President Obama Says Marijuana Should Be Treated Like Alcohol

[Warren DeMontague]

35. I don't think the political calculus for reversing a last minute descheduling is all that different

from that involved with letting Sessions do his prohibition thing.

The only difference, to my mind, is if Obama does it then it becomes "an Obama issue", just another Obama executive decision that Trump can reverse on Day one, like he's promised.

I don't really know which is better- the idea of Obama descheduling it on the way out the door has occurred to me more than once, myself. I also question whether attaching a political impetus or "side" to the thing might be more detrimental to the cause of legalization, in the long run, or not. As it is, right now legalization or reform of marijuana laws enjoys a broad bipartisan consensus among voters, if not elected officials. Here's a separate example: I've considered, in the past, that despite Al Gore's wonderful work raising the profile of global warming, a side effect of his whole inconvenient truth thing is that for better or worse by having the issue associated with him, it became politicized and eventually more of a political football. I realize it is more complicated than that- the Koch Bros and fossil fuel profits really being a big driver- but again, something that isn't really a red/blue issue, became one.

Obama acting unilaterally on weed might have a similar effect. And if Sessions, etc. are going to crack down on it, I suspect they'll do it either way. Like I said, if Trump is really gonna let Sessions go nuts on legal states, he could also just reschedule it going in. The political costs are likely to be similar in either regard.

But I'm sort of hoping they'll look at the matter and decide it's not worth expending massive amts of energy and capital to fight it. What I suspect is, they may make some token moves to "tighten up" the anti-weed front, but they'll decide stopping it altogether is just too much trouble.