Celebrating famous female cannabis connoisseurs throughout herstory to the present day.
All contents copyrighted. "Bright Leaf" artwork by Jean Hanamoto, camomoto at Spoonflower.com
Tiffany Haddish and her outrageously awesome brand of comedy burst onto the scene in Girls Trip (2017), in which her character smuggles pot onto a plane as only a woman can. She was the natural casting selection to voice the pot-savvy Kitty in the 2021 animated series based on The Freak Brothers cartoons of the 70s, co-starring Woody Harrelson and Pete Davidson.
After announcing she'd given up drinking following a pair of arrests for DUIs in 2022 and 2023, Haddish gave an interview with Jaivier Hasse of Forbes magazine in May of this year in which she talked about her use of cannabis to treat her endometriosis and announced, "I choose weed over drugs."
Raised in foster homes after her mother had a tragic accident when she was 9, Haddish lived in her car at age 17, when she was raped by a police cadet. A teacher gave her a choice between psychological therapy and the Laugh Factory Comedy Camp. Comedy turned out to be her savior.
Cannabis was another blessing. “It made me feel relaxed. It took away a lot of
my emotional pain. At first, it was like an occasional thing," she said. "Then, as I
experienced endometriosis pain, especially during my cycles, during my
period, I would smoke weed basically for a week straight while I was
bleeding. And, that changed the game for me. I was able to function. I
wasn't like crying and super emotional all the time."
“When I discovered the actual power of marijuana and how it can help
relieve that inflammation, bring that pain down… It has helped me so
much,” she explained. “I went to Panama and learned about the different
things that cannabis can do and how you can use it. I like mixing it
[cannabis leaves] with coconut water and making tea out of the flower.”
Never afraid to speak her mind, she added, “There are lots of very productive, business-minded, business-oriented,
resolute people that smoke or ingest marijuana in some sort of way,
shape or form. There’s a lot of domestic violence because of alcohol. A lot of child
abuse because of alcohol, but not because of weed."
"If men got endometriosis, it would probably be something talked about," she continued. "You need to give women the right to be able to smoke or ingest cannabis
legally… If you are going to take the right for women to make the
decisions off of their uterus, then you need to give them the right to
be able to smoke or ingest cannabis legally, completely across the
board.”
Haddish won a Primetime Emmy Award for hosting a Saturday Night Live episode in 2017, the year she published a memoir, The Last Black Unicorn. Her album Black Mitzvah in 2019 won her the Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album, making her the second African-American woman to win this prize after Tokin' Woman Whoopi Goldberg in 1986. Richard Pryor is named as one of her mentors.
Having conquered every other forum, Haddish released a single CD co-written with Diane Warren this year titled, "Woman Up." Her new book is titled, I Curse You With Joy. She certainly does.
Einbinder starts with a series of trenchant and hilarious observations about drugs from weed to Ritalin, and goes on to tackle topics like global warming from a woman's perspective with killer comedic and performance skills.
My name is Sally Duval, and I’m running for Texas House of Representatives, and it’s HIGH time for a change. If you agree that we need leaders who will ensure that Texans have access to safe, tested marijuana products, chip in today: https://t.co/r25fbUhVIApic.twitter.com/xFeYVBNELg
— Sally Duval for Legalizing Freedom (@SallyForTexas) September 9, 2024
After her preroll bust in Cayman Islands, "Saturday Night" star Rachel Sennott joked:
"You want to be arrested for something cool. You want to be arrested
for like protesting, shoplifting, something awesome." Just not for a
minor cannabinoid.
@Yes4MA reports:
Easthampton Mayor Nicole LaChapelle is one of 50 elected officials
supporting our campaign because she knows that our current mental
healthcare system is leaving too many people behind.
Psychedelic-assisted therapy is a new path forward.
@SmartandSafeFl writes: “Safe lab-tested marijuana will save lives and put an end to
outdated laws that ruin people’s lives for merely possessing or
consuming small amounts of marijuana.”
Thank you
@RepLoisFrankel
for your support of #YesOn3, and freedom in Florida."
