Drug Policy Alliance

A forthcoming biography on President Obama is making headlines, with new details about the president smoking marijuana with his teenage friends in Hawaii.

David Maraniss’ book, “Barack Obama: The Story,” describes Obama as a marijuana enthusiast: “When a joint was making the rounds, he often elbowed his way in, out of turn, shouted ‘Intercepted!’ and took an extra hit,” Maraniss writes. Maraniss also describes Obama’s technique of “roof hits” while hot-boxing cars. “When the pot was gone, they tilted their heads back and sucked in the last bit of smoke from the ceiling,” he writes. Obama has been less than shy about his drug use in the past, writing about the topic in “Dreams from My Father.” “Pot had helped, and booze; maybe a little blow when you could afford it,” he writes in the memoir.

While Obama’s term began with great promise for drug policy reformers, in the past two years it has been difficult to distin¬guish Obama’s drug policies from those of his White House predecessors. Although President Obama has acknowledged that legalization is “an entirely legitimate topic for debate” – the first time a sitting president has made such a statement – his administra¬tion has made a string of increasingly disappointing moves over the last year. Half of all U.S. drug arrests are for marijuana – more than 850,000 Americans were arrested for marijuana in 2010 alone, 88 percent for mere possession.  Read more.