President Barack Obama made waves on Sunday when he admitted what for millions of Americans counts as the obvious: That marijuana is no more dangerous than alcohol.
Obama's remarks were step in his apparent "evolution" on marijuana. In the meantime, the public is leading the way, with a majority of Americans already favoring full legalization. That means pro-pot legalization campaigners are looking ahead to 2016, shaping up to be the next big year for recreational pot.
Activists will be pushing legalization ballot measures in Arizona, California, Massachusetts, Maine, Montana and Nevada. Already, they are making an offer to political candidates: Embrace legalized pot and win over a chunk of the youth vote, or else. Some Democrats, meanwhile, are taking another lesson from Colorado and Washington: In 2012, marijuana got a greater percentage of the vote in both states than Obama.
"It appears having marijuana-related initiatives on the ballot produce a greater turnout among younger voters," Mason Tvert, communications director for the Marijuana Policy Project, said in an email. "If a candidate takes a position against marijuana policy reform, or if they choose to ignore it, they shouldn't be surprised when those younger voters choose not to vote for them."
If a candidate comes out against legalization in 2016, said Colorado Democratic consultant Jill Hanauer, "it will be to their peril, because millennials will be such huge segment of the voting public in 2016 … they're going to lose a huge segment of the voting public for good if they try to stop what's happening in American culture."
The data around marijuana and the youth vote is murky, but there is some to support the point made by Hanauer and Tvert. Exit polls conducted in all three states with 2012 legalization referendums -- Colorado, Oregon, and Washington -- found 5 percent to 12 percent increases in voting by people ages 18 to 29.
People ages 18 to 34 favor legalization by as much as 64 percent, compared with 31 percent for the 65-and-up crowd.
Democrats are far more likely than Republicans to support legalization. That means the issue will likely be far more significant in Democratic primaries than in Republican primaries.
But Democratic operatives are also mulling a more radical prospect: Could pot in 2016 essentially be gay marriage in 2004, in reverse -- a wedge issue Democrats put on the ballot to drive up their presidential turnout?
Democratic turnout declined less in Colorado and Washington, the states where legalization passed, than it did nationally from 2008 to 2012. In Florida, a close adviser to Democratic gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist is a driving force behind placing a medical marijuana initiative on the 2014 ballot -- a move seen by many as an attempt to boost the Democratic vote.
But there are wrinkles in the narrative. Of the states likely to vote on legalization in the 2016 general election, only Arizona and Nevada could reasonably be considered possible presidential swing states. And Republican communications consultant Kurt Bardella said he is skeptical that the issue will spill into the presidential election.
"The thing with gay marriage was that there was a real intensity from the conservative base, who saw it as a fundamental attack on one of an institution," Bardella wrote in an email. "I think on some level, it’s harder to make the case that the left feels legalization of marijuana is a birthright that would get them to mobilize with more intensity than they normally would, since I think they’ll be pretty motivated with Clinton at the top of the ticket."
Peter Levine, director of the youth voting research center CIRCLE, also threw cold water on the notion that pot could drive major changes in turnout. "The big picture is that it's not anywhere near the top of young people's issue priorities. Their issue priorities are always jobs and education and other issues … drug legalization hardly polls at all."
Even the 2012 youth turnout evidence, Levine said, is "mixed." Exit polls suggest it went up in all of the legalization states. But the separate Census Current Population survey of voting found that the youth vote went down from 2008 to 2012 in Washington.
"No one knows for sure whether the exit polls or the census are absolutely correct. They are both surveys, after all," Levine said in an email.
Should Rand Paul, or Hillary Clinton, proudly announce pro-pot legalization positions? Neither has shown much willingness to do so. Clinton cast doubt on drug legalization in Latin America in 2012, and Paul, despite his libertarian leanings, has only called for less draconian punishments for pot.
Much can change between now and 2016. Kevin Sabet of Project SAM, an anti-legalization advocacy group, warned that the trend toward greater social acceptance of marijuana is not "inevitable," pointing to near-misses in the 1970s. He even warned of a pot backlash.
"Do I really want to have a marijuana store around the corner from my kid's school? Because that's what this is about," Sabet said.
But so far, poll after poll finds more and more Americans in support of legalization, even after Colorado opened its recreational dispensaries.
Hanauer, who said she sometimes feels "personally ambivalent" about pot as a mother of high school kids, said she would encourage candidates to "be authentic about whatever their personal opinion is, and simultaneously be respectful about whatever this group of voters cares about."
"If I were a Democratic candidate in a primary or general, I would embrace this issue, as this is something that's important to respect the will of the voters," Hanauer said.
Before You Go
“I think that most small amounts of marijuana have been decriminalized in some places, and should be," he said back in 2000 in an interview with Rolling Stone. "We really need a re-examination of our entire policy on imprisonment.”
