In 2001, Obama questioned the harsh penalties for drug dealing, noting that selling 15 tablets of Ecstasy was the same class of felony as raping a woman at knifepoint.
In 2002, Obama sponsored an unsuccessful measure to create an employment grant program for edx-criminals, who often return to a life of crime because no one will hire them.
Source: The Improbable Quest, by John K. Wilson, p.146-147
Oct 30, 2007
Do not lower drinking age from 21 to 18
Q: Would you as president remove the requirement that a state have a legal drinking age of 21 in order to receive federal highway funds, thereby returning the drinking age back to the states?
BIDEN: Absolutely no, I would not. The cost of alcoholism in
America, the cost of accidents that flow from drunkenness, are astronomical.
DODD: No, I agree with Joe on this. The problems associated with alcohol are significant in our country. The evidence is overwhelming..
RICHARDSON:
No, I wouldn't lower it. I think you need a dual approach: strong law enforcement, but you also have to have substance abuse treatment.
GRAVEL: I think we should lower it. Anybody that can go fight and die for this country should be able to drink.
KUCINICH: Of course they should be able to drink at age 18, and they should be able to vote at age 16.
Smokes cigarettes now; smoked some pot in high school
[Some pundits question how well Obama's] brand of popularity will hold up when voters learn more about him, such as the fact that he's a smoker. That meant cigarettes, -- Obama, trying to quit, is down to puffing three a day. But when Jay
Leno asked him in Dec. 2006 if he smoked, he was talking not about Marlboros but about pot. "Not recently--that was in high school," Obama responded. "Did you inhale?" Leno said, alluding to bill Clinton's famous dodge. "That was the point," Obama said.
Source: Hopes and Dreams, by Steve Dougherty, p. 29-32
Feb 15, 2007
Admitted marijuana use in high school & college
Long before he was in the national media spotlight, Barack Obama had this to say about himself: "Junkie. Pothead. That's where I'd been headed: the final, fatal role of the young would-be black man... I got high [to] push questions of who
I was out of my mind." Obama's revelations were not an issue during his Senate campaign two years ago. But now his open narrative of early, bad choices, including drug use starting in high school and ending in college, are sure to receive new scrutiny.
Source: Lois Romano, Washington Post, p. A1
Jan 3, 2007
Deal with street-level drug dealing as minimum-wage affair
We need to tackle the nexus of unemployment and crime in the inner city. The conventional wisdom is that most unemployed inner-city men could find jobs if they really wanted to work; that they inevitably prefer drug dealing, with its attendant risks but
potential profits, to the low-paying jobs that their lack of skill warrants. In fact, economists who've studied the issue--and the young men whose fates are at stake--will tell you that the costs and benefits of the street life don't match the popular
mythology: At the bottom or even the middle ranks of the industry, drug dealing is a minimum-wage affair. For many inner-city men, what prevents gainful employment is not simply the absence of motivation to get off the streets but the absence of a job
history or any marketable skills--and, increasingly, the stigma of a prison record.
We can assume that with lawful work available for young men now in the drug trade, crime in any community would drop.
Source: The Audacity of Hope, by Barack Obama, p.257-259
Oct 1, 2006
Understand why youngsters want to use drugs
Junkie. That's where I'd been headed: the final, fatal role of the young would-be black man. Except the highs hadn't been about me trying to prove what a down brother I was. Not by then, anyway. I got high for just the opposite effect, something that
could push questions of who I was out of my mind, something that could flatten out the landscape of my heart, blur the edges of my memory. I had discovered that it didn't make any difference whether you smoked reefer in the white classmate's sparkling
new van, or in the dorm room of some brother you'd met down at the gym, or on the beach with a couple of Hawaiian kids who had dropped out of school and now spent most of their time looking for an excuse to brawl. You might just be bored, or alone.
Everybody was welcome into the club of disaffection. And if the high didn't solve whatever it was that was getting you down, it could at least help you laugh at the world's ongoing folly and see through all the hypocrisy and bullshit and cheap moralism.
Source: Dreams from My Father, by Barack Obama, p. 87
Aug 1, 1996
