/ Xeni Jardin / 8:07 am Fri Dec 14, 2012
Obama on pot smoking in newly-legal CO and WA: "Bigger fish to fry"
Photo: Shutterstock. "Young man eating leaves of hemp. Shoot in the field of marijuana."
"We've got bigger fish to fry," Obama told ABC News' Barbara Walters, speaking about marijuana smokers in Colorado and Washington.
In those two states, recreational use is now legal, but the DEA still has a hard-on for weed prohibition, as demonstrated by the agency's ongoing and aggressive dispensary raids in CA. According to the president, going after potsmokers in states where it's legal is no longer a high (heh) priority.
"It would not make sense for us to see a top priority as going after recreational users in states that have determined that it's legal," he said.
"This is a tough problem, because Congress has not yet changed the law," Obama told Walters of the legalization in Colorado and Washington. "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?"
More in the Washington Post.
dea / drugs / marijuana / MMJ / politics
Andrew Cuomo's naked hostility drives out MTA president Andy Byford, the "Train Daddy" who has transformed the world's rail systems
Andy Byford comes from generations of public transportation workers and worked his way from a London Underground platform supervisor to running multiple British rail lines; then went to Australia where he oversaw Railcorp in NSW; then to Toronto, where he ran a successful five-year initiative that turned the TTC into the American Public Transportation Association's […]
Canadian "protesters" at Huawei extradition hearing say they were tricked, thought they were in a music video
The idea of paid protesters is a favorite of the right, though as always, the thing you accuse your opponents of inevitably turns out to be the thing you're doing yourself (Trump paid actors to cheer his presidential campaign announcement and big industry groups pay actors to protest regulations that undermine their profits).