President Obama’s Marijuana Jokes a Bigger Hit Than His Policies

President Obama’s marijuana jokes over the last couple years proved more progressive than his administration’s policies.

On Saturday night, during the 2016 White House Correspondent’s dinner, the Commander in Chief added to his long list of weed one-liners with a new zinger.

“In my final year my approval ratings keep going up. The last time I was this high, I was trying to decide on my major.”

President Obama has been landing weed jokes for years. In 2015 he said:

“I’m not saying I’m any funnier,” he said. “I’m saying weed is now legal in D.C.”

In 2014 he quipped:

“Colorado legalized marijuana this year. … It’s an interesting social experiment. I do hope it doesn’t lead to whole lot of paranoid people who think that the federal government’s out to get them and listening to their phone calls. That would be a problem.”

And in 2013 at the same event he said:

“I remember when Buzzfeed was just something I did in college around 2 a.m.”

Saturday night was another moment of levity around an increasingly heated issue. Activists are calling on President Obama to single-handedly move cannabis off the federal list of the world’s most dangerous drugs.

But the President has consistently encouraged Congress to take the lead, saying he’d “probably” sign legislation that downgraded pot from its rank as a federally prohibited “schedule 1” substance — considered as dangerous as street heroin or LSD. OxyContin, which contributes to about 50 prescription painkiller overdoses per day, is schedule 2.

This Spring, activists unfurled a 51-foot long inflatable joint and participated in civil disobedience at the White House gates. That protest led to a historic sit-down between activists and a unnamed, low-ranking White House staffer in April.

The Department of Justice under the Obama White House also gave up its persecution of iconic California medical marijuana activist Lynnette Shaw this Spring.

While President Obama’s Administration has spent hundreds of millions of dollars interfering with state-legal medical cannabis operators, it has stood down on recreational marijuana. A historic White House memo instructs federal prosecutors to focus on bigger priorities than state-legal pot licensees in the four recreational states — Colorado, Washington, Oregon, and Alaska — and Washington D.C.

President Obama smoked pot a lot as a youth in Hawaii, where he was the member of a smoking crew called The Choom Gang.

Here’s President Obama’s full remarks at the 2016 White House Correspondent’s Dinner. We’re going to miss you, Mr. President.

Tell us your best cannabis joke in the comments!