Let's see the quote again.
When I asked Obama about another area of shifting public opinionÂthe legalization of marijuanaÂhe seemed even less eager to evolve with any dispatch and get in front of the issue. ÂAs 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 donÂt think it is more dangerous than alcohol.Â
Is it less dangerous? I asked.
Obama leaned back and let a moment go by. ThatÂs one of his moves. When he is interviewed, particularly for print, he has the habit of slowing himself down, and the result is a spool of cautious lucidity. He speaks in paragraphs and with moments of revision. Sometimes he will stop in the middle of a sentence and say, ÂScratch that, or, ÂI think the grammar was all screwed up in that sentence, so let me start again.Â
[Why the paraphrase at the start of the next paragraph??]
Less dangerous, he said, Âin terms of its impact on the individual consumer. ItÂs not something I encourage, and IÂve told my daughters I think itÂs a bad idea, a waste of time, not very healthy. What clearly does trouble him is the radically disproportionate arrests and incarcerations for marijuana among minorities. ÂMiddle-class kids donÂt get locked up for smoking pot, and poor kids do, he said. ÂAnd African-American kids and Latino kids are more likely to be poor and less likely to have the resources and the support to avoid unduly harsh penalties. But, he said, Âwe 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. Accordingly, he said of the legalization of marijuana in Colorado and Washington that ÂitÂs important for it to go forward because itÂs 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.Â
As is his habit, he nimbly argued the other side. ÂHaving said all that, those who argue that legalizing marijuana is a panacea and it solves all these social problems I think are probably overstating the case. There is a lot of hair on that policy. And the experiment thatÂs going to be taking place in Colorado and Washington is going to be, I think, a challenge. He noted the slippery-slope arguments that might arise. ÂI also think that, 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, WeÂve got a finely calibrated dose of meth, it isnÂt going to kill you or rot your teeth, are we O.K. with that?Â
He's giving his opinion about it. He's not wanting to jump out in front and lead the charge for legalization. He sees the "hair" and nuance in the issue.
He's most concerned about the legal aspects of it.
Sure, push back on whether its more or less or equally dangerous as alcohol. What exactly did he mean by "in terms of its impact on the individual consumer"? Long term health? Likelihood of a car accident? Casual use vs drunks and stoners? High school kids experimenting vs 50 year olds as regular users? Hard to say, it seems to me. He said he's told his kids to avoid it, so that's obviously part of his thinking. He may even agree with you that there is science that says that it can be worse than alcohol. I think most everyone agrees that there can be different effects at different stages of life.
But from a legal policy standpoint, which clearly seems to be his major concern, I think he's saying that we have had the balance wrong for a long time.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.