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Since it is becoming increasingly obvious that President Obama is going to be asked about marijuana every single time there’s a forum where the public is free to submit questions, it would make sense for the Commander in Chief to bone up on the subject, and at least go to the trouble to prepare some intelligent responses.
Apparently the Administration doesn’t feel that it’s worth their time to do that, though. Obama seems to actually be getting worse at talking about cannabis, as pointed out by Scott Morgan of StoptheDrugWar.com.
“This latest exchange is just embarrassing,” Morgan writes of the President’s latest sidestepping of a cannabis question.
The President was asked about legalizing medical marijuana at a town hall event in Cannon Falls, Minnesota on Monday, reports David Edwards at The Raw Story.
“If you can’t legalize marijuana, why can’t you just legalize medical marijuana?” a woman reasonably asked the President.
“A lot of states are making decisions about medical marijuana,” Obama’s answer began. “As a controlled substance, the issue is then that is it being prescribed by a doctor as opposed to… you know, well, I’ll leave it at that.”
That non-explanation was apparently the best the President could offer on the subject.
Could the Commander in Chief have realized the hopelessness of any attempted explanation of stopping seriously ill patients from have safe and legal access to the medicine recommended by their doctors — the only medicine which helps — but which isn’t available from Big Pharma?
I wouldn’t want to try to explain that, either. Especially if Big Pharma were among my biggest campaign contributors.
“To find oneself speechless in the midst of an intensifying debate is to reveal rather transparently the utter incoherence of one’s position, and this could be the most complete collapse yet in the ugly history of political leaders trying and failing to defend our nation’s massively unpopular war on medical marijuana,” Morgan wrote.
“There just seems to be some sort of misunderstanding happening here, wherein we came under the impression that if marijuana wasn’t important enough to warrant even 30 seconds of meaningful discussion from the president, then it’s also probably not important enough to justify arresting millions of us for possessing it,” Morgan wrote.
“Our read?” wrote the LA Weekly‘s Dennis Romero. “He’s pro-medical marijuana, but he can’t be seen as such as Republicans fight for their presidential nomination and battle over who can make Obama seem more liberal.”