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Fittingly for MLK day, Prez Obama laments class and race disparities from pot prohibition

By Douglas Berman

I MLK am intrigued and pleased to see that the New Yorker has just released this very lengthy article profiling President Obama that has a very interesting small section with quotes from the President concerning modern marijuana policies and reform. Though I expect to cover various aspects of what Prez Obama said a lot more over at Marijuana Law, Policy and Reform in the week ahead, these comments should be of special interest to sentencing fans: 

What clearly does trouble him is the radically disproportionate arrests and incarcerations for marijuana among minorities.  “Middle-class kids don’t get locked up for smoking pot, and poor kids do,” he said.  “And African-American kids and Latino kids are more likely to be poor and less likely to have the resources and the support to avoid unduly harsh penalties.”  But, he said, “we should not be locking up kids or individual users for long stretches of jail time when some of the folks who are writing those laws have probably done the same thing.”  Accordingly, he said of the legalization of marijuana in Colorado and Washington that “it’s important for it to go forward because it’s important for society not to have a situation in which a large portion of people have at one time or another broken the law and only a select few get punished.”

As is his habit, he nimbly argued the other side. “Having said all that, those who argue that legalizing marijuana is a panacea and it solves all these social problems I think are probably overstating the case.  There is a lot of hair on that policy. And the experiment that’s going to be taking place in Colorado and Washington is going to be, I think, a challenge.”

As the title of this post highlights, I think it is valuable and fitting that news of the President of the United States making these points hits the papers on the weekend we honor the work and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King.  As students of history know, Dr. King was concerned about economic inequallity as well as racial inequality, and I think the stories of modern pot prohiibition reflect both.  More broadly, as I highlight in a new post over at my other blog, titled MLK marijuana mash-up: “I Have A Dream…” we are free at last from pot prohibition, I think MLK’s most famous exhortations about freedom and equality are useful to consider at this unique moment of marijuana reform debates.

Some related recent posts (mostly from MLPR):