In “Democracy and Spreading Knowledge Transparently,” I wrote about President Obama’s tendency to exclude certain policy alternatives in explaining his thinking to us. In his world-wide Town Hall event, he showed another variant on the theme of lack of knowledge transparency in his public communications.
This time the subject was Marijuana Prohibition and his reply to a question about whether ending it would be likely to stimulate the American Economy. He replied with a dismissive answer, chuckling and using a mild put down of part of his audience, while simply asserting that it would not do so, without explaining the thinking of the Administration about ending Prohibition.
Today, Andrew Sullivan replied by saying among other things: “. . . His answer was a non-answer. I’m tired of having the Prohibition issue treated as if it’s trivial or a joke. It is neither. . .”
Sullivan is right. The consequences of Prohibition: economic, undermining of the criminal justice system, incarceration rates exceeding those in all other Democracies, and growing violence from drug cartels in both Mexico and the United States, make this a very serious issue that one can’t both laugh off, and still claim that one is being transparent and open with the public. The President has avoided giving us his thinking on this subject, and was dismissive of the question. That’s not transparency. It’s manipulation.