In the second season of a Netflix series called “Bill Nye Saves the World,” Bill Nye the famous mechanical engineer will be focusing on marijuana in an episode.
Nye will return to Netflix on Friday December 29th for season two of his Emmy-nominated show.
There will be 12 episodes in the second season revolved around specific topics and special guests. He will be visiting a medical cannabis retailer in one episode and will discuss cannabis policy with director Kevin Smith who is a marijuana advocate.
In an interview with the Chronicle, Nye spoke about the season two debut and about the marijuana focus.
The media publication asked Nye, “What did you learn taping the cannabis episode?”
He responded, “I didn’t really know what “Schedule 1’” meant … I also didn’t really know the history of marijuana becoming Schedule 1, and I didn’t really know how the medical profession feels about marijuana.”
The Chronicle also said, “Dr. Sanjay Gupta and former U.S. Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders have said that cannabis science has been systematically politicized and institutionally misrepresented. Given what you’ve learned, what do you think?”
Nye responded, “Oh yeah, marijuana was made Schedule 1 to oppress or suppress poor people. That’s pretty well-documented. That was certainly, in the last 40 years, the intent. But in George Washington’s time, it was used as legal tender. You would buy and sell the marijuana species as the reefer of the realm. So things changed for economic reasons mostly.”
When asked if he has any personal experience with cannabis growing up, Nye remarked, “I smoked it once, and I didn’t get high. I haven’t learned to smoke anything very well. … I just was too uptight to have anything happen.
When asked about the Kevin Smith panel, he said, “Kevin Smith tells his daughter that she’s only going to smoke with him and the weed that he buys. I don’t know if that’s good or bad, it’s just certainly a well-intending father. … This ones going to be like the sexuality episode from the last season: Everybody is going to be talking about it.”
Nye concluded that “we need to study it [marijuana] more. It’s not well-understood. We’re passing laws or not passing laws because of presumptions and assumptions about marijuana — some of which have just got to be wrong.”
