Watch: Colorado gov gets candid on cannabis with Katie Couric
Yahoo Global News anchorKatie Couric gave Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper quite the introduction during a sit-down interview Monday in New York City.
John Hickenlooper has shoplifted, smoked pot, been a geologist, a brewer, a mayor and a governor
Hickenlooper is making the rounds on a two-day press trip to promote his new memoir The Opposite of Woe: My Life in Beer and Politics, which hits bookstores today. Couric mentioned some of the amusing TMI tidbits scattered throughout its 344 pages and pressed Hickenlooper on his marijuana views.
Since their meeting in 2014 at the Aspen Ideas Festival, Hickenlooper has softened some of his skeptical views on marijuana legalizationin Colorado.
At the time you opposed it, you even called it reckless, Couric starts. What were you most worried about initially, and have your concerns been allayed?
He counts off a couple of things: being in conflict with federal law (still dont like that) and continued concerns about how THC affects adolescent brain development.
Hickenlooper says: We havent seen the big spike that I was worried about seeing of teenagers at greater frequency smoking. Now weve seen a little bit of an uptick, thats why I keep telling other governors to hold off a couple of years just to see if there are unintended consequences and whether we can handle them.
Couric counters: Well, there has been an uptick in kids ingesting edible marijuanahospitalizations in general are way up from marijuana use, so do you still have some reservations?
Hickenlooper repeats his magic wand motto about reversing the vote with a moment of reflection:
But now, Im not sure Id reverse the vote. But, I think weve made real progress. And there might be a way to have a better system come out of this. I am not as negative as I was. I am cautiously optimistic, like we might actually do this. This is going to be one of the biggest experiments of the 21st century.
Couric does her duty in asking at the end ...
