President Obama was in Newark, New Jersey today touring a drug-rehab center and touting his leniency towards people involved with the drug trade, who he says are nonviolent.

Today the first wave of more than 6,000 drug dealers was released from federal penitentiaries around the country after their sentences were shortened at the behest of President Obama.

The publicly stated reason is that keeping drug dealers in prison for long periods of time is too expensive and the punishment does not fit the crime.

The liberal point of view is that selling heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine is a non-violent action.

That despite the fact that in 2013 nearly 44,000 people died from drug overdoses.

Thousands more were killed in automobile accidents.

Thousands more contracted AIDS and other diseases and are generally a huge strain on the American medical system.

All because people sell narcotics to make money.

Yet those people, President Obama puts forth, deserve sympathetic treatment.

Of course that is erroneous in the extreme and many law enforcement agents are harshly critical of President Obama's early release program that will continue.

Now Talking Points knows the real reasons the president and other liberal Americans do not want harsh punishment for drug-involved individuals.

Reason number one: The left firmly believes that police target African-Americans more than whites in the narcotics trade.

Therefore, the thinking goes, the criminal justice system is racist.

Reason number two: Many liberals want to legalize all drugs.  They believe it is a personal choice and should not be punished by society.

Also, President Obama apparently thinks diverting drug-involved individuals into rehab is a better solution than incarceration.

The problem is rehab never works unless the individual wants to get off drugs or alcohol, and many offenders do not.

Thus, this whole exercise will accomplish little in the way of public safety.

Some convicts will inevitably return to the drug life, and they will cause a tremendous amount of damage.

But here's the worst part of President Obama's foolish policy: It sends a message to drug dealers and users that society doesn't believe this is a dangerous and immoral situation.

When I was growing up in Levittown, New York, there was nothing worse than being a drug dealer.  They were outcasts in the neighborhood, considered scum.

Now they are glorified in some places; in many circles the local dealer is considered cool.

The acceptance and promotion of addictive substances is a national disgrace.

Drug dealing is one of the lowest forms of human activity, it enslaves kills and harms people.

Yet President Obama is making it a priority to give folks who sell hard drugs leniency.

Awful.

And that's the memo.