President Barack Obama said during a YouTube interview Thursday that he believes more states will consider legalizing recreational marijuana, citing his administration’s hands-off approach to prohibition-ending cannabis laws in Colorado and Washington state.
“What you’re seeing now is Colorado, Washington, through state referenda, they’re experimenting with legal marijuana,” Obama said in response to host Hank Green. “The position of my administration has been that we still have federal laws that classify marijuana as an illegal substance, but we’re not going to spend a lot of resources trying to turn back decisions that have been made at the state level on this issue. My suspicion is that you’re gonna see other states start looking at this.”
–
“What is interesting to me is that the president did not take the opportunity to endorse legalization — though he could have,” Sabet told HuffPost. “The president is right that we need a balanced public health and public safety strategy for drugs. Indeed, as he says, we need to focus on treatment. Legalization advocates would rather just focus on letting people use drugs.”
