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Mr. Obama’s remarks risked undermining the national drugs laws that are imposed by his justice department. Despite marijuana being legalized in Colorado and Washington by referendum, the drug remains a schedule 1 controlled substance – along with heroin and Ecstasy – under federal law.

While the justice department said last year that it would not challenge the legalization passed by both Colorado and Washington, the White House has stressed that Mr. Obama does not favour amending the federal rules.

The president made his comments in a wide-ranging 17,000-word profile that surveyed the challenges facing his final three years in office after what is widely agreed to have been his worst 12 months.

He admitted the disclosure that US spies listened in on the telephone of Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, felt “like a breach of trust and I can’t argue with her being aggravated about that”.

He conceded that the likelihood of the US reaching final treaties in its three major initiatives in the Middle East – on Iran’s nuclear program, the dispute between Israel and Palestinians, and Syria – was “less than 50-50”.

“On the other hand,” he said, “in all three circumstances we may be able to push the boulder part-way up the hill and maybe stabilize it so it doesn’t roll back on us”.

Asked, after stepping back from intervening in Syria, if he were haunted by the horrors of the country’s bloody civil war, Mr. Obama said: “I am haunted by what’s happened.

“I am not haunted by my decision not to engage in another Middle Eastern war.”

The article disclosed that Mr. Obama’s wife, Michelle, has already begun working on an autobiography for publication after the couple leave the White House.

The president plans to write his own memoirs of his time in office, which are expected to fetch a record $20 million from a publisher.

It also explained that Malia, the couple’s older daughter, is “an aspiring filmmaker” and is a fan of the sexually explicit HBO series Girls, of which her parents are said to have been “wary”.