Federal legalization of marijuana

I'm not a push-over on marijuana legalization. Honestly any consumption I have is very rare. But I do support legalizing marijuana for a number of reasons. The response from the White House could use more conversation, which I was unable to find a way to hold through the website.

Whitehouse Response at We The People to petitions

This response to multiple petitions can be found on the Whitehouse's We The People website. Interestingly the site WeThePeople.gov is for the National Endownment for Humanities, however that site seems to have stopped publishing work a few years ago.

Addressing the Legalization of Marijuana

By Gil Kerlikowske

Thank you for participating in We the People and speaking out on the legalization of marijuana. Coming out of the recent election, it is clear that we're in the midst of a serious national conversation about marijuana. 

At President Obama's request, the Justice Department is reviewing the legalization initiatives passed in Colorado and Washington, given differences between state and federal law. In the meantime, please see a recent interview with Barbara Walters in which President Obama addressed the legalization of marijuana.

Barbara Walters:

Do you think that marijuana should be legalized?

President Obama:  

Well, I wouldn't go that far.  But what I think is that, at this point, Washington and Colorado, you've seen the voters speak on this issue.  And as it is, the federal government has a lot to do when it comes to criminal prosecutions.  It does not make sense from a prioritization point of view for us to focus on recreational drug users in a state that has already said that under state law that's legal.

…this is a tough problem because Congress has not yet changed the law.  I head up the executive branch; we're supposed to be carrying out laws.  And so what we're going to need to have is a conversation about how do you reconcile a federal law that still says marijuana is a federal offense and state laws that say that it's legal.

When you're talking about drug kingpins, folks involved with violence, people are who are peddling hard drugs to our kids in our neighborhoods that are devastated, there is no doubt that we need to go after those folks hard… it makes sense for us to look at how we can make sure that our kids are discouraged from using drugs and engaging in substance abuse generally.  There is more work we can do on the public health side and the treatment side.

Gil Kerlikowske is Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy

Source: Legalized Marijuana Could Generate
$100 Million In Revenue Annually For Colorado

I don't believe the Obama administration response on this issue takes into consideration that the reason they are not legalizing is not the substance -- it is the people and culture of an illegal market. If marijuana was legalized it would curb violence, and gang/corporate activity around the market. By moving the market to legalized trade it would make those in the market accountable for offenses such as extortion, fraud, and other criminal actions. These offenses have more to do with the actual trading of the substance than the market it is currently trading in. In actuality business would benefit greatly from the amount of legal action which could be pursued from offenses in a legitimate legal market. Prices could be regulated, taxes could be paid, and the public would be legally employed (paying income tax, holding a house, and other assets available through legal business activity).

I believe there is an active corporate push for illegal market activity. The corporate agenda is to place young people in jail with felony offenses on their record. Criminalizing our youth, particularly black and brown so they are unable to obtain jobs that check against background for criminal wrongdoing is furthering a number of

• The under-education of persons in the working class and unemployed.
• Battle to obtain and hold a productive job when felonious offenses are on record.
• Resorting to work in the illegal market that aims to kill or incarcerate you.
• Rise of a quasi-military state with random checks of innocent citizens living in fear
• The loss of hope and a plan for the future, with the ambition and drive to see it succeed.
• Slave labor through the prison system replaces the lowest class of wage earners.
• Deepening the divide between have and have not as the middle class is caught on a slippery slope downward.

Ultimately this is the decline of society and while I can't pin it all on legalization of marijuana, the conclusions drawn show this to be a major contributing factor. We can't continue to treat the result, it has to move to the cause and the culture leading to that cause.

Finally I want to encourage those whom have criminal activity on their record to pursue expunging their record of criminal activity. There are workshops held regularly to assist those interested, check with criminal defense attorneys, public defenders and some judges will assist as well.