German Lopez

So what is the middle point?

And he basically makes a point that just because you legalize something does not mean you have to embrace it.

I don't mean just legal, I mean culturally too.

So how do we balance these things?

We already see this with tobacco.

It's legal, but we restrict where people can use it.

We have very high taxes on it.

Same thing with alcohol.

It's restricted.

You can't drink and drive.

It has relatively higher taxes, although I would say the taxes aren't high enough on alcohol.

And then there's limitations on even where you can drink, right?

And in a lot of places, you cannot have an open container.

So with marijuana, we've really gone in a direction where the taxes are relatively low and the regulations are not as strict as I think a lot of initial proponents were thinking.

And yeah, so we've kind of moved below that grudging toleration line, which, yes, it's a funny phrase, but it basically gets at that idea of like, look, you can tolerate something, you can make it legal, but you don't really have to think it should be a part of everyday life.

I would say that

People should step back and think about how medicine is supposed to work in the United States.

So it is supposed to go through this regulatory process with the federal agencies involved, and it says yes or no, whether a drug passes both safety and efficacy measures, and there's lots of rigorous testing involved.

That has not happened at all with what's being sold in medical marijuana dispensaries, because what's happened instead is state voters have said,

And sometimes state legislators as well have approved these initiatives where they say you can just sell marijuana at a dispensary and claim it provides X, Y, Z medical use really without any evidence.