"President-elect Obama is not in favor of the legalization of marijuana."

To be fair to President-Elect Obama, he never pledged to legalize marijuana. Quite the contrary, during his Presidential campaign he backtracked from his previous comments supporting pot decriminalization, and he even went so far as to pick one of the chief architects of the modern drug war to be his Vice President. In short, to believe that the Obama team would have responded to the legalization question any other way was idealistic at best, and foolish at worst.

The Washington Times has unearthed a video of a debate in Barack Obama's initial Illinois campaign for the U.S. Senate in 2004. The debate tape from Jan. 21, 2004, at Northwestern University shows Obama proclaiming the war on drugs an "utter failure."

"We need to rethink and decriminalize our marijuana laws," he said to scattered applause. "But I'm not somebody who believes in legalization of marijuana. What I do believe is that we need to rethink how we're operating in the drug war. Currently, we're not doing a good job."

My guess is that he will go with more police, harsher penalties, and more killer SWAT team raids. It is what Bill Clinton did. And no one complained (well except for the legalizers).

As those of you paying attention know - Obama was never about policy. He was about getting elected. His policies will be what ever he feels will give him the best chance for re-election. It is not like any great number of Americans think drug prohibition is working (well except for making illegal drugs easier to get than beer and financing criminal gangs and supporting the narco take over of Mexico) it is just that the prohibitionists are loud and they have a lot of government money behind them.

"The Latin American drug cartels have stretched their tentacles much deeper into our lives than most people believe. It's possible they are calling the shots at all levels of government." - William Colby, former CIA Director, 1995

H/T Suzanne Wills via e-mail

Cross Posted at Power and Control