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Obama, 2016 hopefuls listed as ‘most influential’ pot users

by Bradford Richardson - 08/26/15 2:27 PM ET

A marijuana legalization advocacy group ranked President Obama No. 1 on its list of the Top 50 Most Influential Marijuana Consumers.

The Marijuana Policy Project (MPP) released the list to “identify individuals who have used marijuana and achieved high levels of success or influence.”

The president wrote about marijuana and cocaine use in his first book, Dreams From My Father.

{mosads}“When I was a kid, I inhaled,” Obama said on the campaign trail in 2008. “That was the point.”

Coming in second as a group are a number of 2016 presidential candidates, including former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

“I drank alcohol and I smoked marijuana when I was at Andover,” Bush said earlier this year.

“When [Cruz] was a teenager, he foolishly experimented with marijuana,” a spokesman for the Texas senator told The Daily Mail in February. “It was a mistake, and he’s never tried it since.”

“Let’s just say I wasn’t a choir boy when I was in college and that I can recognize that kids make mistakes, and I can say that I made mistakes when I was a kid,” Paul said in late 2014, responding to a question about whether he ever consumed marijuana.

“If I tell you that I haven’t, you won’t believe me,” Rubio said in early 2014.

“I smoked marijuana twice — didn’t quite work for me,” Sanders said earlier this year. “It’s not my thing, but it is the thing of a whole lot of people.”

Former President Bill Clinton is listed at No. 4.

“When I was in England, I experimented with marijuana a time or two,” he said in 1992.

Secretary of State John Kerry comes in fifth on the list, with Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in seventh. Former President George W. Bush ranks 18th.

“We hope this list will make people question some of the anti-marijuana propaganda they’ve been hearing for so long,” MPP director of communications Mason Tvert told the Washington Examiner on Wednesday.

“The only thing that makes marijuana consumers more likely to become ‘losers’ are the legal penalties they face just for using it,” he said.

Other notable figures on the list are comedian Stephen Colbert, talk show host Oprah Winfrey and hip-hop mogul Jay Z.

The MPP notes the list is not meant to connote support for marijuana policy reform — only that the subjects consumed pot at least once.

The group has backed a number of ballot measures and state legislative initiatives to legalize marijuana.

Tags Barack Obama Jeb Bush Marijuana Policy Project Rand Paul