President Obama thinks marijuana is no more dangerous than booze — and even less harmful “in terms of its impact on the individual consumer.”
“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 than alcohol,” Obama said to New Yorker editor David Remnick in a lengthy profile published Sunday.
On the two states that have legalized pot, Obama said that “it’s important for it to go forward because it’s important for society not to have a situation in which a large portion of people have at one time or another broken the law and only a select few get punished.”
“Middle-class kids don’t get locked up for smoking pot, and poor kids do … 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.”
You can read the rest of the interview here.