Saletan has this great kicker of a final paragraph:
If only, indeed. While reading the piece I found myself wondering what kind of policy for say, marijuana, we might adopt if the president were a recently regular pot smoker.If you want to know what Obama really thinks about tobacco, don't read his lips. Read his teeth. To relieve his addiction and protect his health, he's been chewing nicotine gum. The law he just signed authorizes the FDA to expedite approval of nicotine lozenges, gum, and patches. It encourages the agency to broaden the grounds for prescribing such products and to authorize their "extended use." It puts regulators smack in the middle of the nicotine business so they can turn it to better use. If only all our drug policies were this rational.
To be sure, I'm under no illusion that the cigarette law recently enacted is the singular product of Obama's tobacco addiction, despite the parallels drawn in the that paragraph. Saletan reports that the country's biggest tobacco company, Altria, helped to write the bill. Altria and other tobacco companies, Saletan said, are increasingly feeling the heat to make alternative tobacco products -- like tablets and snus -- contain fewer carcinogens in reaction to public opinion on the issue of tabacco safety.
But at the same time, the government would be insane to outlaw cigarettes. People will just find other places to buy them. Obama, as Saletan rightly notes, has had every reason to quit smoking -- for his wife, his kids, the Fox News cameras -- and he's still struggling. What happens when you outlaw a product with that kind of demand that cannot be met by the legal market? It goes underground.
Which brings us to drugs. The government's effort to manage tobacco rather than make it illegal is exactly what belongs in the debate over pot and other illegal substances that could, at the very least, provide significant boons to medical pharmacology. The FDA has rejected the possibility of making cigarettes illegal by saying the underground product would be "even more dangerous than those currently marketed." So when you make popular products illegal, it has the potential to make those products more dangerous. Gee, ya think?
I know that Gee, ya think is about as far as you can get from a comprehensive plan for the controlled legalization of marijuana and other substances. But let's be adults here. Obama understands the limits of cigarette law because he understands the market for cigarettes. Maybe what the drug debate really needs is a joint in the West Wing.
When the president does it...
People will just find other places to buy them.
Some people will, but a whole lot won't. I would say the vast majority won't and almost none would continue a pack-or-two a day habit if they had to get them illegally. That's not to say that I support banning cigarettes, but I think that to say that "people will find a way" grossly oversimplifies the situation. How many will? How much will those that do find a way cut back? Reducing consumption is far, far more effective than making these products "safer".
The countervailing question is, of course, what havoc will the remaining 10% of smokers wreak? And it's a good question. Good enough that I don't support banning (for now).
But the fact that such a meager law is considered significant is itself a valid concern and a warning against decriminalizing or allowing other narcotics with anything less than the tightest of restrictions. Cigarettes have insulated themselves into American culture. This makes far less unreasonable measures like banning cigarette sales in convenience stores politically unteneble. It gives very large and very powerful corporations whose financial interests are vested in the destruction of life and health a seat at the table.
This makes me very cautious about decriminalization of other substances. Or at least makes how we decriminalize them very important. Trying to strike whatever balance we can between making them as stigmatized and difficult-to-obtain as possible while keeping a black market from cropping up. The idea that "we can figure out the details later" is insufficient because, if implemented wrongly, it could be worse than the status quo.
I'm not a fan of the War on Drugs, but I think that the correct approach differs from substance to substance. We have less to fear from pot than we do from crystal meth and so the former may not need to be as restricted as the latter. Restrictions ranging from having to buy it from a state-run operation (like liquor in some states) to allowing only supervised use.
But whatever the answer is for currently illegal drugs, even our current approach to tobacco is far, far too limited.
For me the decriminalization of marijuana is best treated as a public health concern.
Like drinking and driving, pot is only dangerous when the user has to interact with other people in potentially dangerous situations (like driving). Other than that, the user only harms him/herself.
As for cigarettes, if tobacco wasn't a major exported good it would have been restricted.
Addiction is addiction. Whether its tobacco or heroin makes no real difference.
UNITED STATES PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA IS A DRUG ADDICT WHO DUPLICITOUSLY PERSECUTES OTHER DRUG ADDICTS!
Obama and the Democrats are just another bunch of Reich-wing pandering authoritarians, no different from the Republicans, who all see addicts as easy prey for their machismo and political opportunism.