SULLUM: Obama's views on drugs

Obama has a limited amount of political capital he can spend in his initial time in office. I don't blame him for retreating somewhat from some of his more far-reaching pulpit pontifications (promise is probably too strong a word). He doesn't want this issue to cause him to be villified by the Christian Right, as this would be a major distraction to more substantive issues.

who cares if pot is legal or illegal? The current laws don't stop its use, sale, or production. Over 50% of persons who are incarcerated are there for non-violent drug related crimes. A lot of theses people probably still deserve to be in jail but.. It would be good for our courts, relieving over crowding in the judicial system, and the prison system to decriminalize some of these crimes, therefore allowing the law to prosecute more efficiently violent people thereby offering taxpayers more protection and allowing us to spend less tax dollars on the prison system. Legalization of pot is hardly a religious issue. The Republican party needs to live up to its own principles. Small government and personal responsibility. Heres a good issue to make an example of that

Mr. Obama might have some answers about the federal marijuana prohibition. Like how prohibition can be good policy for marijuana but bad policy for alcohol. Both prohibitions brought us violence and illegal suppliers. Both allowed minors easy access to the substance. Both substances are in fact substantially similar; recreational drugs that shouldn't be used by minors and which can yield vast sums of money for the Government when they're taxed. The only real difference between them is alcohol kills 100,000 people every year while marijuana has never killed anyone. Instead of controlling marijuana with the policy that failed for alcohol and instead of arguing about Decriminalization and Legalization, which really no one knows exactly what they mean, we need only ask one question. Why aren't we controlling marijuana with the *same laws* as alcohol?