Another Obama Flip-Flop: Drug Users Must Be Treated as Criminals

In 2008, Barack Obama campaigned on the promise of reforming America's approach to drug abuse from the current War on Drugs (which causes a very large and far-reaching amount of collateral damage to innocents) to a public health approach — that is, instead of treating all recreational drug users as criminals, he proposed offering addiction recovery and counseling options and seemd to leave a glimpse of hope for decriminalization.

However, on July 22, 2011, he made it clear that decriminalization is not an option in his view. That seems to ignore the fact that criminalization of personal recreational use of naturally-occurring substance is exactly what fuels the War on Drugs.

There is a very simple reason for this approach: the War on Drugs is profitable, so why take away the cash cow of those who offer you support?