He probably should not have laughed at the legalizing of Marijuana to help grow the nation. But I think it was just a pun on growing Marijuana and growing the nation kinda thing. Just my opinion!
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I honestly don't think it will help the economy that much but, on the other hand I do not see a reason for our country to not legalize it. I say this as a person who has never done drugs in his entire 27 years of life except alcohol. I say this though cause I see no reason why substances such as Viagra and Enzyte can be legal yet something that is inherently natural and can have some rules placed on it just like the consumption of alcohol should be considered illegal. With that in mind I understand the standpoint of President Obama in his statement. Economy wise the substance cant do anything to help but it is a subject that he has to tread very carefully.
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He wasn't laughing at the concept of legalising marijuana per se.

He was maybe laughing at two things, a) the idea that that could have any significant impact on the economy, and b) the fact so many online users would vote for that question as the one they want to ask the President.

And yes, in my book, both of those things are pretty funny.
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I'm okay with him laughing about it. I don't think he has the right answer at this time, but I'm not sure what the relationship to "growing" our economy is. He might be picking words carefully. We'll see.
Casual laughter is a lot different that heated, angry claims about marijuana being the devil incarnate. I'll wait to see what happens next.
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He some ways, yes he should laugh at it. Given the many challenges facing this administration I hope he does not add "shutting down the war on drugs" to the agenda.

Next term, I hope he addresses the second failed attempt a prohibition because the costs are devastating.

Also, I'm interested to see the effects of open voting on the rankings of answers for this question.
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I completely agree that it's something that should be done, but now probably isn't the right time to do so. I don't think he was explicitly laughing at the issue - it may have been a joke about pot being a way to "grow" the economy.

Also,Obama is generally a pretty jovial guy - he smiles and jokes a lot. On a 60 Minutes interview with Jim Kroft the other night, Kroft gave Obama a hard time about laughing while talking about the economic crisis. Just goes to show that Obama makes jokes even about issues he feels are serious and warrant attention.
Source(s):
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0309/20339.html

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I was upset that he laughed about this question, in fact I turned off the meeting after that. There are many of us who voted for it that are not naive "young people" wanting to make it easier to get high. There has been so much money wasted on the failed War on Drugs and so many lives ruined by draconian sentencing rules for marijuana that this is a serious issue.

That said, at least he found it necessary to say something about the issue. Hopefully, after it continues to rank highly in these online votes, eventually he will see the need to seriously address it.
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The President is (once again) trying to find a middle ground: not legalization, but "rethinking" how we do things. We know that President Obama is a fan of President Lincoln, and borrowed a page from Lincoln's playbook, by placing his rivals in his Cabinet (Seward at State is clearly analogous to Hillary Clinton at State).

Now he needs to read up on FDR, and borrow FDR's ending of Alcohol Prohibition. The "War on Drugs" is lost: drugs are everywhere, plentiful, cheap and potent, *today*. If all drugs are legalized and taxed, the availability will remain the same, but the black-market premium pricing will disappear, and so will the drug cartels. In California, Governor Schwartezegger needs extra billions to close a huge state budget gap. That gap could be immediately fixed if all drugs were legalized, taxed, and treated as medical problems.
And of course, keep the DUI laws as they are, .. impaired driving under the influence of drugs is currently illegal in California and most states and should stay that way. No one is saying that we want dangerous behavior, however induced to flourish, but the basic commerce-in and possession of drugs should be legalized now, to create new revenues for governments everywhere.
The main problem, is that the Drug War is the means by which the prisons are kept full of mostly minority drug offenders. The government needs to get serious with the prison guard unions and other groups interested in maintaining this war-on-drugs-fed empire and either give them a different trough to feed at not involving drugs, or like AIG, tell them that they are now on a diet and will not use the Drug War to foment prison construction and to inflate police budgets.
In addition, corruption in government fueled by drug organizations would end, resulting in more faith in the integrity of government generally.
The drug war disproportionally hits minorities and the poor. A housewife can legally get perscription Xanax, and never be arrested, ... but a resident of a depressed neighborhood engaged in dealing or using drugs is dealt with harshly by our "justice" system ... this is systemic discrimination and racism at its insidious worst.
Finally, ending the Drug War would end our society-wide hypocrisy. President Clinton's "I never inhaled," lie was allowed through, because a huge proportion of our baby-boomer generation had in-fact experimented with drugs. If we actually disqualified all baby boomers from holding public office for such experimentation, that whole generation would find itself suddenly excluded from their government jobs for no good reason, since their experimentation has no bearing on their current job performance (maybe with the exception of former President G.W. Bush, who clearly suffered brain damage from decades of excessive substance abuse!!)
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