President Barack Obama is to signal his approval of a Senate bill that seeks to lessen constrictions around the use of medical marijuana, saying the US should “follow the science as opposed to the ideology” on the issue.

Asked about the bill by CNN’s chief medical correspondent, Sanjay Gupta, in an interview to be broadcast on Sunday at 9pm ET, the president said: “You know, I think I’d have to take a look at the details.

But he added: “I’m on record as saying that not only do I think carefully prescribed medical use of marijuana may in fact be appropriate and we should follow the science as opposed to ideology on this issue, but I’m also on record as saying that the more we treat some of these issues related to drug abuse from a public health model and not just from an incarceration model, the better off we’re going to be.”

This week, a California judge declined to remove marijuana from the federal list of the most dangerous drugs. Changing social attitudes, however, have led to its legalisation for recreational use in Oregon, Colorado, Washington state, Alaska and the District of Columbia and for medicinal use in those states and 19 others.

In a recent poll from the Pew Research Center, 53% of respondents approved of the legalisation of marijuana. Among millennials, defined as those aged between 18 and 34, support for legalisation was at 68%.

The Senate bill, known as the Carers Act, which was introduced last month by the Democrats Cory Booker and Kirsten Gillibrand and the Republican Rand Paul, seeks to allow patients to use medical marijuana without fear of federal law and to open the banking system to marijuana dispensaries.

Paul, a declared GOP candidate for president in 2016, lines up with many liberals in seeing laws relating to marijuana as part of a wider criminal justice problem that contributes to a huge and racially skewed prison population.

Obama’s receptiveness to marijuana policy reform has long been evident. He has admitted to using the drug in his youth – writing about using marijuana and cocaine, saying “I got high, without always thinking about the harm that it could do” – and has said he views marijuana as not being “more dangerous than alcohol”.

In late 2012, after Washington state and Colorado legalised the drug, he said it would not be a priority for federal prosecutors.

Speaking to Gupta, he suggested current policies on tobacco – as well as car seatbelts – could provide a model for federal policy on marijuana.

“You know, we save tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of lives every single year,” he said. “We didn’t throw anybody in jail; we just made sure that they were well-informed and if somebody has an addiction, we made sure that we made it easy for them to get help.

“And I think we need to re-emphasize that approach [for marijuana], because we don’t want to encourage our kids to engage in drug use, but there are going to be more effective ways than, too often, the approach we’re taking today.”

Booker, the former mayor of Newark, New Jersey, also spoke to Gupta. He said: “We now have had three presidents that have admitted to smoking marijuana. ”

“People that are in public office all throughout the Senate have said: ‘Hey, I’ve smoked marijuana recreationally.’ How much of a hypocrite do you have to be to say that I broke American laws using pot as a recreational thing and that I’m not going to support this idea that as a medicine for severely sick people, that they shouldn’t be able to access this drug?”

 

Marco Rubio, the Florida senator who this week declared his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, on Sunday said he did not “believe same-sex marriage is a constitutional right”.

Rubio said instead that the issue should be decided at the state level, although he did concede that “sexual preference is something that people are born with”.

Same-sex marriage is now legal in 37 US states – including Florida – and the District of Columbia, a situation reached after the supreme court struck down the Defense of Marriage Act (Doma) in 2013. The issue remains contentious in many southern states, but a final supreme court decision on its constitutionality is expected this month.

“It’s not that I’m against gay marriage,” Rubio said in a CBS interview taped in New Hampshire, the early voting state to which Republican candidates flocked this weekend. “I believe the definition of the institution of marriage should be between one man and one woman.

“States have always regulated marriage. And if a state wants to have a different definition, you should petition the state legislature and have a political debate. I don’t think courts should be making that decision.”

“I don’t believe same-sex marriage is a constitutional right. I also don’t believe that your sexual preferences are a choice for the vast and enormous majority of people. In fact … I believe that sexual preference is something that people are born with.”

Before and after his declaration of his presidential candidacy, Rubio’s views on a number of nationally contested issues have come under close scrutiny. Though he acknowledges the existence of climate change – in contrast to many other prominent Republicans – he has said that he does not believe it is caused by humans.

The son of Cuban immigrants was also asked about immigration, another issue on which Republican feelings run high. In 2013 he was one of the sponsors of a comprehensive reform bill. Many critics have suggested he dropped the issue after the bill’s failure to pass through Congress.

Rubio told CBS host Bob Schieffer he no longer believed such an approach could work, and instead outlined a number of steps he said would have to be taken – on issues such as border security – before undocumented immigrants in the US could achieve citizenship.

“We understand that we have to deal with 12 million human beings that are in this country, that have been here for longer than a decade,” he said. “We know we have to deal with this. We are not prepared to deal with it until first you can prove to us this will never happen again.”

Asked about his position in a crowded Republican field – potentially featuring as many as 19 candidates for the nomination – Rubio said he was uniquely qualified having served at local, state and national levels.

Repeating familiar attack lines heard across the field in Nashua, New Hampshire, on Friday and Saturday, he also said Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton would offer the country “another four years of Barack Obama”, and her record on foreign policy had been “a disaster for America”.

At his campaign launch on Tuesday, Rubio played heavily on his youth as compared with Clinton’s age, which is 67. In response to scepticism surrounding his experience, as he runs for the White House after less than one full term on Capitol Hill, the 43-year-old told CBS: “The presidency’s a big job and I’m prepared for that.”

 

Florida U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio offered a measure of support for President Obama’s first executive amnesty program, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, during a recent interview he conducted in Spanish this week with Univision’s Jorge Ramos.

Rubio’s comments mark a reversal of sorts from criticism he offered of DACA last year, and they also put him at odds with the conservative Republican base, which he will need in his corner if he hopes to win the 2016 GOP presidential nomination.

“I believe DACA is important,” Rubio told Ramos in the interview, which was posted online and translated by Grabien. “It can’t be terminated from one moment to the next, because there are already people benefiting from it.”

Rubio did say that he believes DACA, which Obama announced in 2012 and granted amnesty to so-called DREAMers, should end, but only after immigration reform is passed.

“Well, at some point it is going to have to end, that is to say, it can’t continue being the permanent policy of the United States,” said Rubio, who conducted two interviews with Ramos: one in Spanish and the other in English. Ramos did not ask Rubio about DACA or immigration for the English-language discussion.

“I believe, if I become President, it is going to be possible to achieve immigration reform,” Rubio told Ramos in Spanish.

That rationale is similar to what Obama has used to defend his implementation of DACA and his more recent executive amnesty program, Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents. Obama has repeatedly said that he acted unilaterally because Congress failed “to put a bill on my desk.”

Critics of Obama’s two amnesty pushes argue that his actions were illegal and unconstitutional.

Rubio’s comments to Ramos on DACA are much softer than statements he made last July during the height of the flood of Central American unaccompanied minors.

“Furthermore, because the recent wave from Central America spiked after DACA was announced, it is in our interest to wind down this program,” Rubio said in a statement released on July 24. “If you are not currently in it, you should not be eligible for it.”

“For President Obama to raise hopes it may actually be unilaterally expanded is irresponsible and threatens to make this problem even worse,” Rubio stated then.

Immigration will likely prove to be Rubio’s biggest hurdle in winning the GOP presidential nomination. He and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush are the two Republican hopefuls whose views on immigration reform are seen as most out of step with the conservative Republican base.

Rubio came under heavy criticism for his involvement in 2013’s so-called “Gang of Eight” immigration reform proposal. If it had passed, the measure would have provided a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants as well as work visa options.