“Let me stipulate a couple of things,” Krauthammer said. “Number one, alcohol is a lot worse. I’ve seen what it does as a doctor. It destroys the body — aggression, car accidents, a lot of damage. If I were starting a society from scratch and had to choose the intoxicant, I would outlaw alcohol and I’d allow marijuana. It’s benign compared to alcohol.”

“The problem is this, Bill — you never start society from scratch,” he continued. “Alcohol is ingrained in the culture. We learned that in prohibition. You have to regulate it. And my question is, do we really want to add a second intoxicant onto that? Because, who knows, it leads to other things. Look, marijuana is not the worst thing in the world. There’s a lot worse, there are harder drugs, there is alcoholism, there’s abortion, the crime, a lot of other stuff.”