Drew Carey stumps for medical marijuana

I really like Drew Carey. I don’t find him to be the funniest guy around, but he’s taken what life’s given him and worked with it pretty well. He’s a chubby dork and he works it like no other. He doesn’t pretend to be cooler than he is – I mean when you host “The Price is Right” how cutting edge can you be? Drew has started doing videos for the nonprofit Reason Foundation. His first video was about hellish Los Angeles traffic. Pretty mild topic, most people would agree with what he has to say. His second video? Legalizing medical marijuana. Probably a bit more controversial. I can’t help but wonder what his 73-year-old “Price is Right” viewers would think about that.

Drew Carey has his issues—with the federal government, that is. “I think it’s clear by now that the federal government needs to reclassify marijuana. People who need it should be able to get it—safely and easily,” Carey said, describing the point of “Drew Carey Defends Medical Marijuana,” the second installment of The Drew Carey Project, his ongoing short-form documentary series posted on reason.tv.

In the new video, Carey first stands on a Brentwood—”where O.J. used to live”—street corner and points out all the places, including a pharmacy, a liquor store and Starbucks, where you “can get anything you want to bring you up and down.” The former sitcom star then visits a West Hollywood facility that sells physician-prescribed pot, which is legal in California, to people suffering from a range of debilitating ailments, from chronic back pain to cancer. The video also features interviews with average, gainfully employed, middleclass people who use medical marijuana to ease what ails them, as well as with L.A. County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Steve Whitmore, who says that “dispensaries are low on the priority scale of law enforcement,” in terms of who is partaking of pot within those walls.

“I think it’s clear by now that the federal government needs to reclassify marijuana,” Carey, standing in a gas station parking lot, says in closing. “If that bothers you, it if makes you nervous that people are out there using marijuana to ease their pain, drive down to any old gas station in America like this one, buy yourself a nice, cold brew and pop the top. They really take the edge off.”

[From E! News]

Drew Carey actually makes some pretty good points, in terms of how readily available much more dangerous drugs are. I’m not really going to throw myself into the old medical marijuana debate – we’ve already established that I am adorably naïve and randomly old-fashioned, so we’ll leave it at that. I do generally understand the arguments both sides make. Here’s Drew’s video for the Reason Foundation:

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