Colbert and Cannabis: A Farewell Tribute

As we approach the final days of Stephen Colbert hosting CBS's The Late Show this Thursday, we follow CelebStoner's lead and look back at our favorite moments when Colbert celebrated cannabis. 

In a January 2006 City Arts and Lectures interview in San Francisco, Colbert said he smoked "a lot of pot" for a period of time in high school. That would explain a lot. 

On his 2007 The Colbert Report debut, during a (mock) interview with Ethan Nadelmann of the Drug Policy Alliance, Colbert demonstrated that he knew what "shake" is. Nadelmann commented that while viewers surely must get drunk to watch Fox host Bill O'Reilly, probably half of Colbert's audience got stoned before watching. On his January 18 show that year while introducing O'Reilly, Colbert announced, "You're not high, Bill O'Reilly is really here. You might also be high." 

That July, he showed a clip of the USDA's 1942 film Hemp for Victory film before introducing Marijuana Policy Project's Aaron Houston. Later, he asked Ben & Jerry about their flavor named for VIP Willie Nelson, "What's his made of, shredded tax forms and hash?" 

During a 2008 interview with Carole King, Colbert pulled out his Tapestry album and noted it was a double, briefly demonstrating how this allowed people to clean their pot on it in the 70s. On his premiere Colbert Report of 2014, after Colorado started selling legal pot, he took on columnists Ruth Marcus and Davis Brooks with the line: "I applaud Marcus and Brooks for taking a stand against legalizing the pot they smoked." 

Since The Late Show with Stephen Colbert premiered on September 8, 2015, the pot jokes continued. 

A 2016 segment, "Stephen Colbert Gets All Up in Your Faith" had him commenting on the first cannabis church while pantomiming a killer bong rip. That year, he interviewed Whoopi Goldberg when she introduced her Whoopi & Maya cannabis product line, designed for women. In 2017, he introduced Kathy Bates as "an Academy Award–winning actress who terrified us in Misery, inspired us in Titanic, and now she sells us weed on the Netflix show Disjointed." Bates demonstrated her technique for using a vape pen.

The Late Show won a Best Video Segment Tokey Award in 2023 for "The Ganja Girls: Seniors Smoking Weed." For 4/20 that year, he opened with a "Yes We Cannabis" segment from the "dank, grooved-out wonder planet known as Chillaxia." 

In 2024, Colbert asked Will Reclassifying Weed Help Biden? and unpacked the 2024 flap about the Easter coinciding with the Transgender Day of Visibility by noting that in 2025 the holiday would fall on 4/20. He predicted we would 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!" 

Answering the Colbert Questionnaire about his favorite smell in late 2025, "The Dude" Jeff Bridges responded that, "I dug the smell of some fresh weed, man," earning cheers from the crowd and a handshake from Colbert. 

For his final 4/20 monologue in 2026, Colbert began, "Hi(gh)...is what you all might be" before covering this year's fast-food 420 specials and segueing into Pope Leo as the best 4/20 hang, due to the white smoke coming from the Sistine Chapel upon his election. "He tried shoving a rolled-up towel under the door, but we knew what was going on," he mused.  

During a lengthy interview with GQ after The Late Show was cancelled for telling too much truth, Colbert reiterated his tale of youthful pot experimentation and was photographed smoking a joint while swimming in the pool at the Chateau Marmont in LA. He said on Strike Force Five that he'd envisioned getting drunk a lot after retiring, but at his age the aftereffects of drinking are too unpleasant. He didn't say that about smoking weed though.

I've loved the many send-offs for Stephen, like John Lithgow's "The Mighty Colbert" and Jimmy Fallon's re-written "My Way." And so we raise a joint, or a bong, or a vape pen, or a cannabis drink to Stephen Colbert, whose wise and witty humor kept us laughing through some tough years for our country – especially when we were stoned. 

UPDATES: During his final monologue, Colbert joked, "A lot of people have asked me what I plan to do after tonight, and the answer is drugs." 

His next stop was a return stint as host of the Monroe, Michigan public access show "Only in Monroe." At six minutes in on the show, he celebrated Michigan legalizing recreational marijuana in 2018, leading to a string of cannabis dispensaries in the town dubbed "The Green Mile." Colbert mused, "Though I think if I were naming a cannabis district after a Tom Hanks movie, I would go with Forest Hemp, or The Dank Vinci Code (among others, each one funnier than the next)." Nine minutes in, he wonders, "Did Bigfoot come here for the weed?"

