As everyone knows a number of States in America allow the use of marijuana, one for no reason at all – that is Colorado – and the rest on the flimsiest of medical excuses – such as you have a pretty bad cough and your doctor thinks it will clear it up!  President Obama has always been against marijuana noting that the federal government rejects the legalisation of marijuana.  

That situation now appears to be changing, given that in a recent interview published in New Yorker magazine, the President was quoted as saying he would not “encourage” smoking dagga as he believed it is “a bad idea, a waste of time, not very healthy”.  He did admit to smoking dagga when he was young and said that he thought it was not as dangerous as alcohol in terms of the damage it can do to an individual.  He also pointed out during the interview that whenever people get arrested and sent to jail for marijuana it is always children from poor families and that children who smoke marijuana, but come from wealthy families, never go to jail – so the treatment by the government in that regard is incredibly unfair.  When it came to the issue of how grass is being treated in Colorado and Washington, he said in the interview the experiments should go forward “… because it is 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.”  

That all hints at a big change coming in America, although often they take another 10 years once they have reached this phase of Presidents thinking that things are not so bad but of course it is a difficult topic, because on the one hand there are many who do not believe that it is as dangerous as alcohol, and you have even now the President of America supporting this point of view and he is probably correct in doing so, and on the other hand there is no denying that dagga is not good for your health, and it certainly, apart from leaving you paranoid, is pretty demotivating.  Those that appear to smoke it all the time invariably have a view that is against much of organised society, not particularly interested in hard work and trying to live the easy life.  I think you would be hard pressed to find a successful person, and I am not talking about people who make their money singing songs or acting in movies, who smoke dagga on a regular basis.