President Obama said in an interview published Sunday he does not believe marijuana is more dangerous than alcohol and that it was “important” that the legalization of the drug in some states to “go forward” because it would prevent unfair penalties for some users.
"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 in an interview with The New Yorker.
Pressed on whether marijuana was less dangerous than alcohol, Obama noted that 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, Obama said, he did see pot as less dangerous “in terms of its impact on the individual consumer.”
Obama said he was particularly concerned by disproportionate arrests of and sentences for minorities possessing the drug.
“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.”
The president said he believed it was unfair that the government was “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.”
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