I am a college student and part of the reality of my life is drugs, especially Marijuana. Personally, I do not smoke weed nor do I take illegal drugs. Yet, I encounter the use of Marijuana on a daily basis across my campus and throughout my dormitory. As a moderate liberal, I tend to fall into a crowd that seems to support the legalization of Marijuana. I want to come out and say, just like President Obama, that I am not in favor of legalizing pot.
(Well, maybe the President didn't say that in fear of alienating the pot-head voters). CBSNews.com covered the town hall with Obama and reported this.
As CBS News' Chief Political Correspondent Marc Ambinder points out, the top-rated questions in the “budget” and “fiscal stability” sections of the submissions page concerned the legalization of marijuana.
(Here’s one: “With over 1 out of 30 Americans controlled by the penal system, why not legalize, control, and tax marijuana to change the failed war on drugs into a money making, money saving boost to the economy? Do we really need that many victimless criminals?")
Hotsheet did not expect President Obama to address the pot questions during the town hall, particularly after the event opened with a pair of relatively straightforward questions. But we were wrong: the president interrupted the event midway through to address the issue.
“…we took votes about which questions were going to be asked, and I think 3 million people voted or 3.5 million people voted,” he said. “I have to say that there was one question that was voted on that ranked fairly high, and that was whether legalizing marijuana would improve the economy and job creation.”
The president then joked that “I don't know what this says about the online audience,” prompting laughter from the roughly 100 people gathered in the White House East Room for the event.
“…but I just want -- I don't want people to think that -- this was a fairly popular question,” he continued. “We want to make sure that it was answered.”
And then he answered it in a way that must come as a disappointment to legalization advocates – though they could at least take solace in the fact that he did not flatly state that he opposes legalization.
“The answer is, no, I don't think that is a good strategy to grow our economy,” the president said. His answer prompted applause from the audience.
I tend to agree with Obama but I also do not think it is worth burning political capitol on this issue. Democrats have very limited bargaining room and wasting time on legalizing pot just doesn't make sense in my eyes. I agree with the point that weed is less harmful than alcohol and it creates thousands of nonviolent criminals. Yet one thing my father taught me was that in life, you need to pick you battles. And at this point and with the current political climate, legalizing weed is not worth liberals time and effort.
http://www.cnn.com/...
This aired on D.L. Hughley's show and is pertinent to this discussion. I think that the points made by D.L.'s interviewee were very insightful and the fact that drug use is down among teens is a good thing. As a teenager (and/or young adult) I feel very strongly that drug use is damaging to my peers and that making weed more easily accessible (they never seem to have any problem getting it anyways) to them will do them much more harm than good.