OH, FOR the days when a president of the United States only admitted to trying marijuana in his youth, claimed he didn’t like it, and said, famously or infamously, that he didn’t inhale.

This current president’s comments to the New Yorker the other day about marijuana have been, well, selectively edited by some of our friends on the starboard side of the media. But the president shouldn’t have his words changed. Not at all. What he said was confused enough, irrelevant enough, unhelpful and even harmful enough. Just quote him, folks. No need for embellishment.

For example, when asked by a reporter for the New Yorker what he thought about legalizing marijuana, the president started meandering off in this direction:

“As has been well documented, I smoked pot as a kid, and I view it as a bad habit and a vice, not very different from the cigarettes that I smoked as a young person up through a big chunk of my adult life. I don’t think it is more dangerous than alcohol.”

Huh? Not very different from cigarettes? (Sigh.) So when Joey gets busted with weed, he can always shake his finger at his parents: Didn’t you hear the president? You two smoke Marlboros!

The president’s words don’t seem to jibe with those out of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, which says the drug in marijuana can affect memory, thinking, coordination and sensory and time perception. To quote the institute’s website: “Marijuana overactivates the endocannabinoid system, causing the high and other effects that users experience. These include distorted perceptions, impaired coordination, difficulty with thinking and problem solving, and disrupted learning and memory.”

Anybody who’s ever had a cigarette and tried a doobie at a party would probably tell you there’s a marked difference between the two. There’s a reason you go to jail if you’re caught driving while high. Whether on booze or mary jane.

WHEN asked if he thought marijuana was less dangerous than booze (he’d already said he didn’t think it was more), the president said it is less dangerous “in terms of its impact on the individual consumer. It’s not something I encourage, and I’ve told my daughters I think it’s a bad idea, a waste of time, not very healthy.”

Well, at least he’s advising his daughters against smoking pot. As any good dad would. But what was the point of asking the president to compare the risks associated with smoking pot and those of getting drunk on booze? What a dumb question. As if we had to choose one or the other. Can’t both be bad for developing minds? Each drug presents its own risks.

Do we have to legalize marijuana because alcohol is so much an accepted part of society? There’s something missing here, like common sense.

Yes, there are a lot of problems with booze. But the effects of marijuana aren’t negligible, either. Once again, according to those who are supposed to know about such things-the scientists at the NIDA-“in chronic users, marijuana’s adverse impact on learning and memory persists after the acute effects of the drug wear off; when marijuana use begins in adolescence, the effects may persist for many years.”

NIDA calls it a “fact” that marijuana has long-lasting negative effects on young people and their brains. And it claims a “number of studies” have shown a connection between chronic pot smoking and mental illness.

So who are these hotshots at the National Institute on Drug Abuse anyway, and who asked them to chime in?

NIDA is a branch of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, a cabinet-level department in the executive branch of the federal government.

In other words, NIDA is the president’s own people. He should listen to them.

After his comments downplaying the danger of marijuana, the president almost had to devote the obligatory paragraph or two to the other side of the question. On the one hand this, on the other hand that. As an argument, that’s an editorial-writing staple. Unfortunately.

The president did warn about the ol’ Slippery Slope into other drugs. Which was welcome. If only he hadn’t prefaced that warning by needlessly comparing pot with cigarettes, booze and so on, then his comments might have done some good.

Just last week the papers in Arkansas ran with a story about some teens in Northwest Arkansas who have banded together, like so many teens in other parts of the state and country, to help prevent drug abuse by their friends. They’re out to combat the permissive attitudes these days about dangerous drugs. And one of their focus points is pot.

Then the president of the United States spoke. He didn’t help much. Maybe his people should give him a little talk. The way he did his girls.

ANY half-mystified, half-appalled observer of this “debate” between defenders of different toxins has to ask why either the New Yorker’s politics or this president’s can be taken seriously. Both seem lost in a mire of juvenile disputatiousness over an abstract choice that doesn’t matter in actual practice. Choose your poison: Weed or whiskey?

Yet this exchange does reveal, however unintentionally, what’s wrong with American politics today: Both sides are asking questions that don’t really matter, that don’t really go to the heart of the issue, let alone contribute to a solution.

It seems to be happening with unsettling regularity: Voluminous bills are passed in Congress without their being read, let alone understood (see Obamacare), and only later must real people deal with their real consequences. That’s when the waivers begin to flow like a Mississippi of rules, regs, exceptions and general confusions.

Maybe we’re short of answers these days because we’re not asking the right questions. Marijuana or alcohol? Why not arsenic or strychnine? Is this the level of discussion we want to foster in the American dialogue?

What’s wrong with that false choice? Mainly its irrelevance disguised as sophistication. Much like one of the New Yorker’s editorials or the president’s speeches, both of which can be laborious exercises in saying nothing much. Both specimens of today’s rhetoric seem just another irrelevance presented in the guise of moderation-even suave sophistication. We’ve certainly come a long way from Lincoln-Douglas-a long way down.

How wrest a glimpse of perception, even insight and unity, from today’s mix of politicking and nitpicking? Let’s begin by talking about the practical effects of policies lightly adopted, or just slipped into in an absence of mind. Let’s begin by watching the results of experiments with the legalization of marijuana in state after state, the better to understand what we’re risking and what if anything we’re gaining.

Let’s begin, as always, with education. And see where it leads. There may be no way to avoid the dangers of either prohibition or permissiveness. But, please, let’s not assume we have to choose between one or the other in some kind of blindfolded taste test, and pretend we’re having a serious discussion.

Editorial, Pages 16 on 01/24/2014