Open letter: Obama, please deschedule cannabis before you go

Editor’s note: President Obama left office without taking any action to legalize cannabis by rescheduling during the entirety of his eight years in office. He did, however, issue a near record number of clemencies.

Dear Barack Obama, President of the United States,

You have only a few weeks left in office to make your final substantive, lasting changes on these United States of America. Please take five minutes, the sooner the better, to order the head of the DEA to remove marijuana from the CSA drug schedule, or alternatively to move it to the lowest level, Schedule 5.

Congress has given you that power. Remember, you already signed an executive order naming hemp as an essential national security resource for the U.S. via the Department of Agriculture. You know that nonmedical adult use of marijuana is at least as safe as alcohol and that prohibition has been used as a tool of racial, social and political suppression.

Look at what your expected successor is lining up for the nation, in terms of appointments and policies. Please don’t leave us at the mercy of this usurper: You must see that it’s really up to you to make this happen before you leave office. Don’t let us down.

Click here to sign the petition asking Obama to deschedule cannabis.

Your supporters have asked you to do this from day 1 in office

It’s no secret. Even before you took office, you asked people to contact you online to voice their top priority for your administration. Over and again the single most popular topic was for you to legalize cannabis. Time and again, you sat it out.

It’s not that we don’t appreciate all the little things you’ve done; like the Ogden memo in 2009 and the Cole Memo in 2013 to soften federal enforcement. Like signing the Farm Bill to allow states to grow low THC hemp. Like signing federal budgets that reduced funding for federal raids on state-legal medical marijuana. Like signing clemencies for nonviolent drug offenders. Like occasionally giving an honest appraisal of marijuana. Like yourself being a positive role model showing that a person of color can smoke cannabis, succeed in law school and ascend to the highest office in the land. Like not campaigning against any of our state legalization initiatives. For all that and more, thank you.

On the other hand, there was the national crackdown of 2010, civil property forfeitures against cannabis dispensaries, the embarrassment of DEA director Michelle Leonhart, the agency’s pronouncements that medical marijuana is either a hoax or a religious miracle of faith — because the DEA sure isn’t going to recognize any of that scientific evidence it has medical value. Or the people whose lives it has saved or benefited.

Eight years later, science is still waiting for you to take a stand

Eight years later, on the cusp of your Presidency, you have one more chance to do the right thing by the people who put you in office twice and asked you for this one thing, so simple, really. You can either go through the Attorney General’s office or directly to the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration with an executive order to remove cannabis in all its names and spellings from the Controlled Substances Act. The relentless failures of the DEA are impossible to ignore. It will take your action to make them change.

You might want to take it one step further and assign it to another agency that has some skills in regulating agriculture and consumable goods, just to make sure the Department of Justice does not assume authority over the plant by using some other device.

Food and Drug Administration may or may not be a good fit, but use your imagination.

Click here to sign another petition for Obama to reschedule.

A legacy that cannot be erased

Failure to make this change could lead to a roll back similar to what happened in the 1980s. People of color rounded up en masse, sick people deprived of medicine, hard working people deprived of their after-hours “pursuit of Happiness,” the industry driven back underground, criminal drug gangs once again on the rise. Your legacy of health care and environmentalism and economic reforms could be eviscerated by the Trump regime.

But if you deschedule marijuana now, before you go, you will leave a legacy that cannot be erased. A legacy of fewer arrests, more opportunities, more tax revenues, more liberty. Your supporters will remember that, though it was at the end of your term, you really were listening and you really did care. With barely a month to go, you owe this to yourself and everyone who voted for you.

And after you leave office, President Obama, please come to California to smoke a legal joint again. You’ll be glad you did, and it might be just the thing you need to get through the next four years. We know that the rest of us are going to need it.