Is Ethel Kennedy's Experience with LSD Therapy Informing Current US Policy?

Health Secretary RFK Jr.'s parents Robert and Ethel Kennedy

As the federal government moves to legalize psychedelics, particularly ibogaine, at the urging of Joe Rogan and in hopes no doubt that his and other drug-peace loving minions will look kindly on Trump and his coattail brigade of brigands in the upcoming midterm elections. Standing with Trump and Rogan at the policy announcement was HHS Secretary RFK Jr., whose support for psychedelics may stem from his mother Ethel's clinical experience with LSD in the 1960s while her husband was a US Senator.

Michael Pollan spoke about Ethel's LSD experience and RFK Sr.'s Congressional-floor comments on the topic during a Fresh Air interview about his new book, A World Appears: A Journey Into Consciousness. According to Acid Dreams by Martin A. Lee and Bruce Shlain, "The decision to curtail LSD research was the subject of a Congressional probe....the inquiry in the spring of 1966 was lead by Senator Robert Kennedy (D-NY), whose wife Ethel reportedly underwent LSD therapy with Dr. Ross MacLean." (p. 93). 

A SPIN magazine article "When Bobby Kennedy Defended LSD" reprinted in a newsletter from MAPS (Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies), says that the conservative Sen. Thomas Dodd (D-CT), an alcoholic who was later censured by the Senate for political corruption, convened The Special Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency for three hearings on LSD and other psychedelic drugs in 1966. 

"RFK, whose wife had been treated with LSD and benefitted from the experience, adopted a quite different tone in his questioning of FDA and NIMH officials in his own subcommittee hearing on LSD," says the article. "He was curious as to why so many LSD research projects were getting scrapped. When the officials evaded the questions, RFK got straight to the point. 'Why if they were worthwhile six months ago, why aren’t they worthwhile now?' he asked repeatedly."

The article quotes Kennedy saying, "Perhaps to some extent we have lost sight of the fact that (LSD) can be very, very helpful in our society if used properly.”

Women's Biographies on Film

Inspired by a post on a Turner Classic Movies Facebook fan group that noted it's Women's History Month and asked for readers to send in their favorite costumes worn by women(!), I started coming up with this list of women who have been portrayed in film instead, and it's quite an impressive one: 

Greta Garbo lead the way in Queen Christina (1933). Just the way she runs up the steps for her entrance hooked me. And Katharine Hepburn was a fine Mary of Scotland in 1936. 

Greer Garson played orphans' advocate Edna Gladney in Blossoms in the Dust (1941) and Marie Curie Madame Curie (1943), a role played by Rosamund Pike in the 2019 film Radioactive. Garson was Oscar-nominated for playing Eleanor Roosevelt in Sunrise at Campobello (1960); Jean Stapleton played the role in the 1982 TV movie Eleanor, First Lady of the World. 

Bette Davis portrayed Queen Elizabeth I in The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939). Jean Simmons played the young Queen in Young Bess (1953), as Cate Blanchett did (more realistically) in Elizabeth (1998).

Deborah Kerr starred in a fictionalized account of governess Anna Leonowens in The King and I (1956).  In 1959, The Diary of Anne Frank premiered; Shelly Winters donated the Supporting Actress Oscar she won for the film to the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam. Susan Hayward won an Oscar for her portrayal of Barbara Graham in I Want to Live. (Jazz, and marijuana, are blamed.) Patty Duke was named Best Supporting Actress for playing Helen Keller in A Miracle Worker (1962).

Cleopatra (1963) starred Elizabeth Taylor, the first actress to make a million dollars for a role. (The Queen of Egypt was also portrayed as smoking something in the 2005/07 HBO series Rome.) Debbie Reynolds played The Unsinkable Molly Brown in 1964; Kathy Bates played the role in Titanic (1997).  In 1965, Julie Andrews played a version of Maria von Trapp (without the yodel) in The Sound of Music.

Women's History Month 2026 - Leading the Change: Women Shaping a Sustainable Future

The theme of this year's Women's History Month is “Leading the Change: Women Shaping a Sustainable Future,” encompassing "financial sustainability, community resilience, leadership succession, and intergenerational equity." 

