For two decades, Rick Steves has guided viewers through capital cities all over Europe, helping them find the best sites to see and the best food to taste. But when he traveled to the U.S. Capitol this week, it wasn’t to check out the marble — it was to explain why legalizing weed is about more than getting high.

Steves was in D.C. as a guest of Rep. Earl Blumenauer, who first met the roving television star in 2014 when they teamed up for a marijuana legalization fight in the congressman’s home state of Oregon.

“I’ve been a fan of his work for years,” Blumenauer says.

When people think of legalization, “they see some scary guy with dreadlocks and, you know, all sorts of head garb, and playing a didgeridoo, not working like mom and dad want him to work,” Steves says. “And people say, ‘I don’t want one big hemp fest for my future.’”