President Obama Compares the Fight for Cannabis Reform to Marriage Equality

A recent Rolling Stone interview with President Barack Obama brought to light the similarities between the fight for same-sex marriage and cannabis reform.

“[T]his is a debate that is now ripe, much in the same way that we ended up making progress on same-sex marriage,” Obama said. “There’s something to this whole states-being-laboratories-of-democracy and an evolutionary approach. You now have about a fifth of the county where [cannabis] is legal.”

Obama also explained that in order to make major changes, like what happened with marriage equality last year, there has to be many different actions taken to systematically make progress, rather than one major effort. He went on to explain the various steps he took at POTUS to make those systematic changes toward allowing same-sex marriage.

Just last year, the United States Supreme Court made history by ruling in favor of marriage equality. This sweeping victory made same-sex marriage legal in all 50 states, overturning the ban on same-sex marriage in 13 states.

According to a Gallup poll, only 35 percent of Americans in 1999 supported marriage equality. Cannabis legalization received 34 percent support from Americans that same year. Ironically enough, 60 percent of Americans now support same-sex marriage and cannabis legalization. It appears that for one reason or another, American attitudes have changed in a similar way toward both causes.

The Marijuana Majority Founder Tom Angell emailed a statement to ATTN regarding the President’s statement. Although he said Obama was correct in his comparison that “it would have been very helpful if he had taken a more concrete positive action on this issue before it was almost time to vacate the Oval Office.”

Angell continued to share that Obama could still help those who have been negatively impacted by certain drug policies. “He could, for example, effectuate blanket commutations of sentences for people who are serving time behind bars for nonviolent drug crimes for no good reason whatsoever,” Angell said. “Now, more than ever, it’s time for President Obama to walk the walk in addition to talking the talk.”