"Whether developing green technologies, advancing economic justice, strengthening education systems, or building civic power – women are designing blueprints for sustainable transformation," says the National Women's History Foundation. "This theme affirms that shaping a sustainable future means fostering systems that support both people and the planet." 

The cannabis, psychedelics and environmental movements have many women to honor who have advanced sustainability. 

One is Tina Gordon of Moon Made Farms, in Southern Humboldt, California. In her sustainably grown garden, Gordon incorporates "aspects of nature, native soil, and on-site composting, we introduce forest and plant material to our gardens to ensure the best and healthiest product. We want to encourage the genetics, and ultimately epigenetics of the plant to carry through an expression of this unique geographic environment."

Sophia Buggs—also known as Lady Buggs—is an urban farmer, medicine woman, and community leader in Youngstown, Ohio. Through stories, blessings, and reflections, she explores themes of ancestral connection, Indigenous practices, food justice, and the challenges and joys of negotiating community partnerships. Her talk at the Women's Visionary Congress 2023 is both a celebration of cultural heritage and a call to honor the unseen forces and generational wisdom that guide us toward collective healing and empowerment. 

Winona LaDuke (pictured), the Native American activist who ran for Vice President on Ralph Nader's ticket in 1996 and 2000, is growing hemp and other crops in Osage, MN, where she operates a hemp market store and coffee shop. "I want to scale up and join the 400,000 other horse powered farming operations in North America, understanding the sacred relationship between life, power and the future," LaDuke writes. "I would like to live well, I am interested in decoupling food and hemp from fossil fuels, and I am also interested in the quality of life which small-scale farming creates." 

Paul McCartney: Man on the Run

The new Amazon Prime documentary, "Paul McCartney: Man on the Run" charts McCartney's marijuana arrests and their affect on his music, and life. 

Through archival film footage and interviews, the film follows McCartney's musical journey, starting with the breakup The Beatles. Criticized for putting out apolitical albums of what he later called (unapologetically) "silly love songs" with his band Wings—featuring his wife Linda on keyboards—the band and Paul's songwriting gained an edge when he faced jail time for growing five marijuana plants on their family farm in March 1973. 

According to a TV interviewer in the film, it was said in court that, "McCartney had a considerable interest in horticulture, and many of his fans sent him seeds to grow. The cannabis seeds, it was said, came to him in such a way."  He admitted he had knowingly growing the plants, but claimed he didn't know what they were. 

The film does not mention the statement McCartney made in court regarding cannabis's legal status. “I feel that there should be legislation on the use of cannabis," he said. "Drink is a much worse drug to my mind than cannabis.” 

Later that year, Wings hit their stride with the release of their album "Band on the Run." The album was recorded in Nigera, where McCartney said he smoked the strongest weed he ever had in an interview with Marc Maron where he noted that "for the creative process it was required." 

Alysa Liu: From Oaksterdam to the Olympics

I've always loved figure skating, maybe since watching the graceful and glorious Peggy Fleming winning the Olympic gold medal in 1968 when I was just a girl. Where I grew up in Pennsylvania we skated in the winter, on ponds at our local mall that had an ice skating rink where scenes from the movie "Flashdance" were filmed. 

At this year's Olympics I fell for Alysa Liu during her short program, which placed her third going into her final triumphant free skate. Liu is an entirely different kind of skater, one more focused on her art than the competition, resulting in a relaxed and joyous presence on the ice that's captivated the world. 

Liu trained at the public rink in the city of Oakland, CA, just a few blocks away from the area known as Oaksterdam for its preponderance of Amsterdam-style cannabis shops that started springing up after California voters legalized medical marijuana in 1996. She gave a shout-out to her home city, pointing to an Oakland flag that a fan had brought, after her championship skate that was set to Donna Summers's disco version of "MacArthur Park," a 1970s song about a park in Los Angeles. “I’m just glad,” she said, “that I could bring Oakland to Milan.” 

Liu's father, who (as everyone knows by now), fled China after organizing protests against the government there, saw promise in his oldest child and paid for skating coaches, taking her to winning her first US National Championship at age 13 (the youngest female champion ever). At the 2022 Olympics in Beijing, she came in sixth despite the extra pressure of the Chinese government attempting to "naturalize" her, after sending spies to gather information on her and her father. Doubtlessly traumatized by that, and tired of the regimented life of a competitive skater, she quit the sport that year at the age of 16, so that she could have more of a normal teenage life, going to concerts, taking her first vacation, and getting her driver's license. 

