Obama: Pot is not more dangerous than alcohol #druggpolicy

The Seattle Times
January 19, 2014 at 1:17 PM | Page modified January 20, 2014 at 1:37 AM

Obama: Pot is not more dangerous than alcohol

President Barack Obama said he doesn't think marijuana is more dangerous
than alcohol, "in terms of its impact on the individual consumer."

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama said he doesn't think marijuana is more
dangerous than alcohol, "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," the president said an interview with "The New
Yorker" magazine.

Smoking marijuana is "not something I encourage, and I've told my daughters
I think it's a bad idea, a waste of time, not very healthy,"
Obama said.

Obama's administration has given states permission to experiment with
marijuana regulation, and laws recently passed in Colorado and Washington
legalizing marijuana recently went into effect. The president said it was
important for the legalization of marijuana to go forward in those states to
avoid a situation in which only a few are punished while a large portion of
people have broken the law at one time or another.

The president said he is troubled at the disproportionate number of arrests
and imprisonments of minorities for marijuana use. "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."

He said in the interview that users shouldn't be locked up for long
stretches of time when people writing drug laws "have probably done the same
thing."

But Obama urged a cautious approach to changing marijuana laws, saying that
people who think legalizing pot will solve social problems are "probably
overstating the case."

"And the experiment that's going to be taking place in Colorado and
Washington is going to be, I think, a challenge," the president said.

Ethan Nadelmann, the executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance praised
Obama's words, saying his use of the word "important" about the new Colorado
and Washington laws "really puts the wind in the sails of the movement to
end marijuana prohibition.

Critics of the new laws raise concerns about public health and law
enforcement, asking whether wide availability of the drug will lead to more
underage drug use, more cases of driving while high and more crime.

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