President Obama Says Marijuana is 'Less Dangerous' than Alcohol

By admin January 21, 2014 23:05

President Obama believes that marijuana is not as dangerous as alcohol and that the ban in most states unfairly targets the poor and minorities.

In an interview with the New Yorker, the president stated that marijuana use is not something that he would suggest for his daughters or anyone else, but prohibition has become a problem for the U.S.

‘As has been well documented, I smoked pot as a kid, and I view it as a bad habit and a vice, not very different from the cigarettes that I smoked as a young person up through a big chunk of my adult life. I don’t think it is more dangerous,’ Mr Obama said.

Liberal view: In an interview with the New Yorker, President Obama stated that he believes marijuana is no more dangerous than alcohol

Marijuana has been a taboo topic for politicians, and even caused former President Bill Clinton some troubles while running for office in 1992 when it was revealed he smoked pot while studying in England, and he responded that he ‘didn’t inhale’ and ‘didn’t try it again’.

President Obama on the other hand, has been far more candid, admitting to smoking pot and even taking cocaine in his 1995 memoir Dreams of My Father.

‘I think that, at this stage, my life is an open book, literally and figuratively,’ he said while running for Senate in Illinois. ‘Voters can make a judgment as to whether dumb things that I did when I was a teenager are relevant to the work that I’ve done since that time.’

By 2008, voter sentiment across the U.S. had relaxed on the issue of marijuana enough that it didn’t seem to factor much in his campaign.

In the New Yorker interview, Mr Obama clarified that he believes pot is less dangerous than alcohol ‘in terms of its impact on the individual consumer. It’s not something I encourage, and I’ve told my daughters I think it’s a bad idea, a waste of time, not very healthy.’

But the most troubling aspect of the federal ban on marijuana is it’s impact on specific segments of the population – especially African-Americans like himself.

‘Middle-class kids don’t get locked up for smoking pot, and poor kids do,’ he said. ‘And African-American kids and Latino kids are more likely to be poor and less likely to have the resources and the support to avoid unduly harsh penalties.’

‘We should not be locking up kids or individual users for long stretches of jail time when some of the folks who are writing those laws have probably done the same thing,’ Mr Obama added.