Obama Talks Cannabis Reform with Bill Maher

Barack Obama spoke candidly about cannabis reform with Bill Maher during an interview on the HBO talk show, Real Time with Bill Maher. When the two were not talking about the modern media and Donald Trump, they did touch on cannabis in the United States. With a majority of states allowing medical cannabis, and now as one in five Americans will have access to recreational cannabis, it is definitely a hot topic.

When the topic of cannabis form arose, Obama sarcastically poised a question to Maher saying, “Is that something you care about?” The president expressed his concern about smoking cannabis could be harmful to the public’s health. He shared his concern for smoking in general, being that he himself was addicting to cigarettes.

Obama brought the conversation back to the children, and that the responsibility lies with us to make sure we are not encouraging them to smoke. “There is this enormous public health effort to get kids to not start smoking. And make sure the parents felt guilty if they were passing on that habit with their kids,” Obama said. “So that’s where I think we need to go with pot, alcohol. So I don’t think legalization is a panacea but I think that we’re going to need to have a more serious conversation about how we’re treating marijuana and our drug laws generally.”

Obama is no stranger to cannabis, which is reflected in his apparent acceptance of the will of the states. In 2016, Obama admitted that he had smoked cannabis in high school in his autobiography Dreams From My Father. He also noted that he did inhale it frequently, contrary to Bill Clinton’s infamous line that he did not actually inhale cannabis that he had smoked in college.