Julian Castro Yucks it Up About Weed with Don Lemon and a Guy Whose Literal Name is Stone

Former HUD Secretary and current Democratic presidential candidate Julian Castro shared a light moment while answering a town hall question about legalizing recreational marijuana from an audience member named… Aaron Stone.

At Thursday night’s CNN town hall, the news outlet temporarily became the Cannabis News Network when moderator Don Lemon introduced Stone, “a special education teacher here in Washington.”

Stone began by giving a shout-out to “my DCI Dragons,” then told Castro “So at the end of the day some of us like to decompress, whether it’s listening to music, bingeing on Netflix, or smoking marijuana.”

As a panicked Castro tried to remember if he favors legalizing Netflix (probably), Stone asked “What is your position on legalizing not only medical marijuana, but recreational use for adults?”

“Not to go unnoticed, his last name is Stone,” Lemon noted, to laughter from Castro and the audience.

“It’s all right, man, look, your last name is Stone, I won’t assume you’re a stoner,” Castro joked. “My last name is Castro, don’t assume I’m a dictator.”

A suddenly paranoid Stone (probably) thought to himself “Wait, isn’t that EXACTLY what a dictator would say?” as Castro (probably) wished his twin brother Joaquin was there to really freak these guys out.

But then, everyone’s mellow got harshed when Castro said he supports the legalization of marijuana, and reminded the audience of all the people who have been thrown in jail over it.

“We need to go back and expunge the records of people who were imprisoned because of using marijuana,” Castro said. “And this is important. This part is important, in part, because there are a lot of people, and folks in this audience probably know some of them, who have served jail time, right, and disproportionately it’s impacted communities of color and poor neighborhoods of people who have been imprisoned because of marijuana use.”

“It’s not enough just to say we want to legalize it,” he said. “We actually want to go back and expunge these records.”

Watch the clip above and chill, via CNN.

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