What Was Obama Thinking?

When Barack Obama made the statement last week, "Smoking marijuana is no different than smoking cigarettes" what was he thinking? I would believe that any other person would be taken to task for uttering this sentence. Marijuana has never entered my system. I've never used cocaine or heroine. I am, however, a tobacco addict and I hate it. For the last three years I've kept a tobacco pouch between my cheek and gums. Every day I have two cigarettes with my morning coffee and I hate it, so, beginning a week ago, I stopped with the cigarette thing. I did toy with the idea of the E cigarettes but that's just a substitute for everything nicotine. I'm in the process of weaning myself from nicotine because I'm at that point in life that I am sick and tired of the addiction. My only thought right now is I'm not putting pure crap in my lungs and that in itself is a victory.
So, I'm asking once again, what was Obama thinking? Doctors and health specialists have come out of the woodwork since he uttered his now famous words on marijuana saying he doesn't know what he's talking about. "Barry, marijuana goes into the lungs just as does the carcinogens from tobacco" and from what I've read marijuana is much more powerful in hallucinogens than it was whenever you stopped inhaling(If you have).
Then, I started remembering words from Mr. Obama's bio. It tells tons about this guy in the White House:

"Obama, by all accounts, was a habitual drug user in high school. He tried cocaine, he admits in Dreams From My Father; he “tried drugs enthusiastically.” The Chicago Tribune reported back in 2007 that Obama thanked the “Choom Gang” in his high school yearbook; “chooming” was Hawaiian slang for smoking pot. The Honolulu Advertiser reported that Obama’s senior portrait “prominently displayed … A package of ‘Zig-Zag’ rolling papers and a matchbook.” One of Obama’s close friends was arrested for drug possession during high school.


In his memoir, Obama talked about routinely getting high. “Junkie. Pothead,” he wrote. “That’s where I’d been headed: the final, fatal role of the young would-be black man.” But, according to Obama, he only got high because he was contemplating deep matters: drugs could “push questions of who I was out of my mind.”
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2012/05/10/Obama-High-School-Drugs

AS a grandfather I'd be very perplexed if I had a teen-age grandchild came up to me and asked if I'd comment on the President's statement. "Barack, what in God's name were you thinking"?