Pubdate: Mon, 20 Jan 2014
Source: Record, The (Troy, NY)
Copyright: 2014 The Associated Press
Contact:  http://www.troyrecord.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1724

OBAMA: POT IS NOT MORE DANGEROUS THAN ALCOHOL

(AP) - President Barack Obama said he doesn't think marijuana is more 
dangerous than alcohol, "in terms of its impact on the individual consumer."

"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," the president said an 
interview with "The New Yorker" magazine. Smoking marijuana is "not 
something I encourage, and I've told my daughters I think it's a bad 
idea," Obama said.

Obama's administration has given states permission to experiment with 
regulation, and laws recently passed in Colorado and Washington 
legalizing marijuana recently went into effect. He said it was 
important for the legalization 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.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom