In a 2012 television ad, Barack Obama picks up the phone and gives an inspiring yet brief speech about stepping up and doing what needs to be done before promptly hanging up. Who is on the other line? None other than lovable stoners Harold and Kumar, of the "Harold & Kumar" franchise!
“It’s funny,” one might think. “This young, charismatic president is joking openly about people who recreationally use cannabis. He’s our president. He gets us.” This was the clearly the reaction that this 2012 Democratic Convention ad was aiming for. So why does it leave such a sour taste in my mouth?
When Barack Obama first ran in 2008 I was only a young boy, but I could already tell he was gunning for the youth vote. He kept it light, he made jokes, and he admitted to actually inhaling weed, which was a presidential first. Obama ran on a marijuana centrist platform, saying that medical marijuana laws should be left to state governments. This is far from a revolutionary take on weed legalization, but it was certainly good enough for the voters of 2008.
President Obama’s actions, however, have been far from centrist. In just his first three years as commander in chief, over a hundred separate raids were carried out on pot dispensaries around the country. Obama’s war on medical marijuana, which has been more widespread than George W. Bush’s, has affected almost a million patients in the United States. These aren’t college hippies or some other stereotype used to discredit an entire movement; these are patients, people who use marijuana as medicine and need that medicine to live comfortably and survive. So how did Obama get away with it?
Easy. Marijuana legalization is a joke. It is not seen as a serious political tide or an important battleground within the larger fight against the war on drugs. It’s a joke. It has been for years, and it still is.
When a politician is asked about weed legalization at a rally, be it Obama or one of the many candidates before him, you can cue the big laugh as if someone just asked about Frank Ocean’s missing album or Pokémon Go. The candidate will make some dismissive comment about young dope-smokers, he gets another laugh, and we move on.
But not everyone moves on. Approximately 700,993 people get arrested for marijuana each year, and 88% of those arrests are for possession only. 57% of those people arrested are Latino or African American, despite these demographics only making up 12.5% and 12.3% of the country respectively. These are people who have years taken from them, people who have had their futures completely destroyed because they have been imprisoned for an issue that you think is a joke. These people are not laughing.
So I have a question for all of my teachers from high school and earlier who would laugh when I brought up marijuana reform: what exactly are you laughing at? Which part of this issue is funny to you? Is it the thousands who are unjustly imprisoned each year? Is it the billions of dollars we spend fighting a plant instead of on infrastructure, education, or healthcare? Is it the patients who suffer and die because we criminalized their medicine out of stigma and ignorance? Where’s the joke exactly?
I get it. You think people who eat cheese puffs all day and watch '90s cartoons are funny and lazy, but your failure to separate the person from the stereotype is putting lives in danger. Nearly 70% of my generation supports marijuana legalization and it’s no secret why. Cannabis is no longer solely represented in government-funded short films about how it turns you into a zombie. Our friends smoke weed, our family members smoke weed, and we smoke weed. First hand, we witness its lack of negative effects and its plethora of benefits.
Sooner or later, the Baby Boomers will have to realize that the fight for marijuana legalization isn’t some big joke. It’s a movement, and one that has no intention of stopping.