Describing going on a ski trip with friends in 2024, Liu said it "was such an adrenaline rush, to get down the mountain when your legs are that tired. It's hard, and you had to tap into that part of you that fights, and I hadn't felt that since I quit skating.....and I was like, if I can get what I'm feeling from skating, I should just do that." 

Liu told 60 Minutes that she initially went back to skating for "quick hits of dopamine." She told ESPN, "I have ADHD and I love situations that I'm not expecting. It gives me a dopamine rush. With little mistakes, I love working through it. I have to think. And although it's not ideal to make those mistakes in competition, it was made and my brain still was releasing those chemicals and I had to think, 'What next? I have to add a combo here and here.' It was a little bit of fun and a nice little challenge."

It's Time for the NYT To Admit It Has an Editorial Problem

A discussion titled, “Marijuana is Everywhere. That’s a Problem” with New York Times editorial writers Emily Bazelon, David Leonhardt and German Lopez, who co-wrote Monday’s NYT editorial calling for greater regulation of cannabis, focuses on theory rather than practicality, except when used for prejudicial purposes. 

The conversation starts with the clarification that, like the famous NYT editorial series of 2014, theirs is pro-legalization, due to the harms of cannabis prohibition—namely huge numbers of arrests, disproportionately for people of color. They pointed out that they say in the editorial that they oppose the current ballot measure in Massachusetts that would re-criminalize cannabis. 

During the discussion, both Leonhardt and Lopez went right away to the fact that things are too loose now because marijuana can be smelled walking down the street. In Lopez’s case he says he was offered a hit on the street in his native Ohio, and Leonhardt talked about the streets of NYC and DC, where he spends time. Leonhardt also seemed distiurbed by the proliferation of cannabis shops in Colorado. 

Lopez expressed concern that legalization has increased use, drawing on his perspective reporting on the opioid crisis. He was also alarmed that we have “culturally embraced" cannabis. “You see Gwyneth Paltrow investing in Big Weed in CA,” was an example he used, picking up on the prohibitionist organization SAM’s drumbeat about Big Weed.  

Other issues like increasing numbers of people in polls saying they have problems with marijuana, and emergency room visits for CHS, were mentioned. Also mentioned, as in the editorial, were names of products that sounded like cookies and were marketed to kids (something that isn’t permitted by licensed vendors in California and elsewhere). 

Much was made of the 2024 NSDUH survey finding that more people smoke cannabis daily than use alcohol, with everyone assuming this meant people get totally stoned all day long. Leonhardt said twice that he “very much likes” alcohol or his martini, and Lopez said he “partakes" himself. But apparently everyone else who uses cannabis does so problematically in their eyes. People who have a problem with pot aren’t productive, and create problems for society, is Lopez's opinion. "We’ve gone way too far it glorifying its use,” he said.

On medical marijuana, while it was acknowledged that some people in pain or with specific ailments might benefit from it, cannabis hasn’t gone through the rigorous studies and government oversight needed to establish it as a true medicine, and we should re-think a system by which cannabis dispensaries sell a product claiming medical use, the speakers said. 

It's a Green Day in the Bay

Lost in the controversy about Bad Bunny appearing at the Super Bowl halftime show is the fact that the cannabis-loving band Green Day will kick off the music portion of the Super Bowl with a performance at the game's opening ceremony.

In 1987, guitarists Billie Joe Armstrong and Mike Dirnt, both 15 years old at the time, along with bassist Sean Hughes and drummer Raj Punjabi, a fellow high school student from Pinole, CA, formed the band Desecrated Youth, later renamed Sweet Children. 

After signing with Lookout! Records in 1988 and before releasing their first EP in 1989, the group adopted the name Green Day. In the Bay Area, where the band was formed, "green day" was reportedly slang for spending a day doing nothing but smoking marijuana.

The band's name "was absolutely about pot," Armstrong told Bill Maher, adding, "We were trying to be the Cheech & Chong of punk rock." Armstrong went on to say that he stopped smoking weed after he had children, and then described a gravity bong to Maher. "I like burning the substance" as opposed to vaporizing, he said, because he "it smells good, it fills the room." Vaporizing felt like "one more reason to hide the fact that it should be legal." 

