Bill Nye, colloquially titled “The Science Guy,” said in a NowThisinterview that he welcomes the societal benefits of legalization, though he isn’t a fan of using the drug himself.
“I lived in Washington State for a long time, and Washington State legalized it in 2012. We legalized marijuana, we tax it,” Bill Nye told NowThis. “We have a lot of tax revenue. It’s no longer criminalized. We don’t spend money on the police department. We spend money regulating the industry in the same way we regulate other substances.”
He wants law enforcement and the legislative community to look at marijuana the way the medical community does.
“What’s happened with marijuana is it’s a Schedule I drug, which means it’s presumed to be addictive and it’s presumed to have no medical value. Yet people are using it for all these medical applications,” he reasoned. “So well, let’s study it. Well, you’re not allowed to study it because it’s a Schedule I drug… So that has to be sorted out.”
Nye isn’t throwing his hat into the legalization ring because he likes the stuff, but rather as a long-time proponent of evidence-backed legislation—once being involved in a spat with Sarah Palin over climate change.
In fact, he backs legalization despite really not liking pot at all. “I gotta tell you guys, I love you all, but I don’t like the smell. I just don’t like it,” he admitted. “One time in college I tried it, and I’m not good at smoking. I didn’t put in the hours to get good at smoking. But you guys… knock yourselves out.”
In his experience, high people aren’t much fun. “When I played ultimate frisbee very seriously, these guys I would play with would get high and they sucked when they were high,” he recalled.
His words are in line with fellow science communicator Neil deGrasse Tyson and their mutual mentor, Carl Sagan.
“If you really analyze it, relative to other things that are legal, there’s no reason for it to ever have been made illegal in the system of laws,” deGrasse Tyson said in a StarTalk interview. “Alcohol is legal and it can mess you up way more than smoking a few j's.”