Bob Marley (Sept. ‘76)
Peter Tosh (Sept. ‘76)
Keith Richards (Jan. ‘78)
B.B. King (Nov. ‘78)
Mick Jones (Aug. ‘79)
“Gimme a little toke of that and let’s see where we go. [Inhales deeply] C’mon in, Joe, smoke some of this, we’re going to get high. That’s what it’s all about.”
Jack Herer (Feb. ‘89)
“I didn’t discover marijuana until 1969, when I was 30 years old. At the time, I was a successful businessman and a Nixon supporter. Pot changed my life. I began to hear my own words back to me as judgments. I put on earphones and heard music in color for the first time.”
Joe Strummer (Aug. ‘79)
“The Yipster Times says the Drug Enforcement Administration is trying to make pot like cocaine, trying to freak out everybody with massive crackdowns and paraquat scares, so they could get pot to be a rich man’s drug and thus remove its threat. They’re really scared of dope — other- wise they’d have made it legal, right?”
Keith Stroup (Sept. ‘79)
“It may be only one small toke for mankind, but it takes your breath away if you’re the toker. The decriminalization of drugs is the greatest high of all.”
Mick Jagger (June ‘80)
“Cocaine is a very bad, habit-forming bore. I can’t understand the fashion for it. Sitting and smoking grass is different.”
Stephen King (Jan. ‘81)
“I think that marijuana should not only be legal, I think it should be a cottage industry. It would be wonderful for the state of Maine. There’s some pretty good homegrown dope. I’m sure it would be even better if you could grow it with fertilizers and have greenhouses.”
Frank Zappa (Dec. ‘89)
“Think of it this way — you know where pot comes from, right? It comes from the ground. Did it ever occur to you that designer drugs are not things that just come spring-ing out of the ground? They’re not natural. Some scientist had to build them… Now the guy who’s growing marijuana, or the cocaine rancher in South America, he’s not a scientist. He’s a business-farmer combination.”
Bob Weir (Aug. ‘90)
“If alcohol is legal, I just don’t see why marijuana shouldn’t be. Marijuana is so much less toxic than alcohol, and less habit-forming.”
Jello Biafra (Aug. ‘91)
“You don’t have to smoke pot to realize that the real drug problem is not the drugs, and that we can help solve our drug problem and a hell of a lot of our crime problems, environmental problems and racial problems if we’d all do our patriotic duty as Earth Patriots and GROW MORE POT!”
Rita Marley (Dec. ‘91)
“Herb is something they won’t be able to stop. It’s built into the world — not something that man made, but a God-made thing.”
Tone Loc (May ‘92)
“I’m a grown man, I know how to make choices and this is one I’ve made. I’m a cheeba believer.”
Chris Robinson (July ‘92)
“You’re gonna tell me puttin’ up a nuclear plant in my neighborhood is good for me, but I’m not allowed to smoke weed?”
Redman (Mar. ‘93)
“I treat my music as an individual, you know, as a person, a human life. You gotta puff weed to get really deep like that.”
Shannon Hoon (Aug. ‘93)
Tom Robbins (May ‘94)
Ken Kesey (May ‘94)
“That old 1960s consciousness coming out of the beatnik years is the only path I see that is going to get us out of the mess that we’re in. And our gospel is that joint –That joint won’t lie to you. One joint will give you a different high than another joint, but they’ll be straight with you. Marijuana works.”
George Carlin (Nov. ‘97)
“I don’t think drugs are a problem; I think they’re a symptom. As long as Americans are empty, spiritually, emotionally, morally empty, they will need things like the drugs they choose to use. Mankind has wanted to change the way it felt from the beginning anyway. People want to feel different.”
Woody Harrelson (Nov. ‘00)
“Everybody has their drug. The real hypocrisy of the Drug War is that it’s not simply a War on Drugs. You can go to a drugstore in any city in the nation and you’ll find any drug you want, and they’ll be more addictive and worse for you than grass. And there will be a smiling man there sanctioned by the government who’s allowed to give them to you.”
Marilyn Manson (Feb. ‘01)
“I think I started with hard drugs, and worked my way back to the easier ones… I may qualify as a pot smoker now.”
Kevin Smith (Oct. ‘01)
“There are a lot of people like me who can smoke weed and still get a day’s work done.”
Hunter S. Thompson (May ‘94)
“I have always loved marijuana. It has been a source of joy and comfort to me for many years. And I still think of it as a staple of basic life, along with beer and ice and grapefruits — and millions of Americans agree with me.”
B-Real (March ‘92)
“A 40-ouncer [of malt liquor] can kill you, literally. How can a joint kill you? Not even in the long run. There hasn’t even been one death behind a joint. Compare that to liquor, and liquor’s legal. You could apply the same laws to weed as to cigarettes and liquor.”
David Arquette (June ‘07)
“Legalizing marijuana is such a natural step in getting our head out of our ass and seeing the world for what it is.”
Bob Saget (Sept. ‘08)
“I’ve had a few great experiences with pot that I can’t remember!”
Oliver Stone (Nov. ‘09)
“Marijuana, as well as many other drugs, should be legalized and taxed and regulated by the states. It’s a great source of income. It should be sold like it is in liquor stores, and there should be no social stigma. It’s an insane hypocrisy.”
Alanis Morissette (Jan. ‘10)
“I literally want to write a chart that says things like “Marijuana soothes this particular thing” and “Food soothes that.” We can serve a great purpose if we can get to what’s going on underneath.”
Bryan Cranston (Sept. ‘12)
“Marijuana started out with a bad connotation, as you know — but to me, marijuana is no different than wine. It’s a drug of choice. It’s meant to alter your current state — and that’s not a bad thing. It’s ridiculous that marijuana is still illegal. We’re still fighting for it… There are millions of people who smoke pot on a social basis and don’t become criminals. So stop with that argument — it doesn’t work.”
Roseanne (July ‘13)
“The first time I smoked, I was 17. I was with my sister, and we were sleeping out on our porch. I remember sitting on the porch with my mouth hanging open, looking at a tree and going, “Jesus Christ, is that a tree?” I couldn’t stop staring at it — the complexity of it, the patterning. It opened up my mind to whole other conscious rhythms.”
Melissa Etheridge (Jan. ‘11)
“I was on chemotherapy, and it was horrible. But the pain was alleviated by cannabis. It was awesome … truly. I was able to sit there and really see that health is just balance. Cannabis helps balance. If we had reputable tests done on stress and cannabis and alleviation of pain, doctors would prescribe it all the time — and they should.”
Frances McDormand (May ‘03)
“I’m a recreational pot smoker. Because it’s not a constant in my life, I don’t say it should be made legal so it’s more available. But from a medical point of view… why should [patients] have to look too hard for the thing that makes them better? So from that point of view, it’s like,‘Please, what is the problem?’”
Snoop Dogg (April ‘12)
“I remember going to the High Times photo shoot and getting blessed with a big-ass garbage bag full of dope. It was Chronic when nobody had Chronic. They had bullshit out there then, and High Times were the only motherfuckers who knew where it was. And I went on the Howard Stern Show, and I was blazing up on Howard Stern and I was like, “You know what? High Times is the realest motherfucking magazine in the world!”
