* Lots and lots of words, but Chris Kennedy seems to be learning a little as the campaign moves ahead…

AUDIENCE MEMBER: My question is, would you legalize marijuana so this state would not go down the drain like all the others? Like [inaudible]

KENNEDY: I would do this. I would follow the advice of scientists and doctors. If the scientists and doctors and the recovery community said, ‘you should not do that because you’ll create a public health hazard,’ I wouldn’t legalize marijuana simply to get us out of a budget mess, I would tax the rich people who can do that. We don’t need to do that. But I would defer to science, I don’t think it should be a politician that makes that decision.

And we should, within six months of the next governor’s term, we should charge the University of Illinois with reviewing all of the studies that have been done and decide whether it should be legalized or not and how to legalize it. I talked to the governor of Colorado last Friday. So, he said, ‘Look we legalized it, but we didn’t know it would come as gummy bears.’ So, a bunch of kids ate gummy bears and ended up at the children’s hospital in Denver. Because we didn’t know that they should come in a medical container with a screw top lid that only an adult should open. So, they had to go back and re-regulate.’ Then he said the THC, which is the chemical in there, the THC is much stronger than it was when – I was familiar with the topic back in the 80’s, so it’s like 10 times stronger. There’s no regulation in Colorado, at least the way he said it, that regulates how much THC can be administered in one dose. Which means that for the first time in history, like in 10,000 years of human history, people can overdose from marijuana. You’re saying no you can’t –

AUDIENCE MEMBER: – Well, alcohol. You can overdose with alcohol.

KENNEDY: We should defer to science, and what we should say is, OK what do the rules look like? What would be good? Is it OK? Is it like liquor? If it’s like booze, they say it’s not a public health hazard, let’s do it. But let’s make sure we’ve got the right container, let’s make sure that we don’t have a dose that’s too high. Let’s learn from what other states have done. That’s what I say.

The thing is in America, this is interesting, the Republicans in the Senate and in the House, have stopped the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health from studying this question. There’s no study. The federal government is prevented from studying whether or not we should legalize marijuana. That’s like crazy, because politicians got involved where they should have differed to the scientists. In the state of Illinois we regulated medical marijuana. The doctors said, ‘oh no we should use it for many diseases.’ And they said ‘No, no, no, just a few,’ because the politicians substituted their own judgement for doctors and scientists. That’s ridiculous, we should defer to doctors, you should defer to science, there is truth and we should respect it. Let them decide and then we’ll do whatever they decide.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: I feel that God gave us this beautiful plant. Why does there have to be so much regulation?

KENNEDY: And I think I would just ask a doctor or a scientist that’s all I’m saying. I can’t argue with your point.