"Join the Club" Film Tells the Story of Dennis Peron and Medical Marijuana

"Join the Club" is a powerful documentary about Dennis Peron and the origins of the medical marijuana movement, set in the gay rights movement and the AIDS crisis in San Francisco. The tactics of the US war on drugs that began with Richard Nixon and was carried on by successive US presidents is also presented in the film, making the DEA and its multi-jurisdictional forces look like the ICE of its day. 

Filmmakers Kip Andersen and Chris O'Connell were able to conduct the last interview with Peron just before he died in 2018, and his story is told in flashback with remarkable footage of Peron's historic Cannabis Buyer's Club, including police video from an officer who infiltrated the club, news reports, and interviews all skillfully edited together. 

Born in the Bronx, Peron was drafted into the Vietnam War where he recounts seeing 1000 dead soldiers the month that he arrived. Eschewing alcohol as "the war drug," Peron smoked his first joint instead, and the filmmakers do a wonderful job of depicting how that changed his life. Bringing back three pounds of marijuana when he returned from Vietnam launched his career as a pot dealer and activist in San Francisco. 

Peron began his political involvement as a supporter of Harvey Milk, who was the first openly gay man elected to public office in California when he became a San Francisco supervisor. The assassination of Milk and Mayor George Moscone highlighted the terrible ongoing prejudice against the gay community, as did the arrests and police shooting of Peron. 

The film does an excellent job of taking us to the origins of the AIDS epidemic and the relief that patients were getting from cannabis. The death of Dennis's young, beautiful lover Jonathan West from AIDS catapulted him to begin distributing cannabis to AIDS patients and operating what was described as the first AIDS hospice, where patients could gather and support each other in community.

A "Jewel Robbery" with a Marijuana Twist

Kay Francis is offered a marijuana cigarette by William Powell in "Jewel Robbery"

In the pre-Hayes Code film "Jewel Robbery" (1932), William Powell ("The Thin Man") plays a suave jewel thief who romances a bored, jewel-grubbing Baroness played by Kay Francis. "In my own eyes, I'm shallow and weak," says Francis. "I fly about all day, pursuing furs, jewels, excitement....In the morning, a cocktail, in the afternoon, a man, in the evening, Veronal [a barbiturate]."  

After invading a jewelry store where Francis and her elderly husband are picking out a large diamond ring, Powell congenially holds everyone hostage and robs the store's inventory. He then takes the unusual step of offering the shop's owner a marijuana cigarette, saying, "Do smoke one of my cigarettes. Now, inhale deeply...." 

Despite having just been robbed, the man begins giggling so vociferously that Francis asks Powell, "What did you give him?" Powell replies, "A pleasant, harmless smoke. He'll awake in the morning fresh and happy, with a marvelous appetite."  

He then offers her a cigarette, saying, "They're harmless, really. Two puffs, and you'll be hearing soft music. The world will begin to revolve pleasantly. Three, a beautiful dream." She asks, "How do you know this?" and he replies, "Experience. I assure you, all the ladies fall asleep happily." "So that you steal their jewels in peace, I suppose," she replies. Refusing to smoke, she says, "I prefer to keep my wits about me, thank you" (which, considering her circumstances, was rather wise). 

Powell then hornswoggles a security guard into carrying his loot out to the getaway car, and gives him as a tip his box of marijuana cigarettes. The guard fully enjoys smoking one of the joints, inhaling deeply. When he is questioned by the police, he offers the chief one of his stash and the two are soon yukking it up fully. Francis of course falls for Powell, but never gets a chance to try another of his cigarettes. 

Cannabis in the Epstein Files

The DOJ's online searchable (and heavily redacted) Epstein Library reveals that convicted sex trafficker / financier Jeffrey Epstein seemed to be tracking marijuana legalization globally, and may have invested in a cannabis company in the US Virgin Islands months before he was re-arrested and died in his prison cell in 2019. 

Epstein pleaded guilty and was convicted in 2008 by a Florida state court of procuring a child for prostitution and of soliciting a prostitute, and was given a sweetheart plea deal that didn't seem to affect his business or other activities. He soon had some lighthearted exchanges with his correspondents about marijuana and the potential to "cash in" on it. 

