Dear President Obama,
First and foremost, congratulations on your stunning victory over Mitt Romney. I am not sure I could have lived in a Romney America, so thanks for not making me move.
But I would like to talk to you about two other stunning victories in Colorado ans Washington last night….for weed. In case you were a bit busy with all of the “I am leader of the free world” hoopla, last night the states of Colorado and Washington passed sensible laws to allow people over 21 to use weed legally. Voters overwhelmingly decided that it was time to quit taking grown adults to jail because they like cannabis. Pretty awesome, right?
In 2008 you said this:
Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.
That statement was powerful. It embodied a lot of what I believe and my assumed role as a “Weed Activist.” Our nation’s laws on weed are out of control and evil. We lock up 25% of the world’s prison population; we only have 5% of the actual population. Why? Because we lock up (mostly poor) people for weed EVERY DAY!
This has to “change,” It just has got to; and soon.
There is no getting around that. It is an inherently immoral policy that is aimed at reaping profits for big businesses and special interest by capitalizing off of the ruining of another person’s life….and for some weed? Seriously?
There cannot be one rational bone in your body that actually thinks this is a good idea.
So now that we are past the dumb stuff and you have been elected to your second term, can we talk about the injustices of the war on drugs, and weed in particular? You said that this was an “entirely legitimate topic for debate.” Well let’s have that debate.
Please tell me how you can justify locking up people for 5-10-20 years for a substance far safer than booze and far less damaging to our society? Let me know your justification for our marijuana laws disproportionately targeting minorities and poor folks. Please do explain how we can afford to continue to lock people up for weed at alarming rates for crimes with no victims? Help me to understand why we have militarized our police forces in the name of raiding people for weed.
Yes…let us have the debate. I just do not see how the argument for continuing this failed prohibition holds any merit. Any.
It is no longer okay to brush this subject under the rug as some sort of political taboo. Adult use cannabis legalization passed…and it passed BIG.
For instance…in Colorado you got 1,203,250 votes. Weed got 1,252,951. You lost to weed by 49,701 votes. WOW! You got beat by weed by almost 50k votes.
The point is that this is not a fringe issue for you to laugh off in your next YouTube debate. We need REAL solutions to this issue and not light-hearted jokes. We need you to wake up and smell the choom. We need you to lead on this issue for us.
There are millions of weedheads all across this great nation that do not deserve to be treated as criminals any longer. You know this. You know that when you were choomed out with the fellas back in the day that you were not a criminal deserving to go to jail because weed made you feel good.
So I invite you to organize the first White House Weed Summit. I can make myself available any time. You call the day and I will make it happen.
Then you can tell me why you think it is a good reason to keep taking people to jail for weed and I can tell you why I think that is fucking crazy talk. We will invite Richard Branson….
I hope you will see the passage of adult use legalization laws in two states as an opportunity to open the door to this debate, and to begin to really change the way our society deals with cannabis, and drug use in general. The Drug War is a war crime against our own people that has shredded the fabric of our communities and we must put an end to these draconian failures NOW.
Please feel free to contact me at your convenience to further discuss this matter. Thanks for your time and consideration.
Love,
Weed Activist #23,479
PS: Can you stop killing children with drones too? My friend Tom Angell from LEAP would really appreciate that. Thanks.