of same-sex-marriage issues on ballots in … 2006? 2008?
Anyway this would mean it’s just democrats in states getting the issue on the ballot, for their states, as a way to motivate people to show up at the polls. And when they do they’ll most likely vote for Obama.
So it benefits Obama’s campaign, and I can see how it ends up being mis-construed as something that his office is doing but in reality it’s got nothing to do with federal law and everything to do with states and state democrats.
I’d guess that any talk that Obama is thinking about legalizing marijuana originated somewhere in the Romney campaign.
Maybe the talk is about this recent advance - marijuana that won’t get you high.
Would be suitable for much, though perhaps not all, of the medical marijuana market.
Bush!
But the real battle is over swing votes. The people who support marijuana legalization were probably already mostly inclined towards Obama. So Romney didn’t have those voters to lose. But Romney can make a play for anti-legalization voters.
I’m an Obama fan, will vote for him again, but…this is an election year. His comments about being in support of gay marriage were personal, and for the press; he can’t really do anything about it. Last week’s bit about not deporting anyone under 30, same. He can SAY whatever he wants, but it’s actions that matter. So even if the pot thing is true, it really doesn’t matter.
Believe it when you see it.
That’s not actually true. He can (and I believe has) do things like extending marriage benefits for gay federal employees, support non-discrimination policies, and he can throw his weight behind various same-sex marriage initiatives on the federal and state level. The deportation thing wasn’t just talk either, although it was certainly an election-year move.
I have heard this rumor, and I’m interested if it turns out to be true. I think I ran across it first on HotAir, which is a conservative site.
Obama is strongly against legalization. His track record is actually much worse than Bush in this area (though in fairness, there was more medical marijuana in 2009 than in 2001 and therefore more enforcement “opportunities”).
Obama is 100% behind the “war on drugs.” I greatly doubt he will ever spend any political capital to change things, even if he gets elected to a second term.
Is that a more credible cite than Jimmy Fallon, or… ? 