This is a country whose new president has smoked pot. Not just smoked it, he inhaled, too. Got stoned and everything.

At least that's what Barack Obama said in his book, Dreams of My Father. Apparently a little puffsky here and there helped him in his search for racial identity as a young man.

Olympic multi-medal winner Michael Phelps who this week acknowledged "regrettable" behaviour and "bad judgment" after a photo in a British newspaper showed him inhaling from a marijuana pipe. (Mark J. Terrill/Associated Press)

Now, Obama doesn't specify where exactly he smoked dope. But he says he did it when he was a high school and college student, meaning it was likely in Hawaii, where he spent his teenage years, or in California, New York or Massachusetts, where he pursued his higher education.

That means the president is probably safe from retroactive prosecution. Safer, anyway, than Michael Phelps, the Olympic swimming sensation who was photographed with his snout in a big, smoke-filled bong at a university party in South Carolina in November.

Phelps, who can't really use the excuse about searching for his racial identity, has already publicly grovelled and apologized for his actions, but that just made things worse.

Sheriff Leon Lott of South Carolina's Richland County considered that apology "a partial confession" and, when taken together with the incriminating picture, it may well land Phelps in front of a judge.

Checkerboard laws

President Obama, though, is in no such danger. California, New York and Massachusetts are among the 11 U.S. states that have decriminalized pot.

Police in those jurisdictions barely bother with personal marijuana use these days. And while Hawaii hasn't joined that club, it always imposes probation for a first offence.

Being a Harvard-trained lawyer, the president must know about the weird, lopsided legal inequalities here as far as marijuana is concerned, which might explain why he hasn't uttered a public word about Phelps's predicament. This, apparently, is not the kind of change he wants anyone to believe in.

But these inequities are pretty stark. Phelps, says Allen St. Pierre of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, is a "victim of geography."

According to NORML, roughly 115 million Americans now live in jurisdictions where possession of a small amount of marijuana is no longer a criminal offence. Had Phelps hit the bong in, say, Ohio or Mississippi, he'd be in danger of nothing more than a traffic ticket type fine.

Less reefer madness

State governments here are increasingly paying attention to the wishes of voters, the vast majority of whom think possession of marijuana should not be a criminal offence. Four in 10 Americans tell surveys they've smoked up at least once in their lives.

The public stigma of pot is declining, too, given that this country is now run by people who came of age in the 1960s and '70s.

Along with Obama, the list of prominent admitted pot-smokers in the U.S. includes: former vice-president Al Gore, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, former congressman and right-wing icon Newt Gingrich, and former Democratic presidential nominee Howard Dean.

Bill Clinton, of course, toked but claimed he didn't inhale. And given George W. Bush's coy tap-dancing around the subject of his cocaine use back in university, chances are he fired up the odd joint then, too, during his frat days.

Still, as St. Pierre puts it, "where this subject is concerned, there is still no good reason to be honest."

That is because, while state governments might be relaxing their rules, the federal enforcement system, now ultimately headed by Barack Obama, remains rigidly, implacably, militantly anti-pot.

Beware the feds

Federal agencies, which wield enormous power here, dismiss state marijuana laws as irrelevant. Even laws allowing for medical marijuana use.

"It's Orwellian, Kafkaesque," says St. Pierre, who clearly relishes the chance to hold forth on the subject.

"There are some people who might well be a bona fide medical marijuana patient in a state," says St. Pierre, but if they wind up in the sights of a federal agent, "they're going to face federal charges, and they do."

Then there's the border. At the border, you can be penalized not just for possessing dope, but for having talked about possessing dope.

Crossing into the States, Google can be your enemy. U.S. customs agents have computers and often do searches to try to find if someone entering the U.S. has had what they call "a primary relationship with cannabis," St. Pierre says. Even if they have never been arrested for it and don't possess it, they can still be denied entry.

Canadian travellers

Canadian travellers need to understand this: fessing up anytime, anywhere, can mean a permanent ban from the United States.

And it happens. Last March's edition of the West Kootenay Contact, the newsletter of that region's chapter of the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada, carried the story of Karyn, a 54-year-old B.C. woman who suffers from the disease and had a problem at the border. I spoke to her by phone.

On a trip to Spokane, Wash., to drop her son off for a flight to Florida, she was asked by a U.S. customs agent at the Nelway border crossing if she'd ever smoked marijuana.

Being a rule-obeying Canadian, she said yes, she had, as treatment for her painful leg spasms, and produced her medical permit, issued by Health Canada. She is one of the 2,812 people to whom Canada has granted official permission to use medical marijuana.

"I was truthful in all ways," she told me. "I had cards in my possession that identified me as a licensed user, and I didn't want to be caught lying."

The border agent, she said, examined her federal permit, photocopied it and then informed her she was being barred from the U.S. for being an "admitted drug user."

She says she was fingerprinted, forced to pose for mug shots, "and warned that if I attempt to enter the U.S. again, I will be heavily fined and any vehicle I'm in will be confiscated.

"It was horrible. Horrible, horrible horrible."

Enforcing American law

I called U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which confirmed that Karyn's story fit their policy.

It does not matter to them that the Canadian government licenses its citizens and even provides them with government-grown marijuana. As far as the U.S. government is concerned, that just makes Canada a big, official dope dealer.

"A Canadian licence isn't valid under U.S. law," said the Customs and Border Protection official who returned my call.

Yes, he said, it might sound unfair, and yes, he knows about the states that have decriminalized: "That's state law. We apply federal law."

So I called Health Canada in Ottawa and asked spokesman Philippe Laroche if the Canadian government tells its citizens that possession of a valid, federally issued medical marijuana licence is grounds for being barred from the United States.

"No one has ever asked that question," he responded.

Canada Customs, incidentally, shares information with its U.S. counterpart and you can definitely be barred from Canada for drug use, too.

Again, though, President Obama shouldn't worry on his trip to Ottawa later this month. Canada Border Services Agency generally only bars people with a drug conviction in their past.

Obama has never been convicted of marijuana use, or for snorting cocaine, something else he's acknowledged doing. And besides, the president will be travelling to Canada later this month on a diplomatic passport. There shouldn't be any problem at all.