An MD with a redacted name wrote to Epstein on 9/5/2010, "AND do you know WHO aside from the Israelis owns most of the water capture technology.... Hint...I adore him and he just cut off all his hair and I will see him in concert at the state fair on the 16th... (scroll down) WILLIE NELSON! Maybe marijuana does make you a better you." (Nelson played the Puyallup, WA state fair on 9/16/2010. His hair did look shorter in photos from the fair. Reportedly he did own a water capture company.) 

On Sep. 21, 2013, [REDACTED] wrote: "[REDACTED] suggested perhaps medicinal weed for me ;)" Epstein replied: "Yes, my 2nd great idea after Zombie Porn! They say these things come in 3's So we should all cash in on the next one!" Hong Kong based academic and tech bro Gino Yu sent Epstein a link on August 23, 2016 to an article titled, "Researchers find lab rats on marijuana just can't be bothered" with the comment, "Roaches on dmt next?" One of Epstein's attorneys Erika Kellerhals wrote in an email on September 7, 2016,  "All these marijuana guys are stuck using credit unions because no banks will take their money. IBE angle..." probably referring to International Banking Entities. In December 2018, Epstein received a pitch about a cannabis investment fund.  

Bye Bye Bobby

Some deaths hit you hard. Bob Wier, who was still in his teens when he hooked up with Jerry Garcia to start making music, passed on January 10 after a brief illness, and Deadheads everywhere mourned and celebrated his life. 

I first saw the Grateful Dead on their "Live at Last" tour in the late '80s, after Garcia came back from a coma to re-learn the guitar. I thought, "This is where the 60s went" when I saw the parking lot scene: hippie selling colorful crafts, grilled cheese sandwiches and other goodies in a makeshift community that followed the band from show to show. I saw them play with Bob Dylan and several other shows back in the day when you could send in for tickets as part of a lottery for big shows. 

Bill Clinton float with a phattie at the 1993 Grateful Dead Mardi Gras show.

My hemp activism started when a cute hempster guy invited me to the 1991/92 New Year's Eve show at the Oakland, CA colosseum he'd pulled tickets for. It was an unforgettable show, with Baba Olatunji starting it out drumming through the crowd, and Bela Fleck and the Flecktones blowing us away with a drummer whose kit looked like a guitar. It was the year the band's manager Bill Graham died, and since he would traditionally come out as Father Time at midnight at their epic NYE shows, film of him playing Father Time year after year was shown instead. 

I also got to their Mardi Gras show in 1993, when one of the floats depicted the newly-elected Bill Clinton with a saxophone in one hand and a huge burning joint in the other (pictured). As a hemp activist, I wo-maned a table selling tie-dyed hemp shorts and shirts at a string of shows in Sacramento and at Shoreline amphitheater in the Bay Area. The band's keyboardist Vince Wellnick stopped by the booth and picked out our most colorful shirt, which he wore onstage. I ran into Wellnick later on his way to Wier's wedding in Mill Valley. 

Elaine Pagels, Gnosis, and LSD

Elaine Pagels, the classical and biblical scholar who was among the first to translate and interpret the Nag Hammadi manuscripts writes in her 2019 book Why Religion? A Personal Story that she tried LSD shortly before feeling impelled to write her bestseller The Gnostic Gospels (1979). Gnosis, the direct experience of God, is something often powerfully enhanced by entheogens like LSD. 

Pagels grew up in Palo Alto, the child of academic parents (who were horrified by her dabblings into religion as a child). She had an early fascination with the trippy Gospel of John, which was also Emily Dickinson's favorite Bible book. In high school, she hung out with a group of artists, and writes that she knew the (years older) Jerry Garcia, and attended his first wedding (to a very pregnant young woman). In high school, he dated Garcia's friend Paul Speegle, who died in a car crash that Jerry, also in the car, survived, and she surmises that the name The Grateful Dead “must have resonated from the crash he’d survived five years earlier.” The car crash also caused her to leave her new-found religion when born again Christains told her her Jewish friend would burn in hell. 

“Many of us, of course, have left religious institutions behind, and prefer to identify as ‘spiritual, not religious,’” she writes at the outset of Why Religion? “I’ve done both – had faith, lost it; joined groups, and left them....What matters to me more than whether we participate in institutions or leave them is how we engage the imagination – in dreams, art, poetry, music – since what each of us needs, and what we can engage, obviously differs and changes throughout our lifetime.”

