Obama: Pot Is ‘A Bad Habit’ That Is No ‘More Dangerous Than Alcohol’
Prepare for a massive RWNJ screechfest:
When Remnick asked whether it was “less dangerous” than cigarettes or alcohol, the president demurred. It is less dangerous, he said, “in terms of its impact on the individual consumer. 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.”
Obama then acknowledged the structural inequalities surrounding drug laws in the United States. “Middle-class kids don’t get locked up for smoking pot, and poor kids do,” he said. “And 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.”
He went on to attack the hypocrisy of long sentences handed out to users by laws written by politicians who have likely committed the same crimes. “[W]e 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,” he said.
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