O.K., can we all agree that Barack Obama has finally accomplished something in his presidency? Yesterday, his Justice Department issued a memorandum to federal prosecutors in the 14 states that have approved the use of medical marijuana, instructing them not to go after patients and doctors who are following the laws of their states.

“It will not be a priority to use federal resources to prosecute patients with serious illnesses or their caregivers who are complying with state laws on medical marijuana,” said Attorney General Eric Holder Jr.

The move brought praise from a wide range of opinionland commenters.



“ After several false starts, the Obama administration is making all the right noises on federal medical marijuana policy,” says Nick Gillespe at Reason. “The devil is in the details, of course, and how the policy is enforced (or not). But it represents the most compassionate and sensible policy to come out of Washington in a very long time.”

“This is an extraordinary victory for sensible federalism (not to mention for a sane drug policy),” writes Rick Hills at Prawfsblawg.





“ This is one of those rare instances of unadulterated good news from Washington,” writes Glen Greenwald.

Criminalizing cancer and AIDS patients for using a substance that is (a) prescribed by their doctors and (b) legal under the laws of their state has always been abominable. The Obama administration deserves major credit not only for ceasing this practice, but for memorializing it formally in writing. Just as is true for Jim Webb’s brave crusade to radically revise the nation’s criminal justice and drug laws, there is little political gain — and some political risk — in adopting a policy that can be depicted as “soft on drugs” or even “pro-marijuana.” It’s a change that has concrete benefits for many people who are sick and for those who provide them with treatments that benefit them. So credit where it’s due to the Obama DOJ, for fulfilling a long-standing commitment on this issue.

Not everyone is thrilled with the president’s move. At National Review, Wesley J. Smith says “it is subversive of the rule of law for a president to refuse to enforce the law, and particularly to announce that unenforcement will be administration policy.”

The correct answer to the medical-marijuana issue is for Congress to take it out of Schedule 1 of the Controlled Substances Act (no legitimate medical use) and put it into a different schedule, which would allow the FDA to approve cannabis for prescribing, as is done with stronger drugs such as morphine and cocaine. Once presidents get to pick and choose which laws they will enforce, we have ceased to be a nation of laws.

Smith’s colleague Rick Brookhiser counters, “A policy as sensible, humane and badly needed as this should simply be saluted.”

Fourteen states allow some use of medical marijuana. They include every shade of blue and red, green and red meat: From Barack’s Hawaii to Sarah’s Alaska, from libertarian Nevada to Ben & Jerry’s Vermont. They also include California, the largest state in the nation. Most of these laws were passed by popular referendums, as the people took a legally sanctioned end-run around their more stolid representatives. The Supreme Court has ruled, rightly as a matter of law, that federal law takes precedence over these state measures. But Washington now ackowledges, rightly as a matter of prudence and practical justice, that the will of the people of 14 states should be taken into account. I have always argued that medical-marijuana laws are not an exception to my conservative credo, but a natural item. Law and order is not served by passing laws that bring the system into contempt; liberty is not served by inserting the state between patients and their doctors; and morality is not served by withholding help from the sick. I am sorry that the honor of this change belongs to a liberal Democrat; glad, for the sake of the law and for the sick, that the change has come.

At the League of Ordinary Gentlemen, E. D. Kain also praised the president’s move “in terms of states’ rights, patient rights, and just sane, rational domestic policy,” and noted that Obama is “joining the rest of the United States in an upward trend toward support for legalization. In fact, Americans now favor legalization at 44 percent – a new U.S. high.”

Kain is referencing a new Gallup survey released yesterday, which showed continued growth in the number of Americans supporting legalization. “U.S. public support for legalizing marijuana was fixed in the 25 percent range from the late 1970s to the mid-1990s,” reported Gallup, “but acceptance jumped to 31 percent in 2000 and has continued to grow throughout this decade.”

At Hot Air, Allapundit says don’t get too excited, just yet anyway. The overall pro-pot percentage is continuing to rise, but the regional and party breakdowns in the Gallup data are “actually pretty discouraging.”

Only 28 percent of Republicans support legalization, and regionally, only in the west does it enjoy majority approval. (In the midwest, which looks set to have an outsized role in presidential elections in 2012 and going forward, it’s at 42 percent.) I was thinking this morning that the positive bipartisan buzz The One’s getting for the DOJ’s new federalist policy on medical marijuana might tempt him to consider a broader legalization effort — which he once kinda sorta supported — but these numbers make it unlikely. Even with support at an all-time high he’s still 10 points in the hole, and with ObamaCare on his plate and the looming meltdown of Medicare and Social Security, ain’t no way no chance no how either side’s going to further antagonize high-turnout seniors by defending the demon weed. Exit question: 72 percent of conservatives oppose legalization? Pathetic.

