Political and Civic Advocacy
Steves supports the decriminalization of marijuana among responsible adult users in the USA. According to Steves:
Like most of Europe, I believe marijuana is a soft drug (like alcohol and tobacco), not a hard drug. Like alcohol and tobacco, there is no reason why it shouldn't be taxed and regulated. Crime should only enter the equation if it is abused to the point where innocent people are harmed.
Steves is currently on the Advisory Board of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. He is a co-sponsor of New Approach Washington, an initiative to legalize, tax, and regulate marijuana in Washington State. Steves hosted an ACLU-sponsored educational program broadcast, Marijuana: It's Time for a Conversation.
Steves also supports the homeless. In 2005 he constructed a 24-unit apartment complex in Lynnwood, Washington to serve as transitional housing for homeless mothers and their children. Trinity Way is administrated by the local YWCA. Members of the Edmonds Noontime Rotary Club help maintain the buildings and grounds, providing everything from furniture to flowers. The club also raised $30,000 to build a play structure for the children there.
Steves also raises funds for the hunger advocacy group Bread for the World.
A supporter of the arts, he gave US$1 million in 2011 to the Edmonds Center for the Arts and Cascade Symphony Orchestra.
Steves is an Honorary Council member of NARAL Pro-Choice Washington.
Read more about this topic: Rick Steves
Famous quotes containing the words political and/or civic:
“Almost all scholarly research carries practical and political implications. Better that we should spell these out ourselves than leave that task to people with a vested interest in stressing only some of the implications and falsifying others. The idea that academics should remain “above the fray” only gives ideologues license to misuse our work.”
—Stephanie Coontz (b. 1944)
“It is hereby earnestly proposed that the USA would be much better off if that big, sprawling, incoherent, shapeless, slobbering civic idiot in the family of American communities, the City of Los Angeles, could be declared incompetent and placed in charge of a guardian like any individual mental defective.”
—Westbrook Pegler (1894–1969)