OBAMA SHOULD GET ROLLING ON SENSIBLE MARIJUANA

For all of the keen intellect President Obama showed in his online
town-hall meeting, he didn't seem to know much about reefer economics.

When asked whether legalizing marijuana might be a stimulus for the
economy and job creation, he played the question for laughs.

"I don't know what this says about the online audience," he quipped
as his studio audience chuckled and groaned. "But ... this was a
fairly popular question. We want to make sure that it was answered," he said.

Sure. So you could knock it.

"The answer is, no, I don't think that is a good strategy to grow our economy."

No stimulus? Hey, more than a few blinged-out, Escalade-driving pot
dealers would dispute that notion. You want "green" industry? Free
the weed, dude.

Such is the call of such pro-pot politicians as California
Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, who has proposed to legalize the weed, tax
it and regulate it like booze. He estimates the move would generate
$1 billion in revenue for the state's troubled budget and save $150
million in enforcement costs.

It's hard to argue with Ammiano's logic, but it's easy to make light
of lighting up. Marijuana is, after all, funny. Few subjects inspire
more bad puns from headline writers than those that, well, step on
grass. A quick sample:

► "Obama: Nope to dope" (Russia Today)

► "Obama's Marijuana Buzz Kill" (The Daily Beast online)

► "Marijuana issue suddenly smoking hot" (Politico)

Like sex and sobriety, marijuana is funny because it is surrounded by
so much hypocrisy. So is politics.

To listen to Obama's chortles, for example, you'd never guess that he
is our third president in a row to have admitted to using marijuana
back in his years of youthful indiscretion.

Bill Clinton says he tried it but "didn't inhale." Oh, sure. George
W. Bush admitted to early pot use in a taped interview with a friend,
but refuses to discuss it in public. Obama described his own teen
drug use in poignant detail in his first memoir, but like countless
other boomer dads now shies away from the subject.

Yet you would not guess from his snarky town-hall attitude that only
a week earlier his Attorney General Eric Holder announced the federal
Drug Enforcement Administration would stop raiding and arresting
users or dispensers of medicinal marijuana unless they violated both
state law and federal law.

That means you, California, and a dozen other states that allow
marijuana sales and possession for medicinal purposes with a doctor's
recommendation.

Holder sensibly announced that DEA resources are too valuable in the
war against dangerous drug lords to be raiding residents who
otherwise are in compliance with state and local laws and standards.
That would reverse the Bush administration's ridiculous
scorched-earth pursuit that ignored the right of states to govern
themselves in such matters.

Yet convenient inconsistency is not limited to any one party or
administration. A week after Holder's notice - and the day before
Obama laughed off the notion of legal reefers - DEA agents raided
Emmalyn's California Cannabis Clinic, a licensed medical marijuana
collective in San Francisco.

DEA spokesmen claimed Emmalyn's had violated local as well as federal
law, but they didn't say how. Local officials said they didn't have a
clue what DEA was talking about.

Not laughing is Charles Lynch, a celebrated cause since his Morro
Bay, Calif., medical marijuana dispensary was raided by the DEA in
2007. Two days before Obama's town hall, a federal judge postponed
Lynch's sentencing to await clarification of Team Obama's new
hands-off approach.

Lynch, who has no criminal record and was welcomed by the local mayor
and business community, should be set free. Instead he's in legal
limbo, with both sides trying to make him a test case for their
competing crusades.

Also not laughing are lawmakers in at least 10 states, including
Obama's home state of Illinois, who are debating whether and how they
might join the 13 states where medical marijuana is legal.

If he really cares, Obama could end this reefer madness in much the
same way Franklin Roosevelt ended the disastrous run of liquor
prohibition in 1933. Prohibition had to go. It was too costly to
enforce. It demoralized a public already beaten down by the
Depression. It wasted a potential tax revenue-producing commodity by
intruding unnecessarily into private lives of otherwise law-abiding
Americans. Sounds familiar.

Unlike Roosevelt, President Obama does not have to amend the
Constitution to end our marijuana confusion. He only has to get out
of the way and allow the states to enforce their own drug laws.
That's not a laughable notion. It's only sensible.