Actor Kal Penn defended President Obama’s record on drug laws Tuesday, saying he had been “consistent.”
Via Yahoo News, who caught up with Penn at the Democratic convention:
“I think that the president’s been pretty consistent with that. He’s not in favor of legalization, we should be open about something like that. But what the president has done is take a really smart look at the Department of Justice and said, given the fact that the federal government has limited resources, we should be allocating them toward violent criminals and not towards non-violent criminals. We can see that not just in things like marijuana but in things like immigration reform where he’s going after and deporting violent criminals and making sure that if you’re a Dream Act eligible student that you know that you can apply for your deferred status. Wherever the federal government has an appropriate role, I think the president’s been very consistent in that. That’s something that I think folks should know.”
Drug reformers criticized Obama on Tuesday for appearing in a campaign video with Penn and actor John Cho reprising their roles as stoner duo “Harold and Kumar,” claiming it was hypocritical to joke about marijuana users while continuing to enforce policies that would put them in jail.