After graduating Stanford, Pagels applied to a Harvard doctoral program in the study of religion, and was rejected by Prof. Krister Stendahl because, he wrote, “women students have always quit before receiving a degree.” However she was encouraged to apply again the following year if she was “still serious," and after completing a Masters in classics at Stanford and continuing to study advanced Greek and Latin, she re-applied and was accepted. There she studied the “secret” gnostic gospels discovered at Nag Hammadi in 1945, written in Coptic around the 2nd - 4th century AD.

Her husband Heinz, a physicist and author of The Cosmic Code who was interested in consciousness, took part in an LSD experiment at Palo Alto Veteran's Hospital while in graduate school. What he took "wasn't a placebo," he told Elaine later, "saying how astonished he was to see stars and galaxies being born and dying, while others emerged, through what felt like innumerable ages." The summer they married (1969), he encouraged his new wife to try it, "promising to cope with any difficulty that might arise." 

Pagels writes she "anticipated that what would happen might involve what I was writing about, some kind of Christian vision. Instead, as I sat in the apartment, looking out at the sky, the trees in light wind, and the garden, I saw everything alive as fire, gloriously intertwined. Watching, ecstatic and speechless, for about five hours, I finally managed to say, 'I guess that solved the dying problem.' What horrified me before, when [her high school friend] Paul died—that a beloved person could simply disappear, and disintegrate—now seemed to resolve into a deeper unity of the whole." 

Bread and Roses, and Mayor Mamdani

AOC and Letitia James spoke, and Bernie Sanders swore the new mayor in, just after Lucy Dacus and Sarah Goldstone performed "Bread and Roses" today at NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani's Inauguration Ceremony. 

As we come marching, marching, in the beauty of the day, 

A million darkened kitchens, a thousand mill-lofts gray 

Are touched with all the radiance that a sudden sun discloses, 

For the people hear us singing, "Bread and Roses, Bread and Roses." 

As we go marching, marching, we battle, too, for men— 

For they are women's children and we mother them again. 

Our days shall not be sweated from birth until life closes— 

Hearts starve as well as bodies: Give us Bread, but give us Roses. 

As we come marching, marching, unnumbered women dead 

Go crying through our singing their ancient call for Bread; 

Small art and love and beauty their trudging spirits knew— 

Yes, it is Bread we fight for—but we fight for Roses, too. 

As we come marching, marching, we bring the Greater Days— 

The rising of the women means the rising of the race. 

No more the drudge and idler—ten that toil where one reposes— 

But a sharing of life's glories: Bread and Roses, Bread and Roses.

Bette Midler's and Dick Van Dyke's Marijuana Songs

Bette Midler, who turned 80 on December 1, brought the marijuana back to the song "Sweet Marijuana." 

Written by Arthur Johnston and Sam Conslow, this classic was sung by Gertrude Michael in the 1934 pre-code movie "Murder at the Vanities" in an elaborate dance number that apparently was quite the scandal mostly due to its nearly-nude women dancers. Immediately, the lyric was  changed to "Sweet Lotus Blossom" and Julia Lee's 1943 recording by that name is included an many a "reefer" song complication. 

The original lyric was restored in the 1970s by Midler. She recorded it on her 1976 "Songs for a New Depression" album, complete with a big toke at the end, and performed it live while dancing with two huge joints (The "Doobie Brothers"). "In the '70s, Midler's self-professed fondness for marijuana was legendary and unashamed, as was her objection to its criminalised status," wrote Australia's The Age. Concert video from 1977 has her joking about her hardcore fans saying, "Pass the Brownies!" 

This New Year's Eve 2025/26 is the 50th anniversary of the night Midler reportedly planned to tape a joint underneath every seat of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles for her 1975/76 NYE show, to celebrate California's pending decriminalization law, the same night an art student altered the "Hollywood" sign to read "Hollyweed." 

I had tickets to see her six weeks later at the Syria Mosque in Pittsburgh, PA, where every gay person in the tri-state area not only came, but must have planned their wardrobe for months. I remember it was near Valentine's Day because someone unfurled a banner, "Happy VD Bette." She performed an unforgettable show (I can still recite the Sophie Tucker jokes), and came onstage for the finale reclining in the hand of King Kong. 

After a three-day run in Pittsburgh (February 11-13), Midler headed to Buffalo, New York for two shows at the New Century Theatre. On the night of the second show, February 15, 1976, she bailed seven members of her touring crew out of jail after they were arrested on cocaine and marijuana possession charges. 