If it’s still wait-and-see for the country as a whole, Robert Cruickshank says the moment of legalization is fast approaching in California. “This week California is witnessing a fundamental shift in marijuana policy, where for perhaps the first time it really is a question of ‘when,’ and not ‘if,’ the sale and use of marijuana will become legal in California.”

When an April Field Poll found 56 percent of Californians back marijuana legalization, it became only a matter of time before the topic became a fully mainstream subject, deemed appropriate for “serious” conversation at everything from public policy summits to the dinner table. . . .

The biggest news comes from the federal government, where Attorney General Eric Holder has followed through on his early signals and announced the Justice Department will no longer prosecute people for using medical marijuana in accordance with their state’s laws. . . . Whether the Obama Administration intends it or not, the new policy will be further evidence that a strict federal “War on Drugs” is no longer desirable or viable. Here in California, more fundamental changes are under way. As a judge rules LA DA Steve Cooley’s attack on dispensaries to be invalid, the movement for full legalization is well under way. Tom Ammiano’s bill to legalize, regulate, and tax marijuana, AB 390, will get its first hearing in the Assembly next week. Arnold Schwarzenegger, speaking at a bill signing ceremony in Merced yesterday, said he is “basically opposed” to legalization but believes it’s time to have a debate about the issue. In Arnold-speak that says he doesn’t see legalization as a political loser, even if he’s not quite willing to go there himself. His comments show that legalization has gone from being a sensible idea on the fringes of our political discourse to something we can debate as easily and naturally as, say, water policy.

Noting the progress toward legalization and ending the War on Drugs, Al Giordano wants to make a point about how we got here, one that “is worth study by all who clamor for progress on many fronts: from bringing about national health care to ending the U.S. embargo of Cuba to immigration reform to overhauling an entire economic system.” That lesson is community organizing, one step at a time, change from below.

In the mid-1990s, some forward-thinking advocates of drug policy reform concluded that the big, central matter — whether recreational drugs should be legalized or not — was simply too big and confusing a matter for so much of the public to tackle all at once. Even the matter of legalizing relatively harmless marijuana was overwhelming in terms of public opinion. As the Gallup poll graph above recounts, in 1996 only 25 percent of Americans favored legalizing marijuana, with 73 percent opposed. Any organizing strategy under such overwhelming negative numbers that chose polarization over organizing was doomed to fail. And so some pioneering voices and organizers set about on a path of incremental change. They chose to hit hard upon a brittle crack in the drug war artifice: that even if three-quarters of Americans did not then want cannabis legalized for everyone, a critical mass had grave misgivings about policies that persecuted people who were ill — with glaucoma, cancer, AIDS, MS and other ailments – and needed the plant as medicine. The debates today over health care and other matters seamlessly echo those that took place among drug policy reform advocates in the mid-90s. Those who embarked on a strategy of incremental change were often vilified by natural allies who said that such a step-by-step path did not move fast or far enough. In some cases, entire organizations were shattered and splinter groups formed in their place, competing for the same supporters and funding. We all know how that story goes. Friendships in that milieu of drug policy reform, too, were lost in the divisions, egos and hard feelings. There have always been, and perhaps always will be, those who argue that by urging incremental change a movement abandons its core principles. But in the end, history moves one step at a time, and more often than not it is those who walk rather than sprint that emerge triumphant. . . . The history textbooks will note forevermore, when looking back at how the United States repealed pot prohibition (something that will likely now come in most of our lifetimes) that it was the strategy of incremental change that opened the floodgates to fundamental change. The same will be said of how the US embargo of Cuba was ended (granting Cuban-Americans the right to travel there inexorably will extend that freedom to all US citizens). The same will be written of immigration policy. And — if you can weed through the griping about whether this year’s health care reform goes far enough or not – I think a similar path of incremental steps to change will provoke a very similar dynamic toward wholesale change. Short of revolutions – which happen when incremental change is made impossible by the authoritarian nature of regimes – that is how change usually happens.

In the meantime, Andrew Sullivan would like everyone to please realize this is a serious issue, and cut out all the lame pot jokes. “I really wish we could get past the stoner humor aspect of medical marijuana.”