President Obama feels that the Federal Government has some work to do in regards to the way they handle marijuana.
In the past, POTUS has admitted to smoking weed. In fact, he’s the only president who’s ever admitted to that fact. He tells Rolling Stone in a recent interview that he believes marijuana should be treated as a “public health” issue, and not a criminal issue.
“Look, I’ve been very clear about my belief that we should try to discourage substance abuse,” he told Rolling Stone, in response to a question about the failures of the War on Drugs. “And I am not somebody who believes that legalization is a panacea. But I do believe that treating this as a public-health issue, the same way we do with cigarettes or alcohol, is the much smarter way to deal with it.”
In other words President Obama wants the government to stop locking people up over weed and slap a warning label on it.
President Obama then broke down the laws and who’s in charge of enforcing them. “Typically how these classifications are changed are not done by presidential edict but are done either legislatively or through the DEA,” he said. “As you might imagine, the DEA, whose job it is historically to enforce drug laws, is not always going to be on the cutting edge about these issues…it is untenable over the long term for the Justice Department or the DEA to be enforcing a patchwork of laws, where something that’s legal in one state could get you a 20-year prison sentence in another.”
You can read President Obama’s full interview here. Do you agree?
