Bill Nye is calling for more research into medical marijuana and thinks legalization can save money.
Bill Nye, like many in the scientific community, is hoping for more research on medical marijuana. But with marijuana being classified a Schedule I narcotic by the federal government, proper research has been severely delayed.
“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,” Nye told NowThis. “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.”
But Nye seems to be approaching the situation from an objective angle. He does not even use marijuana.
“I don’t like the smell. I just don’t like it,” he said. “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.”
While living in Washington state he noticed the benefits of legalization firsthand.
“I lived in Washington State for a long time, and Washington State legalized it in 2012. We legalized marijuana, we tax it,” Nye said. “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.”
Like Nye, world-renown physicist Neil deGrasse Tyson has also come out in support of legalizing marijuana recently.
“If you really analyze it,” Tyson said, “relative to other things that are legal, there’s no reason for it to ever have been made illegal in the system of laws.”
Both men have cited Carl Sagan as an inspiration. Sagan was known for his support of marijuana.
“The illegality of cannabis is outrageous,” Sagan wrote in the 1971 book “Marihuana Reconsidered.” “An impediment to full utilization of a drug which helps produce the serenity and insight, sensitivity and fellowship so desperately needed in this increasingly mad and dangerous world.”
