Santana: Obama Should Legalize Pot
(WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif.) — President Barack Obama brushed off a question
about legalizing marijuana in his online town hall last month, but guitar
god Carlos Santana says he wishes he would seriously consider it.
"Legalize marijuana and take all that money and invest it in teachers and
in education," Santana said in an interview this week. "You will see a
transformation in America."
During his online town hall on March 26, Obama fielded a question about
whether legalization of the illicit drug would help pull the nation out of
recession. Obama said he didn't think it was good economic policy, and also
joked: "I don't know what this says about the online audience."
But Santana said making pot legal is "really way overdue, like the
prohibition with the alcohol and stuff like that. "I really believe that as
soon as we legalize and decriminalize marijuana we can actually afford a
really good governor who won't keep taking money away from education and
from teachers and send him back to Hollywood where he can do 'D' movies and
we can get an 'A' governor," referring to former movie action hero and
California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. (A Brief History of New York's
Rockefeller Drug Laws.)
Santana made the comments as he was promoting his upcoming rock residency in
Las Vegas at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino. The show debuts May 27 and runs
through 2010.
"It's a milestone for me because I always said I would never do certain
things," Santana said, adding that the list included staying in one place
for too long.
"Yet what is very different is this is the year I decided to do all the
things that I said I would never do. It's a way of coming into a room that I
thought was dark and I would be afraid and I actually bring my light to it."
Santana, whose hits vary from "Evil Ways" to "Maria Maria," said he is also
working on two upcoming albums.
While the 61-year-old has previously talked about a possible retirement,
he's decided to be more careful about predicting the future. "Every time I
tell God my plans he cracks up, he starts laughing. So I just decided to be
quiet for a while and not say that I am going to retire and go to Maui and
become a minister," he said. "God was cracking up. He thought it was a good
joke. So I said, 'OK.' Every time I want to make him laugh I tell him my
plans. So we'll see."
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