Smoked and Will Inhale } Clinton Changing His Mind?

Former President Bill Clinton says his administration twisted arms and spent money to interdict the illegal flow of drugs from Colombia to the United States, but acknowledged that the anti-drug strategy “hasn’t worked.”

Clinton and former President Jimmy Carter appear in a new documentary, “Breaking the Taboo, ” in interviews done before Washington and Colorado voted to legalize possession of small amounts of marijuana.  Breaking the Taboo narrator, actor Morgan Freeman, reports that “the U.S. spent hundreds of billions funding military operations”  in Colombia over the years.

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Clinton talked about a subject on which he has been reticent in years past:  The former president was  forever stung by his 1992 campaign remark that he had tried marijuana while a student in Britain but that he “didn’t inhale.”

“What I tried to do (in Colombia) was to focus on every aspect of the problem,” he says in the film.  “I tried to empower the Colombians as for example to do more military and police wise because I thought they had to.  Thirty percent of the country was in the hands of the narcotraffickers.

“Well, obviously if the expected result was that we would eliminate serious drug use in America and eliminate the narcotrafficking networks — it hasn’t worked.”

Carter said that his administration, in the late 1970′s, tried to shift away from a punishment-based enforcement strategy against drugs.  The effort ended, Carter said, when he lost the 1980 election and President Reagan took office.  The new President and his wife, Nancy, made the “War on Drugs” the first lady’s highest, high profile priority.  It was symbolized by the slogan “Just Say No.”

“She made it clear that her prohibition against drugs included marijuana and everything else,” said Carter.  “So I don’t think there’s any doubt that President Reagan made a profound impact then on the consciousness of our country, and I think that he also shaped the opinion of many in Congress.”

Breaking the Taboo, sharply critical of the War on Drugs, premiered Thursday night at the headquarters of Google — as a crowd gathered under Seattle’s Space Needle to celebrate the legalization of cannabis.  A report appeared Friday on the Politico website.

Clinton's comments come despite the fact that during his administration, drug budgets, marijuana arrests and the numbers of those sent to prison on drug charges spiked,US News & World Report reported. The film also criticizes President Barack Obama's drug policies. Obama had originally requested a compassionate drug policy, but he has since requested $25.6 billion for drug control in 2013, a record-setting number.

Clinton has previously been somewhat quiet on the subject of the war on drugs, the Seattle Post Intelligencer reported. He has also long been mocked for his campaign comments in 1992, when he said he tried marijuana but "didn't inhale."