BEST AWARD SHOW/PRESENTER: THE EMMYS
Candice Bergen, who famously drew the ire of then-Vice President Dan Quayle when Murphy Brown raised a child as a single mother, reflects on how much has (not) changed since then in one of the Emmy's best moments. (Bergen was the first medical marijuana user on TV as Murphy when she gets breast cancer.) On the same show, John Leguizamo spoke (derisively) about Speedy Gonzales and his stoner cousin Slowpoke Rodriguez, and Alan Cummings quipped, "I think I know what's in Holland's water."
Interviews her fellow prisoner
Susan Spry, who was serving time on a meth charge when they met at
Alderson. Stewart wrote a note of recommendation that got Spry the job
she still holds after she left prison. Her Christmas letter from prison called for legalizing drugs, having met so many women in prisoner on drug charges.
Congresswoman Sydney Kamlager-Dove: "Opponents are attempting to derail the Biden administration’s review of
marijuana’s Schedule I status by claiming that rescheduling marijuana
would violate U.S. treaty obligations. I sent a letter to @DEAHQ
urging them to reject these meritless arguments."
Michigan study finds that black and multiracial newborns were
significantly more likely to be tested for substance exposure at birth, and that newborns with a test positive for THC only were not more likely to
experience maltreatment. The authors conclude, "The
evidence strongly supports a policy to end routine CPS investigations
for cannabis exposure and eliminate racially biased drug testing
practices."
WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD (WITH A TIP OF THE TEACUP TO KEITH OLBERMAN, WHO INVENTED THE FORM)
A group of U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents boasted on WhatsApp about their “world debauchery tour” of “boozing and whoring” on the government’s dime.
Colbert Late Show
unpacks this year's Easter flap and, noting that next year the holiday will fall on 4/20, predicts we'll hear: "The liberals want to turn Jesus into some long-haired sandal-wearing beaded hippie who was all about peace and love. Groovy man! Forgive your enemies!"
This year we lost activists John Sinclair, Mari Kane, ED Denson, Nancy Udell and Peggy Hitchcock; Actresses Teri Garr, Maggie Smith and Gena Rowlands; Musicians Melanie and Kris Kristofferson, plus Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh and Super Deadhead Bill Walton, and (too) many more. Sadly, this page will be updated throughout 2024, with an emphasis on women and those connected with cannabis and its legalization, through their lives and/or work.
Jean Jennings (February 3, 1954 – December 16, 2024)
At 14, Jennings was an exchange student in Ecuador where she learned to drive in a Toyota Land Cruiser in the Andes mountains. At eighteen, she bought a used Plymouth Satellite with a 318 V-8 engine, painted it yellow, installed a roof light and a meter, and joined the Yellow Cab Company in Ann Arbor, Michigan, as an owner/operator. While there, she redefined the city taxicab boundaries, trained and created a training manual for new cab drivers, and was elected president of the Yellow Cab board. After writing for Car and Driver (1980–1985), she co-founded Automobile, where she continued to write her widely known column, Vile Gossip and got Jerry Seinfield to write for the magazine. Unabashed and outspoken, Jennings became an undercover spokesmodel at the 1988 North American International Auto Show, and on Good Morning America startled Diane Sawyer, live on air, after calling the new Chevrolet SSR, "bitchin," explaining to the clearly ruffled Sawyer that it was an acceptable California hot-rodding term. She taught an Oprah Winfrey Show audience how to change a tire and jump start a car. She was later the Chairman, CEO and host of the self-branded automotive website and blog, Jean Knows Cars (2012–2016), and edited the book Road Trips, Head Trips, and Other Car-Crazed Writings.
Jeanne Bamberger (February 11, 1924 – December 12, 2024)
Bamberger was a child prodigy pianist who performed with the Minneapolis Symphony before she had reached
adolescence. She became a Professor of Music and Urban Education at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, and Adjunct Professor of Music at the
University of California, Berkeley.
