President Barack Obama believes smoking marijuana is a "bad habit" but thinks legal penalties now fall disproportionately on minorities and that states legalising pot should go ahead with their plans, he said in a profile released on Sunday.
"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," he is quoted as saying in a New Yorker magazine article. "I don't think it is more dangerous than alcohol."
The president said he has told his two daughters that smoking marijuana is "a bad idea, a waste of time, not very healthy".
However, he said he is concerned that marijuana-related arrests fall far more heavily on minorities than on others. Legalisation of pot should go forward in the states of Colorado and Washington 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," he said. » | Reuters in Washington | Sunday, January 19, 2014
