Marijuana Legalization in the US: Yes, We Cannabis

Barack Obama does not think smoking weed is so bad. However, the United States is still a long way from a relaxed rationality regarding drug policy.

We knew that Barack Obama smoked copious amounts of weed in his youth and as a young adult: That is already written in his autobiography, “Dreams from My Father.” While at that time Bill Clinton had admitted he had tried it once but “didn’t inhale,” Obama said, “That was the point.” Obama described his highs in Hawaii as experiences that overcame class and race barriers.

Now, in an interview with The New Yorker magazine, the president says that he thinks cannabis is not more dangerous than alcohol. He views his time as a stoner “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.” He told his daughters that he thinks smoking pot is “a bad idea, a waste of time, not very healthy.” However, it is unacceptable that poor blacks and Latinos are locked up longer and more frequently for smoking pot than whites who do the same.

In the heated debate over legalizing cannabis, these banalities are already a statement. But [entertaining the notion of] Obama becoming a real legalization advocate would be going too far. Obama calls what has been happening since the beginning of January in Colorado, and soon in Washington state: “an experiment” and “challenge.” However, he believes that expectations about how many social problems could be fixed through legalization are too high.

A U.S. president who has a liberal, or, at least, a fairly reasonable attitude toward cannabis? A few years ago, that would have still been a real sensation. Is America, once again, taking the lead? Will the term “green revolution” be redefined, accompanied by a well-intentioned White House? Unfortunately not.

Latin America has suggested sweeping proposals for many years, not only to end the war on drugs, which was started in the 1960s, but also to end the prohibitive approach of drug policy in favor of new regulation. Lastly, at the Summit of the Americas last year, it became particularly evident that the U.S. government — though not alone — is very uncompromising on this question.

Maybe the experiences in Colorado and Washington will help develop the discussion. At least President Obama does not stand alone with his opinions regarding the dangerousness of marijuana: The majority of Americans have the same opinion, and surveys show that the legalization idea is getting more popular. In November, other states are likely to put similar referenda to the vote.

Cannabis Instead of Starbucks

Even those who reject criminalization currently see the phenomenon in Colorado with a bit of ambivalence. It is not just that there are more cannabis shops in Denver than there are Starbucks: The whole hemp industry and tourism in Colorado [that surrounds it], with its shop-hopping tours in a stoned stretch-limousine, is similar to the sangria buckets on Ballermann.* People do not really want anything to do with it. Obama has it right: Marijuana is not more dangerous than alcohol, but the person who defines himself by getting high is hardly smarter than the type who wears the “binge drinker” shirt on the beer mile.

*Editor’s note: Ballermann is the name given to a stretch of beach in Mallorca, Spain, the spring break destination for young German tourists.