She also taught at the University of Southern California, and the University of Chicago. In Chicago, she became interested in the education of young children, and particularly in the Montessori method. Her research interests included music cognitive development, music
theory and performance, teacher development, and the design of text and
software materials that fostered these areas of development. She won both a Fulbright Scholarship and a Guggenheim Fellowship, wrote several books and articles, and co-created MusicLogo, enabling students to write computer code to create tunes that could be immediately played out loud.
Mary McGee (December 12, 1936 – November 27, 2024)
The first woman to compete in motorcycle road racing and motocross events in the United States, McGee was the first person to ride the Baja 500. She competed in motorcycle road racing and motocross from 1960 to 1976,
then began competition again in 2000 in vintage motocross events. Her
last race was in 2012. In 2013, McGee was named an FIM Legend for her pioneering motorcycle racing career. She was inducted into the AMA Motorcycle Hall of Fame in 2018.
McGee died from complications of a stroke at the age of 87 just one day before the release of the documentary Motorcycle Mary, which was released on ESPN's YouTube channel.
Barbara Taylor Bradford
(May 10, 1933 - November 24, 2024)
Bestselling author Bradford sold her first magazine story when she
was 10 years old. She went on to become a journalist, columnist and
fashion editor. She was 46 when she saw her first novel published:
1979's "A Woman of Substance," the story of Emma Harte, a poor but
plucky and beautiful Yorkshire servant who founds a business empire. The
book was an international smash, selling more than 30 million copies,
and set the template for strong and independent Bradford heroines who
would feature in 39 subsequent novels – all bestsellers, many turned
into films or mini-series. In 2007, Bradford was presented with
the Order of the British Empire for her contributions to English
literature. Source.
Alice May Brock (February 28, 1941 - November 21, 2024)
The woman who inspired and co-wrote Arlo Guthrie's song "Alice's Restaurant," set at Thanksgiving, died a week before the holiday at the age of 83. Brock met Guthrie while she was a librarian at the Stockbridge School in Massachusetts where he was a student, and her eatery in western Massachusetts is forever immortalized in the song, which became an anti-war anthem in 1967 while US boys were still being drafted into the Vietnam war. Brock wrote several books, including “The Alice’s Restaurant Cookbook” (1969) and “My Life as a Restaurant” (1976); she appears in a cameo performance in the movie "Alice's Restaurant." A GoFundMe site to help with health and financial issues late in her life raised $170,000 in a few days. A used Hardcover copy her cookbook in "acceptable" condition is on sale at Amazon for $4,629.66. It includes advice on subjects as varied as Your Attitude, Equipment, Improvising And Making Do, and The Supply Cupboard. In 1991, Guthrie bought the re-purposed church in Great Barrington where Alice lived and hosted the Thanksgiving dinner he sang about to house his archives and a community action center. The center hosted its 19th Annual free Thanksgiving dinner this year; plans for an exhibit of Alice's artwork there began just before she died.
Quincy Jones (March 14, 1933 - November 3, 2024)
The amazingly multitalented Jones's now-famous composition Soul Bossa Nova, which gave Austin Powers his mojo, was the inspiration for the ballet "Dear Quincy" in which the dancers smoke and share a pipe.
Garr's autobiography Speedbumps: Flooring it Through Hollywood
(2005) reveals that she had encounters with pot when she was a young go-go dancer on TV shows like "Shindig!" and in movies like Pajama Party with Annette Funicello,
and while hanging out with fellow acting-school student and VIP Jack Nicholson, with whom she appeared in his psychedelic movie Head (along with the Monkees and Funicello). Garr also writes about sending a boyfriend to buy a joint for them to share on a vacation in Maui (somewhat anonymously). Like Funicello, she suffered from MS, but its unknown if either actress used cannabis for it. Garr was perfectly cast as Phoebe's stoner mom on TV's Friends, and remains beloved for her comedic and adorable performances in Young Frankenstein, Oh, God!, Tootsie, Mr. Mom, among many others. Read more.
