CENTER TWP. — Former New Galilee Police Chief Tim Kay spent his life in law enforcement, but on Sunday he was one of many people who spoke out in support of legalizing recreational marijuana in Pennsylvania during a stop by Lt. Gov. John Fetterman on the Penn State-Beaver campus.

Kay, an Ambridge resident, told Fetterman that his main concern about legalizing cannabis is how it will be regulated and kept from minors. “A lot of these young ones are young and stupid,” he said. “They don’t think it out.”

The former chief also said that he has known children he’s coached in Little League who have obtained marijuana as adults for their seriously ill parents. Pennsylvania began offering medical marijuana just last year.

After the hourlong listening session, Kay, who was among about 90 people in the auditorium, said alcohol causes more problems than marijuana use and prohibiting cannabis only makes it more attractive to children.

“You can’t ban it,” Kay said. “That’s when they want to smoke it more.”

Kay was in the overwhelming majority of the 34 people who shared verbal comments on Sunday during Fetterman’s latest public listening session during a tour that will take him to every Pennsylvania county. In a Franklin & Marshall College poll released last week, 59 percent of registered voters said they supported legalizing marijuana in Pennsylvania.

Online comments are also being accepted, and written comments can be submitted at Fetterman’s sessions. “Our goal with this is transparency,” Fetterman said. “One-hundred percent transparency.”

All comments are reviewed and documented, the lieutenant governor added. “We really want to understand where Pennsylvanians are at,” he said, offering that 25,000 comments have been submitted online so far.

While most urged the state to legalize and tax marijuana, some told Fetterman they opposed that idea, pointing to the drug’s effect on young people’s brains to it being a “gateway drug” to harder ones, such as cocaine and opioids.

Beaver County District Attorney David Lozier said he would like to see Pennsylvania study the impact of legalization in other states that have already done it before trying it here. One point that Lozier tried to make about the high potency of today’s street marijuana humorously backfired on him, though, when people began cheering and clapping at his observation.

“I can see, maybe, a medicinal benefit,” Lozier said with a laugh.

La Roche University professor Nancy Wehrheim, a McCandless Township resident, is adamantly opposed to legalizing marijuana, she said, claiming she’s seen negative effects on her students after just a month of use.

“Their ability to do work is highly diminished, and a lot of them fail,” she said.

“I don’t see any benefit that will result from legalizing it,” said the Rev. Ben Wright, a Beaver resident, who offered that cannabis is “spiritually addictive” and detrimental to users’ lives.

But, most of those speaking shared the views of an unidentified woman who said she’s worked as a nurse for 45 years and been assaulted by many drunk patients, but never one who used marijuana. “Marijuana slows you down. You walk slower. You talk slower,” she said, “and you cannot OD on it.”

Marijuana, she said, should simply be treated like guns or prescription painkillers. “Everything should be childproof, it’s dangerous,” she said.

Others in support said legal marijuana can help offset the state’s budget issues, help those with medical or psychological issues who might not qualify for medical marijuana and allow police to focus on more serious crimes.

Several people suggested that if marijuana is legalized in Pennsylvania, then inmates serving time for possessing it should be given amnesty and have their records expunged. A few speakers said marijuana laws have unduly affected black males more than other residents.

After the meeting, Fetterman said he appreciated the consideration people gave to the speakers they might disagree with. “Everyone’s so civil,” he said. “The comments are uniformly thoughtful.”

Fetterman said the speakers “shatter the stereotypes” many have about those for or against legal marijuana. “You hear something new every time,” he said.

His tour will be wrapping up in mid-May in Philadelphia, Fetterman said, and there will likely be stops in Pittsburgh and Allegheny County in April.