Rand Paul sounds like pre-election Obama and Bush on pot legalization

Rand has been doing a lot of flip-flopping. Finding out what he actually believes when it comes to marijuana legalization is a challenge.

Back in 1999, soon-to-be president George W. Bush was asked what his views were regarding the possibility of marijuana legalization. According to the Washington Post, he responded by saying, "I believe each state can choose that decision as they so choose."

But following his election, Bush changed positions and went from "each state can choose" to "Acceptance of drug use is simply not an option for this administration."

In 2004, the New York Times reported:

"About 700,000 people were arrested in the United States for violating marijuana laws in 2002 (the most recent year for which statistics are available) - more than were arrested for heroin or cocaine. Almost 90 percent of these marijuana arrests were for simple possession, a crime that in most cases is a misdemeanor. But even a misdemeanor conviction can easily lead to time in jail, the suspension of a driver's license, the loss of a job. And in many states possession of an ounce is a felony. Those convicted of a marijuana felony, even if they are disabled, can be prohibited from receiving federal welfare payments or food stamps. Convicted murderers and rapists, however, are still eligible for those benefits.

The Bush administration has escalated the war on marijuana, raiding clinics that offer medical marijuana and staging a nationwide roundup of manufacturers of drug paraphernalia. In November 2002 the Office of National Drug Control Policy circulated an 'open letter to America's prosecutors' spelling out the administration's views. 'Marijuana is addictive,' the letter asserted. 'Marijuana and violence are linked ... no drug matches the threat posed by marijuana.'"

During the same year as the Times released their scathing critique of the Bush administration's prohibition policies, Barack Obama was asked to give his thoughts on the issue. "We need to rethink and decriminalize our marijuana laws," he said. "But I'm not somebody who believes in legalization of marijuana. What I do believe is that we need to rethink how we're operating in the drug war. Currently, we're not doing a good job."

In 2008, Obama's campaign spokesman said Obama supports "the rights of states and local governments to make this choice - though he believes medical marijuana should be subject to regulation like other drugs."

But once elected, Obama - like Bush - morphed into a Drug Warrior:

"Sixteen dispensary owners in California have received letters giving them 45 days to shut down before the federal government shuts them down and seizes their assets. The Obama administration's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has openly declared that the mere act of registering to use medical marijuana in accordance with state law is reason to suspend a citizen's Second Amendment rights. Additionally, President Obama has been using the resources of other federal departments to circumvent state laws on medical marijuana. The Obama administration's Internal Revenue Service has ruled that medical marijuana dispensaries cannot deduct common business expenses, a move that cripples the ability of any business to remain viable. The Obama administration's Department of Treasury has pressured banks to no longer hold accounts for medical marijuana businesses that are heavily regulated, taxed, and surveilled by the state of Colorado. President Obama had pledged that 'science and the scientific process must inform and guide decisions of my administration on a wide range of issues, including improvement of public health'. Yet the Obama administration's Drug Enforcement Administration has blocked legitimate requests from researchers to study marijuana's medicinal effect. The Obama administration's Department of Health and Human Services has rejected a Food and Drug Administration approved study of medical marijuana for treatment of post traumatic stress disorder. President Obama has appointed the heads of all these departments. In fact, he even appointed to the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration Michele Leonhart, the acting administrator who had been appointed by President Bush. It is by these measures that President Obama may be judged as more aggressively battling medical marijuana than the previous two administrations in the medical marijuana era."

In 2012, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul was asked about his stance on pot prohibition. "States should be allowed to make a lot of these decisions," he said. "I want things to be decided more at a local basis, with more compassion. I think it would make us as Republicans different." Paul added that young people shouldn't be "put in jail for 20 years" just for smoking weed. But this underscores the key to understanding Paul's proposal: he doesn't want to "end the war on drugs" - as he stated on Real Time with Bill Maher in November 2014 - he just wants to "reform" it. Yet when these "reforms" are examined in closer detail, it becomes apparent that they are largely exaggerated.

Take, for example, the Justice Safety Valve Act of 2013, which Mike Riggs of Reason adequately tore apart in his review of the legislation:

"The bill Paul introduced last month - called the Justice Safety Valve Act of 2013 - isn't nearly so expansive as he led his audience to believe. While the act would allow 'courts - in some circumstances - to sentence a person below the mandatory minimum if that sentence is too lengthy, unjust or unreasonable, or doesn't fit the offender or the crime,' it doesn't require judges to deviate from the mandatory minimum, nor does it entitle offenders who fit the above criteria to an alternative sentence. If it had passed a decade ago, a bill like Paul's would've empowered a federal judge to sentence 24-year-old small-time pot dealer Weldon Angelos to 18 years in prison, instead of the mandatory 55 he received. In other words, people are still going to have their lives ruined by the drug war if Paul's bill passes."

