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 "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," he is quoted as saying in a New Yorker magazine article. "I
don't think it is more dangerous than alcohol."
The president said he has told his daughters smoking marijuana is "a
bad idea, a waste of time, not very healthy."
However, he said he is concerned that marijuana-related arrests fall
far more heavily on minorities than on others. Legalization of pot
should go forward in the states of Colorado and Washington 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," he said.
Marijuana remains illegal in the United States under federal law,
but 21 U.S. states allow or are about to allow medical marijuana
use, and Colorado and Washington have decriminalized use of pot
entirely. Alaska and the District of Columbia are considering
following suit.
The Obama administration said last year that federal law enforcement
will not target users in Colorado and Washington, as long as they
comply with their respective states' laws.
The Department of Justice says it will not interfere with states'
efforts to regulate and tax marijuana provided they are able to meet
a set of requirements, including keeping it from children and
restricting its flow into other states.
The president also said he believes that those who argue that
legalizing marijuana will solve a number of social problems "are
probably overstating the case." Legalization in Colorado and
Washington will likely be a challenge, he said.
In the lengthy profile, the president muses over race, the Middle
East, and criticism of his efforts to woo Congress, among other
topics. Discussing race, he said that he believes some people will
never accept having a black president.
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The president said that the three sets of negotiations involving
Iran, Israel and the Palestinians, and Syria each have less than a
50-50 chance of succeeding, but are necessary steps toward achieving
stability in a volatile region.
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 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 $17 million and
$20 million for one.
Obama said narrowing the gap between rich and poor would be a key
part of his legacy.
"I will measure myself at the end of my presidency in large part by
whether I began the process of rebuilding the middle class and the
ladders into the middle class and reversing the trend toward
economic bifurcation in this society," he said.
(Reporting by Mark Felsenthal; editing by Jonathan Oatis)
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