Neil deGrasse Tyson Says Marijuana Should Have Never Been Made Illegal
Famed astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, one of the most well-known scientists in the world, says marijuana should have never been made illegal.
(Photo: Scott Strazzante, The Chronicle).
“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”, Tyson said in response to a Facebook Live question submitted by MassRoots reporter Tom Angell. “Alcohol is legal,” said Tyson, “and it can mess you up way more than smoking a few J’s.”
“That is extremely rational, which I expect from you, and you’re absolutely right,” replied Chuck Nice, who was hosting the interview.
The specific question asked by Angell was whether or not Tyson agrees with cosmologist Carl Sagan, who created the TV show Cosmos, which Tyson recently hosted a reboot of.
“The illegality of cannabis is outrageous,” Sagan wrote in 1971 in the Dr. Lester Grinspoon 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.”