Obama: (Reefer) Madness to Tackle Legislation

This is good article from Norm Stamper of LEAP that explores both sides of the federal legalization debate.
Huffington Post

Two themes emerge in response to my 3/28/09 post. Below, a shot at summarizing. Let's call the competing views Camp Yes, as in President Obama should have tackled the marijuana issue during his recent online town hall meeting, and Camp No representing those who believe he was wise to shrug it off.

Camp Yes
Barack Obama, along with at least two of his Oval Office predecessors, was a pot smoker (and cocaine snorter) in his younger days. "Youthful mistakes," declaim all three. (Why don't they, and multitudes of other public figures, just say they did it, they enjoyed it, they outgrew it. Or they calculated the risks of continued use vis-à-vis their upward mobility, and switched back to booze?) This president's drug use did not slow his march toward global eminence (any more than Michael Phelps's kept him from the gold). But if young Barry had been busted? For starters, you wouldn't know the man's name today. Camp Yes asks the president: Why not use your understanding of what a drug bust would have done to your own future to do right by tens of millions of unlucky others? (Read the rest of the post)