Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Party nominee for president, predicted Thursday that marijuana will be legal nationwide within the next four years.

Johnson, the former governor of New Mexico, said he thinks that pot legalization will be approved by voters in Washington and Colorado this fall, helping to spur other states to follow suit.

"We are a tipping point here on this issue," Johnson said in an interview during a visit to the Seattle area as part of his longshot campaign.

Johnson, who unsuccessfully pushed for marijuana legalization as governor of New Mexico a decade ago, has admitted to smoking pot as recently as 2008, when he was recovering from a paragliding crash.

He said, "The world will be a better place" when it is legal, because "police will go out and fight real crime, court dockets won't get as filled up, and maybe we can reduce the highest incarceration rate in the world."

Recent polling has offered varying pictures of the prospects of Initiative 502, which would legalize and tax the sale of marijuana in Washington.

An Elway Poll released last week found that 46 percent of registered voters supported the measure, while 44 percent opposed it. But a KING-TV/SurveyUSA poll released days earlier found the measure with 55 percent support versus 32 percent against.

One thing is clear: The initiative has a better chance of passing than Johnson has of becoming president. His campaign has only raised about $1 million President Obama and his Republican rival Mitt Romney have each raised about $300 million and he isn't being included in most polling.

But Johnson, who touts himself as the only third-party candidate who will appear on the ballot in all 50 states, is likely to play a role in November by taking away votes from the major candidates.

The Obama campaign in particular is hoping Johnson will siphon off votes from Romney, The Associated Press reported earlier this week. According to The AP, the campaign figures Johnson will appeal to Republican voters, in part because he ran for governor of New Mexico as a Republican and sought the GOP presidential nomination before running as a Libertarian.

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Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson predicts pot will be legal by 2016