Barack Obama
America's Great Black Hope was raised in Hawaii where, by his own admission, he toked up regularly.
"We were always playing on the white man's court . . . by the white man's rules," he wrote in Dreams of My Father. "Pot had helped, and booze; maybe a little blow when you could afford it. Not smack, though." In a 2007 interview, he stated, "When I was a kid I inhaled frequently. That was the point." After the New York Times ran a story that interviewed friends who charged Obama barely toked, PBS's Mark Shields went so far as to speculate that the candidate had insulated himself from criticism about pot use by his honest admission.
Speaking to Northwestern University students in 2004, Obama said, "The War on Drugs has been an utter failure. We need to rethink and decriminalize our marijuana laws." After he reluctantly raised his hand to oppose decrim during an MSNBC debate, the comment resurfaced. A spokesperson for his campaign said that Obama had "always" supported decriminalizing marijuana and that he'd misunderstood the question, adding Obama's administration would "review drug sentences to see where we can be smarter on crime and reduce the pling and counterproductive sentencing [of] nonviolent offenders." But after the Washington Times posted the 2004 video on their website, his campaign office flip-flopped, saying Obama "does not support eliminating criminal penalties for marijuana possession and use."
Sadly lost in the flap over the anti-American tirade from Obama’s minister is a major reason why Jeremiah Wright damned our country.
"The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing 'God Bless America'," Wright said in a 2003 sermon. "No, no, no, not God bless America, God damn America, that's in the Bible for killing innocent people. God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human."
When Wright says the government gives people drugs, he was likely referring to information uncovered in Congressional hearings by John Kerry and by the work of journalist Gary Webb, that CIA dumped crack cocaine into Los Angeles ghettos to fund Nicaraguan contras during the 1980s. More compelling evidence is presented in the not-to-be-missed Showtime program American Drug War: The Last White Hope from Sacred Cow Productions.
Regardless, Wright has cause to be outraged over racism in the drug war. Although public health data reveals that whites use drugs at the same rate as blacks, African Americans make up almost half of those arrested and convicted for drug offenses. Between 1992 and 1996, drug sentences skyrocketed and the African American prison population doubled. Today, 1 in 3 black men are in prison, on parole or on probation and 1 in 14 black children has a parent in prison. (See Drug Policy Alliance: “The War on Drugs or The New Jim Crow?”)
Did Obama address these issues in his mop-up speech? Of course not. Although he has admitted to youthful drug use, Obama and the other candidates have managed to sidestep the issue of our longest, 100-year drug war, its detrimental effects on all of society, its inhumanity, and the justified rage that it engenders.
Copyright 2008
VERY
IMPORTANT POTHEADS
Debunking
Myths About Marijuana