“Obama’s Unfathomable, Bottomless, Contemptible Cowardice on Pot”

Our story thus far: President Barack Obama, late
of the pot-smoking Choom Gang back in the day, says that marijuana
is no “more dangerous than alcohol,” that black and Latino kids are
arrested disproportionately for drug crimes, and…well,
nothing.

The commander in chief of the federal War on Pot can’t be
bothered to do a damn thing about something he knows shouldn’t be a
federal crime.

From my latest article at
Time.com:

What does it say about our elected representatives when even a
president who grants that marijuana is no “more dangerous than
alcohol,” jokes about his past drug use, and faces no
more elections in his lifetime is terrified to go along with a
massive and still-growing majority of Americans?

That we can’t look to them for anything resembling leadership.
The campaign to legalize marijuana — and thus expand personal
freedom while minimizing the massive harms that attend to
prohibition regardless of the substance being banned — is decades
old and has always had to fight first and foremost against
establishment politicians and media outlets. Colorado’s liberal
Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper staunchly opposed
legalization, which ultimately passed by a 55 percent to 44 percent
margin. In 2010, when California put legalization on the ballot (it
failed), virtually every daily newspaper editorialized
against such a move.

Thankfully, citizens and some brave pols
are so cowed and are pushing for change.

Temporary, odd-bedfellows arrangements have helped to avert
military action against Syria last summer, register
opposition to
mass surveillance by the National Security Agency, call
for auditing the Federal Reserve, and
preserve all
manner of Internet freedom from government regulation.
Theschool
choice movement is a perfect example of this dynamic as
well.

In an America where a
record 60 percent of us agree that “the government has too
much power” and political
independents grow in number, this sort of “permanent
non-governing minority” that comes together over a single issue
and demands change, represents the future of American politics at
all levels. Citizens, it turns out, are more than ready to step and
demand change when our leaders are too feckless to lead.

Read
the whole thing.