Penn Jillette: Obama is a Hypocrite on Marijuana. Let the People Go!
Penn Jillette has his vices. Jillette, the speaking side of the comic duo Penn and Teller, lives in sin city, after all, and has had the occasion to gamble on the Vegas strip.
When it comes to drugs and alcohol, however, Jillette often speaks about how he has never had “one sip of wine,” nor has he taken “a puff” of marijuana. And yet, Jillette put one of his well-known vices on display recently when he exercised his famously foul mouth in an epic rant against President Obama’s position on marijuana.
Sounding off on his show, “Penn’s Sunday School,” Jillette called Obama’s position “beyond hypocrisy.” He said:
Do we believe, even for a second, that if Obama had been busted for marijuana — under the laws that he condones — would his life have been better? If Obama had been caught with the marijuana that he says he uses, and ‘maybe a little blow’… if he had been busted under his laws, he would have done hard f*cking time. And if he had done time in prison, time in federal prison, time for his ‘weed’ and ‘a little blow,’ he would not be President of the United States of America. He would not have gone to his fancy-a** college, he would not have sold books that sold millions and millions of copies and made millions and millions of dollars, he would not have a beautiful, smart wife, he would not have a great job. He would have been in f*cking prison, and it’s not a god damn joke. People who smoke marijuana must be set free. It is insane to lock people up.
Is Jillette justified in making this ad hominem attack on Obama? Since Obama has admitted to smoking marijuana and doing “a little blow,” Jillette says Obama is a hypocrite on the issue. On his show Jillette presented his own clean history with drugs and alcohol as a relevant contrast. While he does not do drugs himself, Jillette also does not believe other people should go to jail for “victimless crimes,” pointing out that 1 in 6 people in prison in the U.S. today are “in there for weed.”
You can watch the relevant clip from Jillette’s show here.
While Jillette doesn’t believe people should go to prison for marijuana use, he is anything but an advocate for illegal drug use. In fact, he told Big Think that “I’ve never been that smart,” and the people he saw doing drugs and alcohol “were getting stupider and I hated that.”
Watch the video here:
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