Here’s a great list of some of Barack Obama’s marijuana quotes before he became president in 2008. He comments on everything from decriminalization and federal raids to his own personal use. There is also a great quote from his book where he discusses his personal drug use. Have any other marijuana related political quotes from president Obama? Leave them in the comments below!

Barack Obama quote on Marijuana Decriminalization – January 21st 2004:

“I think that we need to rethink and decriminalize our marijuana laws. But I’m not somebody who believes in legalization of marijuana. What I do believe is that we need to rethink how we are operating in the drug wars, and I think that currently we are not doing a good job.”

Barack Obama quote on Medical Marijuana Raids – August 27th 2007:

“I would not have the Justice Department prosecuting and raiding medical marijuana users. It’s not a good use of our resources.”

Barack Obama quote from his book “Dreams from My Father”, where her discusses his drug use:

“I had learned not to care. I blew a few smoke rings, remembering those years. Pot had helped, and booze; maybe a little blow when you could afford it. Not smack, though—Mickey, my potentional intiator had been just a little too eager for me to go through with that. Said he could do it blindfolded, but he was shaking like a faulty engine when he said it. Maybe he was just cold; we were standing in a meat freezer in the back of the deli where he worked, and it couldn’t have been more than twenty degrees in there. But he didn’t look like he was sweating, his face shiny and tight. He had pulled out the needle and the tubing, and I’d looked at him standing there, surrounded by big slabs of salami and roast beef, and right then an image popped into my head of an air bubble, shiny and round like a pearl, rolling quietly through a vein and stopping my heart… Junkie. Pothead. That’s where I’d be headed: the final, fatal role of the young would-be black man. Except the highs hadn’t been about that, me trying to prove what a down brother I was. Not by then anyway. I got just the opposite effect, something that could push questions of who I was out of my mind, something that could flatten out the landscape of my heart, blur the edges of my memory. I had discovered that it didn’t make any difference whether you smoked reefer in the white classmmate’s sparkling new van, or in the dorm room of some brother you’d met at the gym, or on the beach with a couple of Hawaiian kids who had dropped out of school and now spent most of their time looking for an excuse to brawl.”

Barack Obama quote on harassment of Medical Marijuana patients – June 2, 2007:

“I don’t think that should be a top priority of us, raiding people who are using … medical marijuana. With all the things we’ve got to worry about, and our Justice Department should be doing, that probably shouldn’t be a high priority.”

 

Barack Obama quote on his personal marijuana use – November 2007:

“I did. It’s not something that I’m proud of. It was a mistake as a young man, but you know? I mean not going to — I never understood that line. The point was to inhale. That was the point.”