When asked about legalizing marijuana, Eric Hovde responded: “You know what? I’m opposed to it as well."

“What about legalizing marijuana?” A member of the audience asks Hovde. “I’m opposed to that because I think it’s a gateway, but …”

Hovde responds: “You know what? I’m opposed to it as well, and where I am on it is this: I get the argument that marijuana is a lot less harmful than any other drug — including, arguably, alcohol — and that kids [might] try marijuana because it’s illegal, and think ‘Oh, I handled that, so I can try something harder.’ So, I get that argument from people that are pro-marijuana. … The easier solution would [be] to just decriminalize it. Don’t make it a commercial enterprise. 

“I’m a libertarian in most cases — not when it comes to drugs,” he continues. “But if somebody says, ‘OK, for medical reasons or whatever, I want to grow a plant, I want to smoke it.’ Fine. But why do we want to commercialize marijuana? I don’t get that. It’s just another thing that society is going to have to bear the consequences and costs of.”

Hovde went on to suggest that cannabis should not be made into a business — adding that alcohol should never have been commercialized, either.  

Opposed

“So, if we just decriminalize [marijuana]? Fine. Nobody’s going to go to jail. No one’s going to get arrested for it. That’s your self-determination, but you’re not going to turn it into an enterprise. Frankly, it should have happened with alcohol,” Hovde says in the audio. “I mean look at — alcohol has a lot of negative byproducts. If somebody wanted to distill it, drink it. Fine, go ahead. But, sadly, as we know, it’s produced a lot of negative byproducts as a part of society. I don’t think adding more negative byproducts to society is a healthy thing. And saying that, I think the cat’s out of the — or, the horse is out of the barn, and it’s going to be hard to put back.” source

“I’m a libertarian in most cases — not when it comes to drugs,” he continues. “But if somebody says, ‘OK, for medical reasons or whatever, I want to grow a plant, I want to smoke it.’