Hey there, President-elect Obama!

How’re you doing? Feeling a little less stressed yet? I don’t blame you, that electoral race was U-G-L-Y.  Like, between the implication that you’re best buds with terrorists and the whole Sarah Palin thing, I can’t blame you if you don’t want to repeat it any time soon.

Or at least for another four years. Ha-ha!

Okay, okay. I’ll get to my point. I know you’re busy “measuring the drapes” (I recommend eggshell; it will really throw those people who think of it as a ‘White’ House) and trying to figure out how the hell you’re going to get America out of the quagmire known as Iraq, but when you have a moment, like maybe once the ball’s rolling on those other things, there’s something you should probably look at.

Over 1 per cent of the entire population of America is in prison.

That means that for every 100 men, women and children (the latter of which are beginning to make up a disproportionately large part of that percentage), one is an inmate. And that’s just scratching the surface. In some parts of America, when narrowed down to racial and age demographics, one in eight Americans has a record. Pretty shocking, eh?

What’s even worse is that a full 60 per cent of these are non-violent drug offenders. A large number of those are due to cannabis-related offenses, largely because your predecessor figured imprisoning them was a good way to drive up the religious vote. Now, as somebody who has smoked pot before (and trust me, there’s a lot of us), doesn’t that seem a little bit… Well, ridiculous, to you..?

Yet, as the first half-black president of America ever, there’s another aspect you might appreciate: there is an enormous racial bias to all this. In Syracuse, for example, blacks are arrested for cannabis possession at a rate 10.61 times that of whites. That’s an order of magnitude, man! Something just ain’t right!

In Massachusetts, over 60 per cent of voters supported the state’s ballot initiative to decriminalize small amounts of cannabis. It’s already pretty much legal for medicinal usage in California. Other initiatives in 10 states do similar. When you think about it, we stoners make up a really big part of the American political pie. Like, even including the back-asswards hellhole known as the American Midwest, states wanting more control over their cannabis policy make up over a 5th of American society. Americans are not afraid of cannabis—Washington is. Why not give it to them?

Honestly, you wouldn’t even have to stand in front of a camera and tell the country that weed is now legal. That would be awesome—like, mad, mad awesome—but I can see it as politically untenable. Instead, the federal government could merely say that the Drug War has failed and it is utterly unable to enforce the draconian laws created from prohibition. Thus, States are allowed to create their own policy with regards to drug misdemeanors and possession will no longer be considered a federal offense. The goal of the idea is to give more power to the states‚ not be nice to pot-heads, making it much more comfortable for a lot of Republicans—which, I remind you, must be worked with because the Senate ain’t quite filibuster-proof… Yet.

So, here it is, at once both a major social problem that must be addressed but also an opportunity to create bridges with the other side of the floor. You know, as straight-edge as most pretend to be, Republicans smoke a lot of grass too. Legalizing (Or at least absolving federal power) carries with it the ability to solve a decade-long social issue while also freeing up state funding (Corrections are often just behind health and transportation as the largest state costs). It would also make those 4-hour stopovers in Minneapolis a lot more tolerable.

Of course, the flip-side of all this is that if you let this pointless War on Drugs continue for the next four years, the millions incarcerated become your legacy—not Bush’s. And I’m really guessing you don’t want to be compared to Bush.

Seriously. Legalize the shit. It won’t hurt society as badly as the Hawks think it will and it will only strengthen and embolden your presidency in the long run.

And compared to Iraq and the economy, legalization is easy.

Hugs ‘n’ kisses,

-Ændrew.