Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson is here for legal weed

Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson got real about marijuana during a Facebook Live question session Monday.

The episode of StarTalk with co-host comedian Chuck Nice turned into a conversation about legalizing weed. One viewer asked if Tyson agreed with the late astronomer Carl Sagan that marijuana should be legalized.

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Tyson responded rationally as ever, making the argument that other substances, such as alcohol, are legal, so why not weed.

"If you really analyze it, relative to other things that are legal, there’s no reason for it to ever have been made illegal in the system of laws," he said during the show. "Alcohol is legal and it can mess you up way more than smoking a few Js."

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"Alcohol is legal and it can mess you up way more than smoking a few Js."

His co-host Nice poked fun at him for his pot lingo. "I can tell you've never smoked weed in your life," he chided.

Tyson countered, "The last time I was like in a cloud of it, thats how people spoke."

He then moved on, naturally, to the similarities of inhaling helium and passing a joint before getting back to more space-oriented questions.

The conversation starts around the 11-minute mark in the video above.

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