Grateful Dead bassist Lesh's "intellectual, articulate and reflective" book, Searching for the Sound: My Life with the Grateful Dead
(2005, Little, Brown) includes his description of the band's "forays
into mind-altering substances." He wrote, "For me and my friends, these drugs (pot, acid, the other
entheogens) were seen as tools -- tools to enhance
awareness, to expand our horizons, to access other levels of mind, to
manifest the numinous and sacred, tools that had been used for thousands
of years by shamans, by oracles, in the ancient mystery schools, by all
whose mission was to penetrate beyond the veil of illusion . . . These
experiences were not embarked upon as escape from 'reality' -- they were
explorations into the superreal."In 2020, Rolling Stone ranked Lesh as the 11th Greatest Bassist of All Time.Read more.
Barbara Dane(May 12, 1927 – October 20, 2024)
"Bessie Smith in stereo," wrote jazz critic Leonard Feather of Dane in the late 1950s. Time wrote of Dane: "The voice is pure, rich ... rare as a 20-carat diamond" and quoted Louis Armstrong's exclamation upon hearing her at the Pasadena jazz festival: "Did you get that chick? She's a gasser!" On the occasion of her 85th birthday, The Boston Globe music critic James Reed called her "one of the true unsung heroes of American music." Dane was one of the many artists whom the FBI surveilled because of their activism, and her FBI file later became source material for her 2022 autobiography, This Bell Still Rings: My Life of Defiance and Song, where she revealed that she suspected her first husband of feeding the FBI information about her. Dane continued to be active well into her 90s. In addition to publishing her book, she continued to perform and appeared in a 2023 documentary about her life, The Nine Lives of Barbara Dane.
Mitzi Gaynor (September 4, 1931 - October 17, 2024)
Gaynor helped teach us tolerance by falling in love with a Frenchman with Polynesian children in the 1958 movie "South Pacific," set during World War II. Initially her character Nellie Forbush, a Navy nurse from Arkansas, rejects him on racial grounds, leading to the song, "You've Got to Be Taught" with its brilliant Oscar Hammerstein lyrics. A wonderful dancer, here Gaynor dances with Gene Kelly in "Les Girls" (1957).
Well, it looks like a woman will be in charge after all at the White House.
Donald Trump has named as his Chief of Staff pick Floridian and longtime Republican operative Susie Wiles, which will make her the first woman to hold that position.
According to the New York Times, Wiles worked for Ballard Partners, a Florida-based lobbying firm. According to their website, Ballard represents Trulieve, the mega cannabis company whose female CEO Kim Rivers reportedly met with Trump just before he announced he would be voting in favor of Florida's measure to legalize cannabis on the November ballot.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis strongly opposed the measure, charging that it would benefit only Trulieve, which contributed over $70 million to the Smart & Safe Florida campaign behind Amendment 3. The measure won a majority vote (56%) but fell short of the 60% vote it needed to become a Florida constitutional amendment, similar to the reproductive rights measure also on the state's ballot, which garnered 57% of the vote.
Wiles helped DeSantis win the 2018 Florida governor’s race, but he later fired and denounced her; she then helped Trump crush DeSantis in the G.O.P. presidential primaries. She recently worked at the lobbying giant Mercury, whose clients include SpaceX, AT&T, and the Embassy of Qatar. Politico reports that until earlier this year, she lobbied lobbied Congress on “FDA regulations” for the tobacco company Swisher International while running the Trump campaign.
In Connie: A Memoir, Connie Chung, who broke through stereotypes and stigmas as an Asian woman newscaster starting in the 1960s, reflects on and meets with the "Connie Generation" of Asian women named in her honor.
She then rather surprisingly ends the book:
"As gratifying as the Connie Generation is, I have one more distinction of superior recognition.
"There is a strain of weed named after me. Yes, a strain of marijuana named Connie Chung. I have not a clue how it came about. I tried smoking marijuana in college, and unlike Bill Clinton, I did inhale. However, still being a straight [pun intended?] arrow, I am not a weed smoker, not that there's anything wrong with it."
