cannabisnews.com: Obama's Drug Past Isn't Hurting Him





Obama's Drug Past Isn't Hurting Him
Posted by CN Staff on June 18, 2008 at 05:43:55 PT
By Vince Beiser, Huffington Post
Source: AlterNet
USA -- If only we could forgive the thousands of imprisoned casual drug users in the way we've forgiven Barack Obama. Barack Obama is about to make history by becoming the first major party's presidential nominee with an identifying trait that once would have automatically disqualified him for the job. No, I'm not talking about his African American heritage -- I'm taking about his past illegal drug use.
Not just of who-cares marijuana, but of cocaine, a drug that carries a felony penalty in many states. It's both encouraging and appalling that he's getting a pass for doing something that has gotten thousands of other Americans thrown in jail.As Obama blithely acknowledges in his autobiography, he used drugs for a while, didn't like them, quit and moved on. No harm done -- not to himself, anyone around him nor, obviously, his career prospects. Same goes for newly-installed New York Governor David Paterson, who has also admitted to smoking weed and sniffing blow.Neither case seems like a big deal in a country where, according to the federal government's own figures, more than 35 million Americans have tried cocaine at least once and nearly 98 million have sampled marijuana or hashish. Once, confessing to toking was enough to scuttle Douglas Ginsberg's nomination for a Reagan-era US Supreme Court seat. Things had clearly loosened up by the time Bill Clinton's hilarious claim that he "didn't inhale" was considered an adequate fig leaf. By George W. Bush's candidacy we were ready to excuse his past pot use; the only issue was whether he had done cocaine. Now, we give such indulgences a wink and a shrug.Except, that is, for that minority of drug users who get caught. Thanks to harsh mandatory minimum sentencing and "Three Strikes" type laws, the number of Americans locked up for narcotics offenses has exploded in the last 20 years. There are now an estimated 500,000 people locked up for drug crimes -- more than the total of ALL prisoners in 1980.Most of them aren't exactly kingpins, either. A federal survey found that more than half of all state prisoners doing time for drug offenses had no record of violence or high-level drug involvement; 43% were convicted of simple possession. Over 40,000 people nationwide are locked up on marijuana charges.And as much as Obama's ascendancy shows how far we have come as a nation toward genuine racial equality, the way we're waging the War on Drugs shows how far we still have to go. The recent roundup of San Diego State students made headlines not because it's shocking that college kids take drugs, but because it was so exceptional for middle-class white kids to be arrested for doing so. Study after study has shown that blacks are more likely than whites to be arrested, convicted, and given longer sentences for drug offenses. Most recently, a report released in April by the Washington, DC-based Sentencing Project found that since 1980, the rate of drug arrests in the nation's largest cities increased by 225% for African Americans, while that for whites grew by only 70 percent. A Human Rights Watch report the same month found that African Americans are more than ten times as likely to be sent to prison on drug charges than whites. All this, even though federal government surveys show that whites use drugs at the same rate as blacks do.Of course, many drug offenders have committed other crimes. Many are dealers. Many deserve to be locked up. But many, many others are no different than the young Barack Obama, or millions of other Americans like him -- curious kids experimenting with intoxicants for kicks. They just had the bad luck to get arrested and charged.If an undercover cop had happened to be among Obama's party buddies back in his wild days, it's a safe bet he wouldn't be where he is now. Who knows what other potential activists, teachers and leaders we have derailed by throwing so many people in jail? Obama's example proves that by locking up so many petty drug users, we all lose.Vince Beiser is an award-winning magazine journalist based in Los Angeles. His work has appeared in Harper's, The Los Angeles Times Magazine, Mother Jones, Wired, blah blah blah. If you really want to know more or to get in touch, check out - http://www.vincebeiser.com - or e-mail:  vincelb sbcglobal.netComplete Title: Obama's Drug Past Isn't Hurting Him -- But Thousands Aren't So LuckySource: AlterNet (US)Author:  Vince Beiser, Huffington PostPublished: June 17, 2008Copyright: 2008 Independent Media InstituteContact: letters alternet.org Website: http://www.alternet.org/URL: http://www.alternet.org/drugreporter/88418/Related Articles:Obama May Be Targeted: He's Soft on Crimehttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread23934.shtmlNext President Might Be Gentler on Pot Clubshttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread23922.shtmlObama Exhibits Honesty About Drug Usehttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread23672.shtml
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Comment #7 posted by FoM on June 20, 2008 at 10:39:20 PT
rchandar 
I agree there is nothing new they just recycle the old.
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Comment #6 posted by rchandar on June 20, 2008 at 10:24:38 PT:
FoM
They are not saying anything new. "Potent" was a scare tactic used from the 90s on.
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Comment #5 posted by FoM on June 20, 2008 at 09:10:04 PT
rchandar 
I agree. People always strive to do better.
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Comment #4 posted by rchandar on June 20, 2008 at 09:07:12 PT:
FoM
Oh, I know! Good to hear from you. All I'm saying is, there isn't a business in the world that doesn't try to make a better product.
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Comment #3 posted by FoM on June 20, 2008 at 08:29:51 PT
rchandar 
I'm not sure I understand but I do know you aren't being critical of me.
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Comment #2 posted by rchandar on June 20, 2008 at 08:20:16 PT:
FoM
Now, look, people, it is not possible for us to "go back" and somehow reduce potency. Inevitably, providers were going to divine a more potent plant. Could we institute some kind of discriminatory legislation, where "outdoor" strains with no chemicals or lights were in some way deemed less "harmful" and grow-room products were not? Logistically, the remark is meaningless: prices for the said "chronic" are, of course, much higher. What ONDCP are trying to do is make a generational claim which is, in reality, a very bogus and useless one. To say that YOUR generation could handle themselves, and the CURRENT generation needs this endless supervision of actions is not reasonable; we know it. The more repressive we get, the more parental and institutional controls we set, the more powerful and dangerous becomes the rebellion which the past continually sets up as a necessity. It's like saying: "hey, we got it straight, but 'they' are out of control." How will you "rein them in"? as a hippie, who favors pot, or as a McCarthyist, who wants to send you to jail for 30 years?I'm not saying this against YOU, FoM. It is just my horse-sense about ONDCP's scare campaign, which has been standard for about as long as "chronic" weed has been in existence.rchandar
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Comment #1 posted by FoM on June 18, 2008 at 06:21:18 PT
Press Release From CASA
New CASA* Report Finds: Marijuana Potency up 175 Percent, Medical Diagnoses, Treatment Admissions, ER Findings for Teen Marijuana Use Up SharplyWednesday, June 18, 2008URL: http://biz.yahoo.com/iw/080618/0407916.html
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