Marijuana no more dangerous than alcohol for individual user, Obama says

President Barack Obama has said he does not think marijuana is more dangerous than alcohol “in terms of its impact on the individual consumer”.
By The Newsroom
Published 20th Jan 2014, 16:57 BST

“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 up through a big chunk of my adult life,” he said in an interview with The New Yorker magazine. “I don’t think it is more dangerous than alcohol.”

Smoking marijuana was “not something I encourage, and I’ve told my daughters I think it’s a bad idea, a waste of time, 
not very healthy”, Mr Obama added.

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His government has given states permission to experiment with marijuana regulation and laws recently passed in Colorado and Washington state legalising marijuana recently went into effect. The president said it was important for the legalisation 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 times. He also said he was troubled at the disproportionate number of arrests and imprisonments of minorities for marijuana use.