Obama: Pot 'not very different' to cigs

Last updated 14:28 20/01/2014

The world's first state-licensed marijuana retailers legally permitted to sell pot for recreational use to the general public open for business. Jillian Kitchener reports.

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US President Barack Obama says smoking marijuana is a "bad habit" but no worse than alcohol and that states legalising weed should go ahead with their plans.


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 state legalising marijuana recently went into effect. The president said it was important for the legalisation 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.



Asked whether he thought marijuana was less dangerous than alcohol, the president said yes "in terms of its impact on the individual consumer".

But Obama urged a cautious approach to changing marijuana laws, saying that people who think legalising 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 New York City-based 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.





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"If we were able to get Iran to operate in a responsible fashion ... you could see an equilibrium developing between Sunni, or predominantly Sunni, Gulf states and Iran in which there's competition, perhaps suspicion, but not an active or proxy warfare,'' he said.

On the question of Syria's brutal civil war, Obama said he is "haunted by what's happened" there. But, he added, "it is very difficult to imagine a scenario in which our involvement in Syria would have led to a better outcome, short of us being willing to undertake an effort in size and scope similar to what we did in Iraq." 

Regarding whether Obama will write a memoir, former adviser David Axelrod called it a ''slam dunk'' that the president will. A literary agent estimated publishers will pay between US$17 million and US$20m (NZ$20m to NZ$24m) for one.


Remnick writes: "The leaks, he said, had 'put people at risk' but revealed nothing illegal. And though the leaks raised 'legitimate policy questions' about NSA operations, 'the issue then is: Is the only way to do that by giving some twenty-nine-year-old free rein to basically dump a mountain of information' " on the media?

With exactly three years left in his presidency, Obama said narrowing the gap between rich and poor would be a key part of his legacy.


- Agencies


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