Perhaps Chung enjoyed her dance with Mary Jane in her formative years. The youngest of 10 children born to recent Chinese immigrants, she had a long road to climb to get to the top of her profession. Thankfully, it seems she chose a better relaxant than others to take the edge off. Her namestrain has been described as, "known for its hazy head high which can lead you down the road of unwinding and relaxing."
Chung surprised Today Show hosts Savannah Guthrie and Hota Kolb during a book-tour interview in September by bringing up her namestrain and its/her qualities at the end of the segment, joking that her husband Maury Pauvich would disagree about her being "low maintenance."
Chung reporting from the House of Representatives
The book reads,
"Nonetheless, if you look up my pot namesake online, you will find my characteristics. I am immensely proud to boast that I am easy to grow. I am deeply relaxing and happy; I am helpful under deadline; and I cause dry mouth but very, very little of the scaries. My flavor profile is described as berry, earthy, piney, sweet, and blueberry, with a blast of berry on the exhale....And this is the trait that I find the most admirable: I am low maintenance."
Flabbergasted, Guthrie could only blurt out, "We didn't expect this interview to go in this direction." (In other words, I have no words.) "Did you bring any?" Guthrie more calmly and pertinently inquired. "No, you can get it online," Chung replied.
Last Thursday, October 24, Willie Nelson and his wife Annie D'Angelo Nelson hosted a star-studded Cannabis Community Call for Kamala. It was obvious that Annie was leading the charge on the call, introducing speakers and keeping the event flowing, as well as making pro-cannabis comments of her own.
“If we want to see legalization become a reality, we have to do what we can to elect Harris,” Willie said. “We need you to drag your friends to the polls if need be.”
“At the end of the day, we can’t go on blaming her for enforcing the law when she was a prosecutor. That was the law, and that was her job,” he continued. “And we need to recognize when we have a real partner in this mission to legalization we’ve all been on, and in Vice President Harris, there’s no doubt that we have that partner.”
Guest speakers began with Colorado Governor and cannabis legalization advocate Jared Polis, who called Harris “the first major party candidate to support leaving it up to the states.” He opined that while Joe Biden has done "very little" on legalization, Harris’s support for marijuana legalization is part of her “freedom agenda.” He added, "Finally, they have the rescheduling sitting there. We hope they approve it, but that’s just the first step.”
Cannabis activist/entrepreneur and 2016 Tokin' Woman of the Year Whoopi Goldberg spoke next about how cannabis can help with women's health issues like menstrual cramps. “It’s really important that we get these things thought of as normal,” she added. “When we talk about cannabis, it should not be something that is ever thought of as something harmful, because it’s not, and we have so many ways of using this, and Kamala knows this.”
Country singer/songwriter Margo Price, also a cannabis entrepreneur, announced that she's already voted for Harris and feels good about voting for the first major party candidate to embrace cannabis legalization (as well as, the whole democracy thing, doing right by women and children, etc.)
Man Ray, Le Violon D’Ingres, 1924. Kiki is the model.
In the preface to the 1929 book Kiki's Memoirs, Ernest Hemingway wrote, "She dominated the era of Montparnasse more than Queen Victoria ever dominated the Victorian era." He was describing the woman known Kiki de Montparnasse, a muse, chanteuse, painter, actress, and cultural icon like no other.
Born Alice Prin in 1901 to an impoverished single mother in Paris, she was required to work menial jobs from the age of 12 at places like print shops and shoe factories. Finding joy in self decoration, she "would crumble a petal from her mother's fake geraniums to give color to her cheeks and was fired from a nasty job at a bakery because she darkened her eyebrows with burnt matchsticks." (Source.)
Uninhibited by posing in the nude, she was determined to make a living as an artists' model while still in her teens, which caused her mother to turn her out of the house. The proprietress of Rosalie's restaurant in the Montparnasse district of Paris took pity on the young Alice, and often fed her. Rosalie's or La Rotonde may be the place where Modigliani, one of dozens of artists who painted or sculpted portraits of Kiki, paid his bill by slipping Futurist painter Gino Severini a chunk of hashish. (Source: Modigliani: A Life by Meryle Secrest, p. 106).
