It used to be the case that the president of the United States would set an example for America to follow. While to a certain degree some presidents put up a facade to at least appear to live a good life, they at least understood that their life was lived in a fish bowl and they should say and do things that reflected well on the office they held.
However, our current president, Barrack Obama, is working to normalize the recreational use of marijuana. The Obama administration has been acting unlawfully (again) when it comes to enforcing the federal law on pot. Recreational marijuana use remains illegal under federal law, but Obama’s administration has given states permission (authority not given by the constitution) to experiment with pot regulation. Laws recently passed in Colorado and Washington legalizing marijuana recently went into effect.
The president is among those who desire to marginalize the stigma of pot use. In a recent interview the president gave to “The New Yorker” magazine, Mr. Obama stated that marijuana use was no less dangerous than alcohol use.
“As has been well documented, I smoked pot as a kid, and I view it as a bad habit and a vice, not very different from the cigarettes that I smoked as a young person up through a big chunk of my adult life. I don’t think it is more dangerous than alcohol,” the president said.
Obama allegedly smoked so much marijuana while attending Punahou School in Hawaii that he and a group of friends called themselves the “Choom Gang.” Choom is a verb that means “to smoke marijuana.”
Smoking marijuana is “not something I encourage, and I’ve told my daughters I think it’s a bad idea, a waste of time, not very healthy,” Obama said in the New Yorker interview.
Instead of discouraging pot use, the president is more concerned with minorities being prosecuted for using. “Middle-class kids don’t get locked up for smoking pot, and poor kids do,” he said. “And African-American kids and Latino kids are more likely to be poor and less likely to have the resources and the support to avoid unduly harsh penalties.”
The administration has already lowered the standard for what constitutes illegal possession, refusing to pursue many cases that the law clearly binds the justice department to prosecute.
He said in the interview that users shouldn’t be locked up for long stretches of time when people writing drug laws “have probably done the same thing.”
I will say it again. Using marijuana is fraught with dangers we do not fully understand yet. Christians should not use pot nor should they engage in drunkenness. It goes beyond our bodies being the temple of God. The Lord has commanded us to avoid these drugs.
