re: #5 Dark_Falcon

A matter of political capital. Obama has but a limited amount and he intends to use it in the places where he thinks it would yield the most results.

I agree with you, but I wonder if something else is going on here, beyond Obama’s caution about spending political capital. There are tremendous financial incentives to keep the War on Drugs going. We’re talking about very big money. I must assume that there are major pressures, from powerful organizations, to maintain the War on Drugs. Of course, the President could begin to wind down this utter failure of a “war”. But that might take a lot more political capital than we might have expected.