In 1921, Kiki began an eight-year affair and artistic collaboration with the photographer Man Ray, during which time he influenced her style and took hundreds of portraits of her, including the iconic surrealist image Le Violon d'Ingres (Ingres' Violin) and Noire et blanche (Black and White). She also acted in experimental films shot by Man Ray.
With a distinctive pointed-nose profile, Kiki also possessed "an extraordinary complexion which you could put makeup on in any form, and she did, too," said Lee Miller, Man Ray's subsequent collaborator and lover. "She was absolutely a gazelle," Miller said. (Source: Kiki Man Ray by Mark Braude, p. 229). "She had the short bobbed hair and unconventional look and really an energy, I think that people just really competed to capture," her biographer Mark Braude told The Octavian. "The bob and that whole fringe cut became ubiquitous by the end of the '20s. But when she started in 1921, 1922, that was actually a dangerous thing." (Kind of reminds me of when Tokin' Woman Patti Smith invented the shag haircut on herself and soon everyone copied her style.)
Kees van Dongen, Portrait of a Woman with a Cigarette
(Kiki de Montparnasse) ca. 1922-1924,
JE CONNAIS LA DROUGE
In Kiki's memoir, illustrated with her portraits and her own drawings, she tells of her introduction to cocaine while still a teenager (and a virgin). In a chapter titled, "Je Connais La Drogue" (I Know Drugs) she writes:
"A sculptor for whom I pose entrusts me with an errand to run on the Champs-Élysées. I have to deliver a statuette to a gentleman of high importance. But he warns me that I must not be frightened by what I will see and above all, if I see money lying around not to worry about it."
Opening the door at the address where she is sent is a man of 40 years who "has the face of a bon vivant and a nose as if he had a bad cold!" He takes her on a tour of the apartment where, "Before letting me into another, darker room, he demands that I undress and put on a beautiful Chinese dress, white silk socks and golden slippers.
In this room, all the wonders are gathered: the most beautiful collections of butterflies, lace, carpets, shawls. It's enough to give you a stiff neck. I want to see it all at once! It's magical."
She then writes, "I had noticed that from time to time he opened a pretty gold box from which he took, with a very small gold shovel, a pinch of white powder that he put in his nose; immediately afterwards he became very eloquent and I listened to him open-mouthed!
"I took advantage of a moment when his back was turned to take a pinch of it myself and sniffed it.
A while later, I felt very light; I was no longer thinking about anything. Life seemed beautiful... beautiful!"
Just opened in San Francisco at the De Young museum: A retrospective of the work and life of Polish-born artist Tamara de Lempicka, the first exhibition of its kind in the US.
Born Tamara Rosa Hurwitz, either in Warsaw or St. Petersburg to a family of Polish Jewish elites that encouraged her artistic interest with a tour of Italy. She married Tadeusz Lempicki in 1916, just before the October Revolution of the following year sent them fleeing Russia to Paris. Using the feminine declension of her husband's surname, Lampicka enrolled at free academies in the artistic community of Montparnasse, and began a lesbian affair with poet Ira Perrot, the subject of her first portraits. She began exhibiting at the Salon des Independants, held annually in Paris, under the masculine name Lempitzsky.
The timeline of Lempicka's life at the exhibit says that in 1922, "Tadeusz grows intolerant of his wife's affairs, cocaine use, late nights spent at clubs followed by valerian-induced sleep, and long work sessions listening to Richard Wagner at full volume." The couple divorced the year she painted a portrait of him, wherein his left hand (where his wedding ring would be worn) is purposely left unfinished. Lempicka picked up her paintbrush to support herself and her child, exhibiting in the United States, and with the Société des Femmes Artistes Modernes in Paris. She subsequently married Baron Raoul Kuffner, becoming Baroness Kuffner.
The Annual Hardly Strictly Bluegrass free music festival, held in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park through the generosity of investment banker/banjo player Warren Hellman, tends to have its musical acts comment on being in the city once called Yerba Buena.
