Michelle Obama is a loving mother, a concerned parent and an intelligent woman, and we wonder how she would answer these three questions: 1) How would you and your husband, family and country have benefited if Barack as a young man had gotten a marijuana arrest, destroying his chance to go to college, his job prospects and, if charged with sales, maybe spent a few years behind bars? 2) How will anyone be better off if that happens to one of your daughters? 3) Can you know this happens to 800,000 Americans a year — even seriously ill patients with a physician’s approval who live in states where doctors, families, voters and legislators have recognized the medical use of cannabis — and not do anything? All pretense to the contrary notwithstanding, your husband is the one person on Earth who can order the DEA to deschedule marijuana, desist in its

Read More: It’s Time to Tell Michelle

Look back 50 years to the US Civil Rights struggle. Southern states twisted States Rights into a legal device to craft the Jim Crow laws used to deny Americans of color their fundamental rights through segregation, prohibiting mixed-race marriage, denial of education and vot- ing rights, etc. The US Fifth Circuit Court June 25, 1962 ordered that a man named James Meredith be admitted to integrate the University of Mississippi. A courageous young President John F. Kennedy dispatched the Mississippi national guard to hold back a mob of more than 2,000 segregationists who repeatedly attacked federal marshals, allowing Meredith to register for college and ultimately paving the way for US voters to elect a mixed-race African-American president.

Five decades later, 17 states have asserted States Rights to restore their citizens’ right to use cannabis therapeutics as allowed by international treaty. Congress refused to cut off funding to DEA raids,

Read More: Federal Policy on Cannabis is New Jim Crow