Carter noted that when he was president, he wanted to decriminalize marijuana. Carter: I'm OK with legalizing pot

Former President Jimmy Carter said he is in favor of legalizing marijuana during a public panel that CNN aired Tuesday.

CNN anchor Suzanne Malveaux asked Carter whether he supported marijuana’s legalization during a forum hosted by The Captain Planet Foundation on Friday in Georgia.


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“I’m in favor of it. I think it’s OK,” Carter told Malveaux. “I don’t think it’s going to happen in Georgia yet, but I think we can watch and see what happens in the state of Washington for instance around Seattle and let the American government and let the American people see does it cause a serious problem or not.”

Washington and Colorado voted to legalize recreational marijuana last month, becoming the first two states to do so, putting state laws at odds with federal laws. U.S. officials remain critical of the laws passing.

Carter said that decriminalizing drugs doesn’t necessarily mean more drug users.

“All drugs were decriminalized in Portugal a few years ago and the use of drugs has gone down dramatically and nobody has been put in prison,” Carter said.

He added: “So I think a few places around the world is good to experiment with and also just a few states in America are good to take the initiative and try something out. That’s the way our country has developed over the last 200 years. It’s about a few states being kind of experiment states. So on that basis I am in favor of it.”

Carter’s remarks come following last Thursday’s premiere of “ Breaking the Taboo,” filmmaker Sam Branson’s documentary that says the global drug war failed and in which the former president criticized former first lady Nancy Reagan’s “Just Say No” anti-drug campaign.

Carter noted that when he was president, he wanted to decriminalize marijuana.

“When I was president, in 1979 I made my definitive speech about drugs and I called for the decriminalization of marijuana. This was in 1979 — not for the legalization but the decriminalization to keep people from being put in prison just because they were smoking a marijuana cigarette,” Carter said.

Carter wrote in a June 2011 New York Times op-ed that he supported the Global Commission on Drug Policy’s recommendations for government to experiment with legal regulation of drugs.

When asked by POLITICO whether this was the first time Carter supported legalizing marijuana — moving beyond decriminalization — his office responded a statement from him: “I have always favored decriminalization and think we should observe what happens in Washington before going further.”

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