Obama On Pot: ‘ I Don’t Think It’s More Dangerous Than Alcohol’

President Barack Obama is sharing his thoughts on pot, saying he doesn’t think marijuana is necessarily more dangerous than alcohol “in terms of its impact on the individual consumer.”

Obama acknowledged — once again — his experience smoking pot as a youngster during an interview with The New Yorker:

“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 says he has discouraged his daughters from using the drug:

“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.”

However Obama added, “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.”

The legalization of marijuana in Colorado has started a debate around the country as to the benefits or drawback of individuals having access to the recreational drug.

According to a Gallup poll conducted in Ocotber of last year, Americans are growing more comfortable with the legal use of marijuana, with 58 percent favoring legalization.

Some researchers believe that making marijuana legal would lead to a decrease in alcohol consumption among young people.

Obama also spoke about the legalization of pot in Colorado and Washington State:

“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’s words were welcomed by pot legalization advocates. Mason Tvert, director of the Marijuana Policy Project, said in a statement:

“The first step to improving our nation’s marijuana policy is admitting that marijuana is less harmful than alcohol. Now that he has recognized that laws jailing adults for using marijuana are inappropriate, it is time to amend for those errors and adopt a more fact-based marijuana policy.”

However, Obama recognized that pot is still a drug and its legalization is not as easy as it sounds:

“When it comes to harder drugs, the harm done to the user is profound and the social costs are profound. And you do start getting into some difficult line-drawing issues. If marijuana is fully legalized and at some point folks say, ‘Well, we can come up with a negotiated dose of cocaine that we can show is not any more harmful than vodka, are we open to that?’ If somebody says, We’ve got a finely calibrated dose of meth, it isn’t going to kill you or rot your teeth, are we O.K. with that?”

How do you feel about President Obama’s opinions on pot?