Pubdate: Fri, 29 Mar 2013
Source: Commercial Appeal (Memphis, TN)
Copyright: 2013 Tribune Media Services
Contact: http://web.commercialappeal.com/newgo/forms/letters.htm
Website: http://www.commercialappeal.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/95
Author: Clarence Page, of Tribune Media Services
Page: 6A

PAUL'S POT POSITION HAS MERIT

The president's position on pot continues to be dangerously vague and 
confusing."

As the nation's capital prepares to open its first legal medicinal 
marijuana dispensary and Sen. Rand Paul's call for legalization basks 
in bipartisan praise, it's time for President Barack Obama to clear 
the air around his own passive-aggressive position on pot.

Until now, the president has been remarkably adept at taking 
positions that seemed to be ahead of their time - and getting ahead of them.

For example, when he declared his full support for the right of 
same-sex couples to marry, there were fears among his supporters that 
he would lose important votes before his re-election campaign, 
particularly among black churchgoers. Those fears proved to be exaggerated.

But four years after his Justice Department announced that the feds 
will no longer crack down on medicinal marijuana sellers who follow 
state laws, the president's position on pot continues to be 
dangerously vague and confusing.

In California, where voters approved medicinal use back in 1996, the 
law was so vaguely worded that about 1,000 dispensaries mushroomed up 
in Los Angeles County alone. Yet busts continued, partly over 
disputes as to whether the law allowed only nonprofit businesses.

At the other extreme, November ballots in Colorado and Washington 
state legalized marijuana for recreational use, and the District of 
Columbia's first dispensary, Capital City Care, has its website up 
and plans to open in April.

And, on another front, Paul, a famously libertarian Kentucky 
Republican, has introduced a bill with Vermont Democratic Sen. 
Patrick Leahy to restore greater flexibility to judges than currently 
is allowed by mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes.

In a recent interview with Fox News' Chris Wallace, Paul got to the 
heart of the current tragedy: ruined lives. "Our prisons are full of 
nonviolent criminals," he said. "I don't want to encourage people to 
do it. I think even marijuana is a bad thing to do. ... But I also 
don't want to put people in jail who make a mistake."

He spoke forcefully of the many young nonviolent offenders like 
Obama, who has written about his teen drug indiscretions, and 
possibly former President George W. Bush, who has politely refused to 
confirm or deny what manner of drug use might have accompanied 
alcohol during the years before he found sobriety.

"Look, the last two presidents could conceivably have been put in 
jail for their drug use and I really think, you know, look what would 
have happened," he said. "They got lucky, but a lot of poor kids, 
particularly in the inner city, they don't get lucky, they don't have 
good attorneys, and they go to jail for these things, and I think 
it's a big mistake."

On that note regarding nonviolent drug offenders, Paul strikes a 
nerve with me and numerous other African-Americans and civil rights 
advocates. As Michelle Alexander, an Ohio State University associate 
professor of law, writes in her best-seller "The New Jim Crow: Mass 
Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness," statistics show a 
majority of African-American men in major urban areas to be in jail, 
on probation, otherwise "under correctional control" or "saddled with 
criminal records for the rest of their lives."

The result is a new form of second-class citizenship that traps them 
in "a parallel social universe, denied basic civil and human rights." 
That includes the right to vote, to serve on juries and to be free of 
legal discrimination in employment, housing, access to education and 
other public benefits.

And the financial cost on top of the social cost of the failed "war 
on drugs" has caused such big conservative names as anti-tax lobbyist 
Grover Norquist, former House speaker Newt Gingrich and former 
attorney general Edwin Meese to join others in Right On Crime. That 
nonpartisan effort is aimed at promoting less costly and more 
productive alternatives to incarceration, such as drug treatment and 
community service for nonviolent offenders.

With the trends moving in such a productive direction, I'm hardly 
alone in wondering what Obama is waiting for. As with the issue of 
same-sex marriage, his support could get ahead of the trend and help 
move it along. He can even claim it was his idea all along.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom