Esquire Magazine December 23, 2008

Why Obama Really Might Decriminalize Marijuana

The stoner community is clamoring to say it: "Yes we cannabis!" Turns out, with
several drug-war veterans close to the president-elect's ear, insiders think reform
could come in Obama's second term -- or sooner.

By: John H. Richardson
The stoner community is clamoring to say it: "Yes we canna

Writer-at-large John H. Richardson's column, "The Richardson Report," runs right
here each Tuesday.

Famously, Franklin Delano Roosevelt saved the United States banking system during
the first seven days of his first term.

And what did he do on the eighth day? "I think this would be a good time for beer,"
he said.

Congress had already repealed Prohibition, pending ratification from the states. But
the people needed a lift, and legalizing beer would create a million jobs. And lo,
booze was back. Two days after the bill passed, Milwaukee brewers hired six hundred
people and paid their first 
0 million in taxes. Soon the auto industry was tooling up
the first 
2 million worth of delivery trucks, and brewers were pouring tens of
millions into new plants.

"Roosevelt's move to legalize beer had the effect he intended," says Adam Cohen,
author of Nothing To Fear, a thrilling new history of FDR's first hundred days. "It
was, one journalist observed, 'like a stick of dynamite into a log jam.'"

Many in the marijuana world are now hoping for something similar from Barack
Obama. After all, the president-elect said in 2004 that the war on drugs had been
"an utter failure" and that America should decriminalize pot:

In July, Obama told Rolling Stone that he believed in "shifting the paradigm" to a
public-health approach: "I would start with nonviolent, first-time drug offenders. The
notion that we are imposing felonies on them or sending them to prison, where they
are getting advanced degrees in criminality, instead of thinking about ways like drug
courts that can get them back on track in their lives -- it's expensive, it's
counterproductive, and it doesn't make sense."

Meanwhile, economists have been making the beer argument. In a paper titled
"Budgetary Implications of Marijuana Prohibition," Dr. Jeffrey Miron of Harvard
argues that legalized marijuana would generate between 
0 and 
4 billion in
savings and taxes every year -- conclusions endorsed by 300 top economists,
including Milton "Free Market" Friedman himself.

And two weeks ago, when the Obama team asked the public to vote on the top
problems facing America, this was the public's No. 1 question: "Will you consider
legalizing marijuana so that the government can regulate it, tax it, put age limits on
it, and create millions of new jobs and a billion dollar industry right here in the U.S.?"

But alas, the answer from Camp Obama was -- as it has been for years -- a flat one-
liner: "President-elect Obama is not in favor of the legalization of marijuana." And at
least two of Obama's top people are drug-war supporters: Rahm Emanuel has been
a long-time enemy of reform, and Joe Biden is a drug-war mainstay who helped
create the position of "drug czar."

Meanwhile, in 2007, the last year for which statistics are available, 782,000 Americans
were arrested for marijuana-related crimes (90 percent of them for possession), with
approximately 60,000 to 85,000 of them serving sentences in jail or prison. It's the
continuation of an unnecessary stream of suffering that now has taught generations
of Americans just how capricious their government can be. The irony is that the
preference for "decriminalization" over legalization actually supports the continued
existence of criminal drug mafias.

Nevertheless, the marijuana community is guardedly optimistic. "Reformers will
probably be disappointed that Obama is not going to go as far as they want, but
we're probably not going to continue this mindless path of prohibition," NORML
executive director Allen St. Pierre tells me.

Some of Obama's biggest financial donors are friends of the legalization movement,
St. Pierre notes. "Frankly, George Soros, Peter Lewis, and John Sperling -- this
triumvirate of billionaires -- if those three men, who put up $50 to $60 million to get
Democrats and Obama elected, can't pick up the phone and actually get a one-to-
one meeting on where this drug policy is going, then maybe it's true that when you
give money, you don't expect favors."

Another member of that moneyed group: Marsha Rosenbaum, the former head of
the San Francisco office of the Drug Policy Alliance, who quit last year to become a
fundraiser for Obama and "bundled" an impressive 
04,000 for his campaign. She


said that based on what she hears from inside the transition team, she expects


Obama to play it very safe. "He said at one point that he's not going to use any


political capital with this -- that's a concern," Rosenbaum tells me. And the Path to


Change will probably have to pass through the Valley of Studies and Reports. "I'm


hoping that what the administration will do," she says, "is something this country


hasn't done since 1971, which is to undertake a presidential commission to look at


drug policy, convene a group of blue-ribbon experts to look at the issue, and make


recommendations."




But ultimately, Rosenbaum remains confident that those recommendations would call


for an end to the drug war. "Once everything settles down in the second term, we


have a shot at seeing some real reform."




Still, a certain paranoia prevails. Rumors about Obama's choice for drug czar have


lingered on Republican Congressman Jim Ramstad. "He's been a standard anti-drug


warrior for the whole time he's been in Congress," says St. Pierre. Another possibility


is Atlanta police chief Richard Pennington, who raises fears in the legalization


community of more of the same law-enforcement model. Another prospect stirring


the bong waters is Dr. Don Vereen, the chief drug policy thinker on the transition


team. "He's really a believer in prohibition and he can excite an audience," says


Rosenbaum, who says a friend on the transition team refused to hint at final


contenders for the drug czar pick. "I'm joking with him, 'I'm going to have to open


up the New York Times for this, aren't I?'" His answer: "We're going to send out


smoke signals."