In 2023, Rufus Wainwright opened his set with his song "Beautiful Child" by saying it was written on acid and mushrooms on Yoko Ono's farm, gesturing to the crowd and saying, "so, it feels proper."
Very Important Pothead Kris Kristofferson, who died just before this year's festival, dueted with Merle Haggard on his satirical song "Oakie from Muskogee" at the 2011 fest. "I think when someone's 70 years old, they ought to be able to smoke anything they want to smoke," Haggard began, bringing cheers from the crowd for the verse, "We still wear our hair grow long and shaggy / like the people in San Francisco do." Kristofferson added his own clever verse, which he sang with a wry smile: "We don't shoot that deadly marijuana / We get drunk like God wants us to do."
Tuttle (center, in green) with her female fiddle and bass player at HSB.
This year, Molly Tuttle brought her righteous bluegrass band Golden Highway, with which she's won the Grammy for Best Bluegrass Album two years running. Tuttle spoke of being raised in California and said she was offered her first pot brownie at Hardly Strictly when her mother brought her to the festival. Now a Tennessean, Tuttle rocked the crowd with her song, "Down Home Dispensary" from this year's Grammy-winning "City of Gold" CD.
Hello legislator the voters have spoken There’s too much politickin' and not enough tokin’ It’s an economic agricultural wonder So legalize the southland and roll us a number Hey mister senator I’m asking you please Put up a down home dispensary in Tennessee
"Nixon Started the War on Drugs. Privately, He Said Pot Was ‘Not Particularly Dangerous,’" read a startling New York Times headline last week.
Minnesota cannabis lobbyist Kurtis Hanna was responsible for the story, after he listened to hours Nixon's infamous Oval Office tapes recently uploaded by the Richard Nixon
Presidential Library. Hanna told the Times he has been
"fascinated by the history of drug policy ever since he was arrested
inside a casino in Iowa in 2009 and charged with possession of
marijuana."
“Let me say, I know nothing about marijuana. I know that it’s not particularly dangerous,
in other words, and most of the kids are for legalizing it," Nixon said in a March 1973 White House meeting with aides including then–White House press secretary Ronald Ziegler and White House counsel/Watergate conspirator John Ehrlichman.
Nixon added, "I don't think marijuana is (unintelligible) bad, but on the
other hand, it’s the wrong signal at this time." He then began to talk about a coming law enforcement speech in which he would "totally" oppose legalization, bragging that no administration had been as hard-line on the issue, and opening a discussion about mandatory minimum sentences; penalties like five years for a trafficker, and life without parole for repeated offenses were put on the table.
If you were in Oregon on Sunday watching the heart-wrenching hour-long 60 Minutes program on 9/11 and the terrible toll it took on the FDNY, you would have seen an ad funded by the National Republican Congressional Committee slamming OR Congresswoman Val Hoyle for her association with the cannabis company La Mota while serving as OR’s labor commissioner. La Mota is under investigation by the FBI and the huge scandal around it lead to the resignation of Oregon’s Secretary of State.
Hoyle responded to the ad when it first appeared, and a counter ad that aired just after the NRCC one on 60 Minutes featured a firefighter talking about Hoyle’s advocacy for workers. (A second appearance of the NRCC ad on the program went unrebutted.)
Hoyle has apparently been a friend in Congress, tweeting out support for the cannabis industry when former NFLer and cannabis entrepreneur Ricky Williams visited her office in June. She seems to face scant competition from her “Young Gun” Republican challenger who has now called for a federal investigation into Hoyle and La Mota; still, it’s disturbing that NRCC would attack a Congressperson on this basis, even as presidential candidates Donald Trump and Kamala Harris now squabble about who is the bigger legalization supporter.
Kingsley Ben-Adir as Bob Marley and Lashana Lynch as Rita in "One Love"
The biopic "Bob Marley: One Love," co-produced by several members of Marley's family, tells his and his wife Rita's story in a moving way seldom seen on film.
