Let me ask you about the War on Drugs. You vowed in 2008, when you were running for election, that you would not "use Justice Department resources to try and circumvent state laws about medical marijuana." Yet we just ran a story that shows your administration is launching more raids on medical pot than the Bush administration did. What's up with that? Here's what's up: What I specifically said was that we were not going to prioritize prosecutions of persons who are using medical marijuana. I never made a commitment that somehow we were going to give carte blanche to large-scale producers and operators of marijuana – and the reason is, because it's against federal law. I can't nullify congressional law. I can't ask the Justice Department to say, "Ignore completely a federal law that's on the books." What I can say is, "Use your prosecutorial discretion and properly prioritize your resources to go after things that are really doing folks damage." As a consequence, there haven't been prosecutions of users of marijuana for medical purposes.
The only tension that's come up – and this gets hyped up a lot – is a murky area where you have large-scale, commercial operations that may supply medical marijuana users, but in some cases may also be supplying recreational users. In that situation, we put the Justice Department in a very difficult place if we're telling them, "This is supposed to be against the law, but we want you to turn the other way." That's not something we're going to do. I do think it's important and useful to have a broader debate about our drug laws. One of the things we've done over the past three years was to make a sensible change when it came to the disparity in sentencing between crack cocaine and powder cocaine. We've had a discussion about how to focus on treatment, taking a public-health approach to drugs and lessening the overwhelming emphasis on criminal laws as a tool to deal with this issue. I think that's an appropriate debate that we should have.
I wish I had that confidence in the Democratic party, or any party. I don't think either dominating party will do such a thing. While a third party will support legalization, it is too often we see one promise/stance given only for the candidate/party to subsequently turn its' back once in power. Obama has done it, as well as his predecessors, and it is easy to conclude that his successors will do the same.
The parties in power (republican and democrat), just want more power. They don't care about us or anyone else but the elites.
While I would apologize for my cynicism, I will not in this case. In the past few decades, the democrats have made a bad problem worse. Not to say the republican party has been rosy on the side of drug legalization, but they sure didn't apply the fortitude of imposition that Clinton did.
And, no I am not a democrat, republican, etc. I side with no party, and will never. I have been disappointed and disgusted too often to side with any of these people. If anything, I am comfortable with the title "secular humanist".
And to those that would say, "If you don't like it, then leave!". Well, I've tried that (at one time I could afford it), and it is not as easy some people may think. If I could, I would, but since I can't, I shan't.
I'm not really looking for agreement or otherwise, or anything. This is just a rant.