This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, November 22nd, 2011.

I'm Caleb Brown.

President Obama has been a profound disappointment in the arena of drug policy according to drug policy

alliance founder Ethan Natalman and the only group more disappointing are

Republicans. Natalman spoke at the Cato Institute's conference

ending the global War on Drugs

held last week.

What's going on today?

Well, first, Obama. Obama. Obama. You know, he wasn't so bad from a drug policy perspective in his first year.

When he was running for office, he made three campaign commitments.

He said he was going to get rid of those crack powder,

mandatory minimum drug laws, which are so racially disproportionate unjust.

He said he was going to allow federal funding for needle

exchange programs. I mean, only being 25 years after almost every other civilized society had done

it. And he said he was going to get the federal government not interfering in medical

marijuana in the states that had made it legal.

And within the first 12 months, somewhat to my surprise.

Basically, he didn't lead on the needle exchange thing, but he left the Democrats in the House do it and it happened.

And then on the rolling, getting rid of the crack powder ones, they allied with us reformers and they

pushed for major reform in that area and they did it in good faith and they got a significant victory in China. a was more just more based on science. And then thirdly a medical marijuana

his Justice Department put out a statement in mid 2009 basically saying that

it should not be a priority of federal law enforcement to go after medical

...