A Song and Open Letter to a President Who is “No Stranger to the Bong”

Thank you, President Obama, for keeping your campaign pledge to end raids on medical marijuana dispensaries that are legal under state laws in California and elsewhere.

Thank you for reversing an inhumane policy established by the Clinton administration and continued by the Bush administration.

Given the experience you and other elected officials have had with illegal drugs and your willingness to challenge the status quo, now is the time to reconsider decades of prohibitionist drug policies that have succeeded only in massively increasing the toll of human misery, violence, and hypocrisy. As with alcohol prohibition, the drug war intensifies and exacerbates every negative outcome it is ostensibly designed to combat.

President Obama, do the right thing and end the war on drugs.

“Obama, You’re No Stranger to the Bong” was written, performed, and edited by Paul Feine; special thanks to Alex Manning.

I couldn’t agree more! As this song points out, Obama is hardly the first politician on the national stage to experiment with drugs. Despite these youthful indiscretions , most of these very people want to ratchet up the War on (Some) Drugs.

Despite my many disagreements with President Obama, I believe that his decision to call the DEA dogs off the medical marijuana dispensaries is a good first step in the right direction. Pardoning Charlie Lynch (back story here and here) seems like the next logical step.