Well I can understand how one might feel given his strong clear positions as a senator and then his position being somewhat muted as the president. I'm sure also how that all felt depended a lot on where they were geographically. Most of the marijuana scene back then whether medicinal or recreational was mainly Colorado and the west coast. So I can see where it came across as more of a betrayal. Here on the east coast especially near the beltway around DC you get a different feel of things though. In this area there was a very different sense as to how Obama felt about certain things. I remember how right around when he was elected he did a Q& A on the internet and the very first question asked was essentially if he was going to legalize marijuana. He didn't answer yes or no but rather he chose to express disbelief that with all the serious issues of the time that the first thing people wanted to ask was about marijuana and his reaction was his typical Come on man" kind of response although that wasn't the words he used but it was definitely the tone. Anyone paying close attention could tell that it made him feel uncomfortable and not because he wasn't going to do anything but because the weight of responsibility he felt being the first Black President. So having lived near the beltway all my life I felt like the position he took as far as saying his administration would not waste resources on people obeying stat laws was the most he felt like he could do at least at that time. He was more focused on the promise of reforming healthcare and that pretty much consumed all of his first term and most of his political capital. Nobody but him can know for sure what he would have done had things played out differently but I truly believe had things been less difficult with healthcare reform we would have had a good chance at seeing him do more about legalizing marijuana. Of course in his second term he lost the majority he had in Congress and so getting much of anything else done was out the window and his last term was more about fighting the forces trying to undo what he accomplished in the first term. now I do agree that his own agencies seemed to work against him, Obama never seemed to be the type to micro-manage his agencies the way other President's have done. He always seemed to me to be content with letting his cabinet do what they felt was best even if it didn't exactly match up to what he promised. I do believe had they more consistently and overtly undermined him he would have done something but for the most part they did go by his wishes. As a result like I've already said before he did create the environment that allowed Colorado to do what they did and that carried on even to this day and helped to improve the overall opinion towards marijuana that exists today. When he started the percentage of voters who favored legalization was more around 50% whereas today it's more like 70-75%. I'll stand by my opinion that things wouldn't be that favorable had he not took the position of letting the states do their own thing and that we would have very few if any states with legalized recreational marijuana. Of course that's just an opinion and can never be proven or disproven.
