Drug Policy

President Obama said he felt that marijuana is not more dangerous than alcohol and that he is troubled by the disproportionate jail time served by minorities for marijuana use.

"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 said in an interview with The New Yorker published Sunday. "I don't think it is more dangerous than alcohol."

Obama said that minorities receive harsher punishments than middle-class people when it comes to marijuana.

"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."