Obamarijuana: Smoke Signals?

During the months of Obamamania following the inauguration, this awesome photograph of Barack Obama smoking a rolled cigarette with droopy eyes went viral on the Internet. That image spurred delight amongst Obama fans—and lots of passionate debate over the question, was Obama actually smoking a weed joint?

No one is entirely sure. “I think that, at this stage, my life is an open book, literally and figuratively,” Obama once said. Is it?

Since Justice Department announced that federal drug agents would not longer be prosecuting people who are legally using, selling or supplying medical marijuana in the states that permit its use, pundits have been divided over the legal implications of this statement.

Graham Boyd, director of the Drug Law Reform Project was quoted on The New York Times for saying that this memo signaled the Obama administration’s willingness to embrace more liberal marijuana laws. Marijuana advocates see this as an encouraging shift that rides on the recent appointment of Richard Gil Kerlikowske as Obama’s top drug policy adviser, perceived to stand for the broader decriminalization of marijuana.

Perhaps the great thing about this memo—as with that iconic 1980s photograph of Obama smoking lovely—that it could be interpreted to be as controversial or uncontroversial as one would want it to be. Thus lies the ingenuity of this carefully calibrated statement. Smoke signals, anyone?

• New guidelines might be effective in states that are currently considering medical marijuana laws. Slate writer Christopher Beam writes, “Many states take their cues from the federal government when it comes to drug policy. States could take the new policy as a tacit nod from Uncle Sam to go ahead and allow medical marijuana back home.” On the other hand, Beam notes that in states like California, where there is an established system of medical marijuana legislation, “the new policy is unremarkably uncontroversial… If you run a medical marijuana business in Los Angeles that the state deems illegal, the federal government can't help you. In fact, it can still raid your facility.” The status quo, for the most part, remains unchanged.

• The Memo muddies the federal role. Tom Riley, the associate director of the White House Office of National Drug Control from 2001 to 2009 has blogged that “the memo itself is internally conflicted to the point of incoherence. While ostensibly encouraging prosecutors to defer to state and local laws on marijuana, it also recognizes that federal “interest” can still allow the feds, at their discretion, to step in and prosecute.” In other words, this memo sets the stage for a complicated clash between federal and local governments. Riley makes this compelling argument: by giving the green light to medical marijuana, the Obama administration might cause the proliferation of traffickers exploiting the medical label. With that, the hope that more liberal laws will be rolled out would just end up as a pipe dream.