President Barack Obama and Bill Maher shot some straight dope during Maher’s interview with the POTUS for the HBO show “Real Time With Bill Maher” on Friday, digging deep into the issue of drug-law reform, particularly as it pertains to marijuana.
“Let me ask you about a question that I know the people who watch our show are interested in, which is marijuana reform,” Maher quizzed the president.
“Is that something that you care about?” Obama, who admitted he “inhaled” prior to winning the presidency in 2008, joked.
At which point Maher — who has openly talked about his recreational use of weed — got semi-serious, citing a growing number of states bringing marijuana legalization in one form or another to the November ballot.
“We’ve both made jokes about it, but it’s not funny to the people who get arrested,which is over half a million, I think, last year. You and I both could have had our lives ruined, not really by smoking it, but by being arrested for it,” Maher said. “And I feel like you had a checklist about, ‘Let’s get rid of a lot of the stupid stuff.’ Like opening up Cuba. You came out for gay marriage. I was hoping ending the drug war would be on that list …. isn’t it time the federal government caught up to progressive states like Arizona and North Dakota?”
Obama opined that the issue of drug use should be viewed through the prism of public health.
“I have always believed that, to the extent that society legitimately wants to guard against any kind of substance abuse, that you treat it as a public health problem,” Obama said. “That’s where I think we need to go with pot, alcohol. I don’t think that legalization is a panacea, But I think that we’re gonna have to have a more serious conversation about how we are treating marijuana and our drug laws generally.”
Obama added that, should the current ballot initiatives on marijuana succeed, a serious conversation about drug laws on the federal level will likely be sparked.
“The good news is that, after this referendum, to some degree it’s going to call the question. Because if in fact it passes in all these states, about a fifth of the country is operating under one set of laws, and four-fifths in another,” Obama said. “The Justice Department, the DEA, FBI — for them to try to straddle and figure out how they’re supposed to enforce laws in some places and not in others … That is not gonna be tenable. It’s not something that I think is going to happen overnight, and there are some legitimate concerns that people have about how you draw lines on these issues.”
The president continued: “But it is indisputable that right now the biggest crisis we have is with opioids, many of which are legal and are ravaging entire communities all across the country. For us to re-sort how we think about these problems, and not think of everything through the criminal-justice lens but also through the public-health lens, I think is something that’s going to need to happen.”
Watch the interview in the video.