By Tom Angell

 

President Obama says marijuana should be treated like cigarettes and alcohol, is criticizing the DEA for being behind the times on cannabis and believes that the legalization debate is now ripe like the conversation about marriage equality was a few years ago.

“If you survey the American people, including Trump voters, they’re…in favor, in large numbers, of decriminalizing marijuana,” Obama said in an exit interview with Rolling Stone conducted the day after Election Day and published on Tuesday. “I do believe that treating this as a public-health issue, the same way we do with cigarettes or alcohol, is the much smarter way to deal with it.”

While stopping short of clearly calling for an end to prohibition, the president’s comments about treating cannabis like two legal drugs are his boldest statements yet on the topic.

In the interview, Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner pressed Obama on marijuana’s status as a Schedule I drug, which his administration decided not to change with a ruling in August.

“Typically how these classifications are changed are not done by presidential edict but are done either legislatively or through the DEA,” Obama responded. “As you might imagine, the DEA, whose job it is historically to enforce drug laws, is not always going to be on the cutting edge about these issues.”

The president also reiterated his belief that federal prohibition enforcement is not sustainable in light of decisions by a growing number of states to legalize marijuana.

“It is untenable over the long term for the Justice Department or the DEA to be enforcing a patchwork of laws, where something that’s legal in one state could get you a 20-year prison sentence in another,” he said. “So this is a debate that is now ripe, much in the same way that we ended up making progress on same-sex marriage.”

The last-minute remarks are reminiscent of an exit interview that President Bill Clinton gave to Rolling Stone just weeks before he left office.

“I think that most small amounts of marijuana have been decriminalized in some places, and should be,” Clinton told Wenner just days before the 2000 election to replace him.

But Clinton oversaw the expansion of the drug war during his two terms as president and did nothing to advance the cause of decriminalization. His administration even threatened to punish doctors just for recommending medical cannabis.

While Obama has largely given states room to implement their own legalization laws without federal interference, he has disappointed marijuana law reform advocates in other ways, such as by letting the DEA refuse to reclassify cannabis under the Controlled Substances Act.

He has, however, commuted prison sentences for a relatively large number of people serving time for drug offenses. But even while Obama has used his clemency powers more than other modern presidents, the number of people he has moved to set free pales in comparison to the total number of nonviolent drug offenders who are behind bars.

A coalition of criminal justice reform advocates wrote to Obama on Tuesday urging a significant expansion of clemency during his final days in office. They want the president to go beyond reviewing pardon and commutation applications on a case-by-case basis and issue clemency to large groups of prisoners with sweeping blanket moves.

“We do not know whether the next president will support clemency efforts or criminal justice reform,” the advocates told the president. “But we do know that until January 20, you alone have the power to deliver both mercy and justice to those who deserve it.”