He's since spoken about the issue of marijuana and drug prohibition a number of times. Last year, he appeared in the documentary, "Breaking the Taboo," where he argued that the war on drugs has been a failure.
“I don't want to promote that but I also don't want to put people in jail who make a mistake," Paul said. "There are a lot of young people who do this and then later on in their twenties they grow up and get married and they quit doing things like this. I don't want to put them in jail and ruin their lives."
"I really believe we should treat marijuana the way we treat beverage alcohol," Robertson said in an interview with The New York Times in 2012. "I've never used marijuana and I don't intend to, but it's just one of those things that I think: this war on drugs just hasn't succeeded."
Robertson has made similar remarks on his "700 Club" show before, but the Times, like many others, perhaps felt they must have misheard him.
“[T]o me, marijuana is no different than wine," he said in an interview with High Times. "It's a drug of choice. It's meant to alter your current state -- and that's not a bad thing. It's ridiculous that marijuana is still illegal. We're still fighting for it ... It comes down to individual decision-making. There are millions of people who smoke pot on a social basis and don't become criminals. So stop with that argument -- it doesn't work.”
[H/T Marijuana Majority]
From his campaign platform:
"By managing marijuana like alcohol and tobacco - regulating, taxing and enforcing its lawful use - America will be better off. The billions saved on marijuana interdiction, along with the billions captured as legal revenue, can be redirected against the individuals committing real crimes against society."
“Marijuana should not only be legal, I think it should be a cottage industry," he said in an interview with High Times. "My wife says, and I agree with her, that what would be really great for Maine would be to legalize dope completely and set up dope stores the way that there are state-run liquor stores.”
[H/T Marijuana Majority]
While marijuana has been made legal for various uses in a number of states, the Obama administration continues to enforce federal laws across the nation. This has led to numerous raids of marijuana-based businesses, as well as prosecutions of growers and other people involved in pot.
"I think it's about time we legalize marijuana," he said. "We have to make a choice in this country. We either put people who are smoking marijuana behind bars or we legalize it, but this little game we're playing in the middle is not helping us, it is not helping Mexico and it is causing massive violence on our southern border."
"Decriminalization does not result in increased drug use. Portugal's 10 year experiment shows clearly that enough is enough. It is time to end the war on drugs worldwide. We must stop criminalising drug users. Health and treatment should be offered to drug users - not prison. Bad drugs policies affect literally hundreds of thousands of individuals and communities across the world. We need to provide medical help to those that have problematic use - not criminal retribution."
"I don't tend to say this publicly, but we can see it's a curative thing. The narcotics industry is also enormous. It funds terrorism and - this is a huge problem in America - fuels the foreign gangs," he said. "More than 85 percent of men incarcerated in America are on drug-related offences. It costs $40,000 a year for every prisoner. If they were really serious about the economy there would be a sensible discussion about legalization."
While Obama and his administration have responded to state marijuana reforms by saying they must enforce federal laws against marijuana, the president has the power to reschedule the drug, which would allow federal authorities to shift resources away from a prohibitive approach.
"However, I think we need to prioritize our law enforcement efforts," Palin said. "If somebody's gonna smoke a joint in their house and not do anybody any harm, then perhaps there are other things our cops should be looking at to engage in and try to clean up some of the other problems we have in society."While Obama has spoken repeatedly about not being interested in prosecuting small-time marijuana users, he hasn't done anything to prevent them from being busted by law enforcement in states where the drug is still illegal.
In 2012, the former president said he was fine with state legalization efforts, though he himself doesn't necessary support legalizing the drug.
“As president 35 years ago I called for decriminalizing -- but not legalizing -- the possession of marijuana,” Carter said. “Since then, U.S. drug policies have been very horrible to our own country because of an explosion in prison populations.”
"I don't have a problem with states experimenting with this sort of thing I think that's the role of states," Cuccinelli said, according to Ryan Nobles of WWBT.
“The proof will be in the policy. The war on drugs has gotten a really bad rap, when you ask people if they support the war on drugs they say no ... [Obama's] budget once again has the same old drug warrior policy ... I reject the assumption that everybody who is using drugs needs treatment or is an addict and needs to get arrested ... Not all drug use is abuse.”
He's kept up the fight for drug policy reform since.
[H/T Marijuana Majority]
“We've been fighting the war on drugs since the '60s. And guess what? Trillions of dollars later, we are losing," Sharpton said during a segment on MSNBC. "When you look at the disparities in sentencing drug offenders, hasn't this kind of injustice undermined the legitimacy of our criminal justice system?”
[H/T Marijuana Majority]
Tancredo continued, “The arguments against marijuana today are the same as the arguments against liquor years ago.”
Years later, the former congressman agreed to smoke pot on camera with a documentary filmmaker, a deal that he later backed out of.