PRESIDENT OBAMA'S WAR ON HIS OWN 'YOUTHFUL IRRESPONSIBILITY'

In his high school yearbook photo, President Barack Obama sports a
white leisure suit and a Travolta-esque collar whose wingspan could
put a bystander's eye out. Hey, it was 1979.

Maybe that explains the rest of young Barry's yearbook page, with its
"still life" featuring a pack of rolling papers and a shout-out to
the "Choom gang." ("Chooming" is Hawaiian slang for smoking pot.)

Far be it from me to condemn our president for harmless (and amusing)
youthful indiscretions. As his predecessor put it, "When I was young
and irresponsible, I was young and irresponsible."

But Obama's older now, and he's responsible for administering our
nation's drug policy. Surely he can't feel comfortable locking up
thousands of Americans for the sort of behavior that gave him a
chuckle three decades ago. Yet, in his new National Drug Control
Strategy, Obama "firmly opposes the legalization of marijuana or any
other illicit drug" and boasts of his administration's aggressive
approach to pot eradication. Watch your back, Choom Gang.

Two days after the "new" strategy's release, the Associated Press
published a comprehensive analysis of our 40-year drug war, using
data obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests.

Since 1970, we've spent a trillion dollars trying to improve
Americans' character by preventing them from ingesting federally
disapproved substances. Nearly $450 billion went toward locking up 37
million nonviolent offenders, 10 million for marijuana possession.

Obama has won praise from liberal pundits by paying lip service to
drug-war de-escalation, but as the AP report shows, he has devoted
more resources to enforcement than any other president.

"We're not at war with people in this country," the president's drug
czar insists, so we should stop calling it a "war on drugs," which
leads Americans to see it "as a war on them." How did they ever get
that idea? You can find the answer in a horrifying YouTube video
that has garnered more than a million views this month. In it, a
ninja-garbed SWAT team breaks into a private home in Columbia, Mo.,
and shoots the family dog in front of the suspect's 7-year-old son.

After seizing "a pipe and a small amount of marijuana," they had the
audacity to charge the parents with child endangerment. Softer
rhetoric won't change the fact that the drug war is a war. Since the
1980s, the feds have subsidized the transfer of military ordnance to
local police and Special Forces training of SWAT teams. That has led
to a dangerous warrior ethos among civilian peacekeepers and an
appalling body count. Obama has never gone in for Clintonian dodges
about his youthful drug use. Inhaling "was the point," he said in
2007, and in his autobiography, he copped to occasionally snorting "a
little blow."

Like many middle-class kids, the president briefly flirted with drug
culture before putting away childish things and becoming a high
achiever. (Indeed, looking at what he has achieved since, you
sometimes wish pot killed motivation as effectively as drug-war
propagandists claim.)

The president lacks the moral authority to lock people up for
behavior he engaged in as a young man. Still, political realities
being what they are, we can't expect him to declare a total
cease-fire in the drug war. To his credit, Obama has at least
reversed the Bush policy of prosecuting medical marijuana cases in
states where it's legal.

But Obama may soon be presented with an unwelcome test of character.
In November, Californians will likely approve a ballot initiative
legalizing recreational pot use. Will Obama ignore the people's will
and continue to prosecute marijuana users in our largest state?

He has five months to think about doing the right
thing.

Examiner columnist Gene Healy is a vice president at the Cato
Institute and the author of "The Cult of the Presidency."