Obama: Marijuana No More Dangerous Than Alcohol, Insists Drug Punishments be Changed
President Obama gave his thoughts regarding the legalization and use of Marijuana suggesting that he feels it is no more dangerous than alcohol.
During an interview with New Yorker's David Remnick published Sunday, the president gave his opinion when it comes to the use of marijuana.
"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 told Remnick.
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Still while the president feels that it is not as dangerous as many perceive it to be he insisted that he would encourage his own daughters to refrain indulging in the illegal substance.
"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," he added.
But perhaps the most revealing statement made by the president was his feelings regarding the incarceration of a large number of young people for non-violent drug crimes and insisted that it should not be that case where a young person who makes a mistake should have to serve a lengthy jail sentence.
"We should not be 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," said Obama.
The racial disparities in drug arrests and sentencing caused Attorney General Eric Holder to announce last year that he would work on restructuring some of the sentencing guidelines for non-violent drug offenders.
"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," the president said.
Marijuana is currently classified by the Drug Enforcement Administration as a Schedule 1 substance, which the DEA considers "the most dangerous class of drugs with a high potential for abuse and potentially severe psychological and/or physical dependence."
Other Schedule 1 drugs include heroin, ecstasy and LSD.
