President Barack Obama said that young Americans have a lot more to be worried about than whether they can legally use marijuana compared to other more severe issues like war, climate change and the economy.

"Young people, I understand this is important to you, but you should be thinking about climate change, the economy, war and peace," said the president during his interview with VICE founder Shane Smith, which was published on Monday at precisely 4:20 p.m. EDT, reports Time. "Maybe way at the bottom you should be thinking about marijuana."

According to Smith, the legalization of marijuana would be a key part of the President's legacy for the millennial generation. However, that did little to sway Obama into making a declaration to legalize weed on the federal level. Instead, he talked about taking progressive steps to decriminalize the plant in order to reduce the amount of Black and brown people being jailed for non-violent drug violations.

"But I always say, folks ... legalization or decriminalization is not a panacea - do you feel the same way about meth? Do we feel the same way about coke, how about crack, how about heroin?" he said. "There is ... concern about the overall effects this has on society and particularly vulnerable parts of our society."

Last month, Obama also stated that he opposes marijuana legalization, but encouraged states to decriminalize it and treat it like tobacco during an interview with Kansas City news station KMBC.

According to him, states could overhaul laws banning marijuana and then discourage the use of pot the same way "we've been able to discourage a lot of other bad things that people do," like tobacco.

"I think that we have to separate out legalization -- there's a lot of concern about drug abuse of any sort by our children and the general population -- versus the heavy criminalization of non-violent drug offenses," Obama said. "And I think that a lot of states are taking a look to see, do we have proportionality in terms of how we are penalizing the recreational user."

Watch Obama's interview with Vice below.