The Obama-Romney love-in: opposing marijuana law reform

Who's afraid of the big bad bud? President Obama and Mitt Romney, of course! Both 2012 candidates take hard-line stances on opposing marijuana law reform, although neither will definitively justify or defend their positions. Despite massive public support for reforming U.S. marijuana laws, Romney and Obama continue to ignore pleas from the American public to take a responsible look at regulating marijuana and its derivatives. President Obama - despite his 2008 claims that he would respect state medical marijuana laws - has proven to be the most militant and harsh commander-in-chief in the history of the War on Drugs.

His administration has raided and shut down dozens of legitimate medical marijuana dispensaries, robbing those operators and their employees of badly-needed jobs while denying their states of badly-needed tax revenues. Mitt Romney opposes any kind of reform of marijuana laws, stating he would fight "tooth-and-nail" against reform. His refusal to discuss the matter with potential voters and the media shines a bright light on his desire to avoid losing the undecideds - who tend to be liberal or independent voters - so he just clams up.

But others in his camp have plenty to contribute. According to The Fix: "But the real icon of drug policy in Romney’s campaign, deeply involved to this day, is Melvin Sembler, a Florida strip-mall magnate who was a national fundraising chair for Romney in 2008 and is again a Florida State Co-Chair for Romney’s finance committee. ...a teenage girl testified to being compelled into the [Straight, Inc] program after being caught with an airline bottle of liquor given to her by a friend, and then beaten, raped, locked in a janitor’s closet in pants soiled by urine, feces, and menstrual blood, forced into a false and bizarre confession to being a “druggie whore” who went down on truckers for a fix. Monroe’s story is extreme but in no way unique.

Similar accounts from Straight survivors have been collected en masse online at TheStraights.com." Both Mitt Romney and President Obama leave much to be desired when it comes to marijuana law reform - one refuses to even answer questions on the topic, while the other viciously and hypocritically raids state law-compliant dispensaries on one hand while mocking and trying to entice pro-marijuana voters on the other. Where does this leave American voters who support marijuana law reform (according to the 2011 Gallup poll)? Nowhere.

And that could seriously affect the 2012 elections... especially with Colorado, Washington, Oregon, Arkansas, and other states considering marijuana law reform ballots this November. Perhaps one or both of these presidential hopefuls will locate their spines, unclasp the hand of the other, and step forward to address this not-so-fringe issue in time for the October 3 presidential debate in the key state of Colorado.