This, we are told, is progress - "baby steps" - towards ending the overall government policy of drug prohibition: 18 years in a rape-infested gulag instead of 55 - all for possessing or selling the wrong kind of plant.

But Rand has backed other bills, too: the Redeem Act, aimed at expunging the records of nonviolent offenders younger than 15; the Reset Act, which would classify some drug crimes as misdemeanors and eliminate the sentencing disparity between cocaine and crack-related offenses; and the Fifth Amendment Integrity Restoration Act, which would restore the constitutional protection against seizures without due process. These bills - which have all gone nowhere as far as getting passed into law - would nonetheless make for an impressive showcase if someone were, say, running for president and trying to court African-American voters:

"If Republicans don't go out and compete for African-American votes, don't go out and compete for the Hispanic vote and the Asian-American vote, we won't win again in our country because the country is a diverse country now and we can't have one party that monopolizes the various ethnic group votes," Rand told CNN's Wolf Blitzer in October 2014. "So, we do have to compete and if I do it, I plan on competing for all votes."

Around the same time, Politico reported:

"Sen. Rand Paul tells Politico that the Republican presidential candidate in 2016 could capture one-third or more of the African-American vote by pushing criminal-justice reform, school choice, and economic empowerment. 'If Republicans have a clue and do this and go out and ask every African-American for their vote, I think we can transform an election in one cycle,' the Kentucky Republican said in a phone interview Thursday as he was driven through New Hampshire in a rental car."

This explains why - at the height of the 2014 riots - Rand rushed to Ferguson, MO, to meet with black leaders; it explains why he set up a "GOP engagement office" in an area of Louisville, KY, with a high black population; and it explains why he gave a speech at the National Urban League Conference in Cincinnati: Rand is taking advantage of one of the worst government policies in US history to score votes.

Of course, this is nothing new - in fact, he sounds exactly like Barack Obama did back in July 2008 when he told Rolling Stone that he believed in "shifting the paradigm" on marijuana to a public health approach: "I would start with nonviolent, first-time drug offenders. The notion that we are imposing felonies on them or sending them to prison, where they are getting advanced degrees in criminality, instead of thinking about ways like drug courts that can get them back on track in their lives - it's expensive, it's counterproductive, and it doesn't make sense."

But there is evidence beyond strategy repetition to suggest Rand won't legalize cannabis. For instance, when he told Bill Maher during their November 2014 exchange that he wants to "end the war on drugs", he was flat-out lying. Whether he was lying to Maher and his massive audience of valuable pro-pot youth voters, or to the evangelicals he met with a year prior - whom he reassured that ending the War on Drugs was not on his agenda - is unclear. But what is clear is that Rand's comments in the past have suggested he will be practically identical to his predecessors on this issue. When asked during an interview with Sean Hannity what his take was regarding the War on Drugs, Rand replied that he "wouldn't change any of the laws on legalization". During a 2013 interview on FOX News, Rand reiterated this position: "The main thing I've said is not to legalize [drugs] but not to incarcerate people for extended periods of time." And the following year, Paul endorsed a bill that would force the government to crack down on states where marijuana has been legalized, saying that President Obama needs "to enforce the law" and he "is just deciding willy-nilly if he likes it he enforces it, if he doesn't, he won't enforce it, and we really think he needs to be chastened, rebuked, and told that he needs to obey the constitution."

Even beyond the pot issue, it's fairly obvious that Rand has been doing a lot of flip-flopping and pandering: He's not for "containing" Iran, but he won't rule it out - and he's also willing to support economic sanctions; he was for cutting US aid to Israel but then changed his mind after a trip to the country - and now regularly posts pro-Israeli propaganda on his Facebook page; he claims Obama's renewed invasion of Iraq is "illegal", but isn't fundamentally opposed to continuing it; and he portrays himself as being against the US empire while backing foreign US military bases, keeping Gitmo open, and sending a "tough" message to Russia over Ukraine.

This is why finding out what Rand actually believes when it comes to marijuana legalization is such a challenge. He wants the GOP base, Israel lobby, and defense sector to see him as a hardliner traditionalist, and he wants African-Americans and young people to see him as a non-interventionist, pro-pot "rebel" of the Republican Party - even as he continues receiving endorsements from establishment goons such as John McCain and Sarah Palin.

But he can't have it both ways, and if history is any guide to which direction he'll go on the marijuana issue, it's a safe bet that he'll continue prohibition just like Bush and Obama did after they were elected.