Producers include Rita Marley, their oldest son David "Ziggy" (whose nickname means "little spliff"), and daughter Cedella (a cannabis cookbook author and musician). Stephen Marley, the couple's third child, was the film's music supervisor. Also involved as an executive producer, along with Brad Pitt, was Orly Agai Marley, a music industry executive who is married to Ziggy.
Christian conservatives have gone on the attack about protecting their children against a segment during last night's Olympics opening ceremony in Paris depicting what was seen as a Last Supper-like tableau with a Goddess in the center and Dionysus served up on a plate.
“[The Last Supper] is not my inspiration and that should be pretty obvious," production designer Thomas Jolly said, [in translation]. "There’s Dionysus arriving on a table. Why is he there? First and foremost because he is the god of celebration in Greek mythology and the tableau is called ‘Festivity.’”
“He is also the god of wine, which is also one of the jewels of France, and the father of Séquana, the goddess of the river Seine. The idea was to depict a big pagan celebration, linked to the gods of Olympus, and thus the Olympics.”
Those who could only see the Last Supper in the tableau are forgetting or were never taught their history (not to mention their herstory): Dionysus, the Greek god of wine and ecstasy, was by some accounts the son of the grain goddess Demeter of the ancient Eleusinian mysteries. Those mysteries saw yearly pilgrimages of the faithful to experience communion with each other via the sacrament kykeon, thought to be a psychedelic potion.
Both our Vice President (and now likely Presidential candidate) Kamala Harris and Usha Chilukuri Vance, the wife of Republican Vice Presidential Candidate JD Vance, have roots in the Hindu religion, which has sacred connections to cannabis.
"The academic study of Indic religions, and of yoga, has been intimately tied to questions
regarding the role of psychoactive substances from an early stage. This is particularly with
respect to soma, a sacred beverage utilized within the Vedic tradition," writes Stuart Ray Sarbacker, Professor of Comparative Religion and Indian Philosophy at Oregon State University, in his paper "Psychoactives and Psychedelics in Yoga: Historical Contexts and Contemporary Culture."
Dr. Sarbacker continues, "The role and nature of the beverage referred to as soma in the Vedic tradition of fire
sacrifice (yajña) and its purported psychoactivity has been thoroughly investigated within and
outside of Indology. ... Soma is revered as a sacred beverage and as a deity, said to confer visionary experience and
immortality upon the brāhmaṇa who ritually consumes it. Soma is identified as amṛta, literally
the elixir of 'nondeath,' of immortality, a name resonating through the millennia of later Hindu
narrative and discourse. There are various hypotheses as to the botanical identity of soma, some
of the leading candidates being ephedra, peganum harmala (Syrian rue), cannabis, poppy, mead
or wine, ergot, amanita muscaria (Fly Agaric mushroom), psilocybe cubensis (Magic
Mushroom), and an ayahuasca analog."
Chris Bennett, Lynn Osburn & Judy Osburn write in their book Green Gold The Tree of Life: Marijuana in Magic & Religion, "Descriptions of haoma, or soma, list it as yellow or gold-like in color, the color of ripe cannabis in the Middle East and India. Source material on the subject also tells us that 'the intoxicating juice of the haoma herb found on their mountain slopes' grew in the Hindu Kush mountains and valleys, a place that is still famed for its powerful ganja."
Harris (top left) wearing a sari.
"Cannabis use is a part of mainstream Hindu practice, prevalent during Mahāśivarātri,
Durgā Pūjā, and other festivals [including Diwali] in the consumption of bhaṅgā, a mixture of
cannabis, milk, and spices, which augments the festival spirit," writes Sarbacker. "Routine cannabis use is extensive
among renouncer (sādhu and sādhvī) communities in India as a sacramental substance and a
social glue. Some Sādhus and Sādhvīs are said to follow, per Bevilacqua, the so-called 'chillumchai' diet—combining the mildly psychedelic effect of Indian cannabis with the stimulation of
tea with sugar and spices. One study found that among
a subset of Sādhus present at the Paśupatināth temple in Nepal, virtually all used cannabis
regularly, with a high percentage reporting its use as a support for meditation."
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