 

2025 Tokey Awards

Tokin' Woman of the Year - Nikki Glaser

I wanted to honor Nikki Glaser as a Tokin' Woman this year even though she's not really indulging of late. 

Glaser's brand of comedy, popularized on her long-running podcast, includes sharing her mental health struggles and her sobriety from alcohol. After a high school friend committed suicide, and noticing she got more attention from boys when she slimmed down, Glaser became anorexic in her teens. 

She did her time honing her stand-up act in comedy clubs, and jumped to getting better-paying gigs in theatres. After getting polyps on her vocal chords from so much podcasting, she cut back on them and now has ended them entirely as her career has taken off. Hitting big at a Tom Brady roast in 2024, she sparkled as the first female host of the Golden Globes this year, and she'll be back in January 2026 to host again. 

On a 2019 podcast with guest and 2023 Tokin' Woman of the Year Chelsea Handler, Glaser opined that she felt guilty about smoking weed since she strived for "sobriety from everything." Handler told her, "You are right to use it, it is medicinal" and said one day we would look back on cannabis prohibition as a big mistake. "Everything becomes a little more sparkly," Glaser said of the cannabis experience. "It's so good for me in conversation, in comedy....obviously you could abuse anything." They talked about how women need to feel freer to use weed in public, and about the convenience of vaping. Doug Benson, the "Super High Me" comedian, was another guest on her podcast that year.  

"I love smoking weed," Glaser said in a video short last year, "but I won't risk showing up for something [not] my best self, or I won't risk having a sore throat, because I just want the relief I feel as soon as I get it, and then eventually it feels not good...It is the exact feeling I felt when I heard Joe Biden dropped out: I was relieved, I was a little bit like, 'everything's fine' and like, also excited. And then within five minutes, I was worried again, and there's a whole new batch of anxieties to consider. And that, I think, is weed" [for her].

Man of the Year - Jeff Bridges

As part of our "Men We'd Love to Smoke With" series, I've got to give a nod this year to Jeff Bridges, who re-inhabited his iconic The Dude character from "The Big Lebowski" while holding a White Russian on Jimmy Kimmel Live to say: “Let’s get ICE off of our streets and into our beverages. This aggression will not stand." He added, "Let's just abide together," using the verb he made popular as The Dude (which was a Merriam-Webster word of the day of late). 

Then, taking the Colbert Questionnaire with Stephen Colbert, Bridges was asked about his favorite smell (pre-Covid, having lost his smell of late). "I dug the smell of some fresh weed, man," he said smiling, earning cheers from the crowd and a handshake from Colbert.  

It also came out this year that Bridges was high on marijuana when filming a key scene in his Oscar-nominated performance as the US President in the 2000 film The Contender.  Speaking at an event at the Clinton Presidential Center about the American presidency, the film's director Rod Lurie recounted going to Bridges trailer when it was time to shoot the scene where he fully defends a woman's candidacy. “The door opens, and I was blown away by this huge cloud of marijuana," Lurie said. "And then—boom!—he completely changes. Becomes super presidential. Gives the speech, nails it in one." Bridges didn’t win an Oscar that year, but he did pick up the best actor award for his role as an alcoholic musician in the 2009 film Crazy Heart. 

Bridges has said he didn't smoke pot during the filming of Lebowski. My favorite pot-smoking-on-film performance of his is in The Only Living Boy in New York, wherein he mentors a young man and fellow writer, including turning him onto some weed, man. 

Tokin' Women and Others We Lost in 2025

Along with luminaries like Jane Goodall, Diane Keaton, Robert Redford, Bill Moyers, Brian Wilson, Sly Stone, Tom Robbins and Marianne Faithfull, this year's tributes include cannabis activists Juhlzie Monteiro, Ann & Richard Lee, Pamela Javid Haymes, Louise Vincent, Wade Laughter, Amanda Feilding, David Watson and Michael Rose, and entheogenic authors Jonathan Ott and Jay Stevens. Rest in Power to them all.

 
Schlossberg at the 2023 JFK Profile in Courage Award ceremony

Tatiana Schlossberg (May 5, 1990 – December 30, 2025)

An environmental journalist and daughter of Caroline Kennedy, Schlossberg died at age 35 from a rare form of leukemia, just when we thought 2025 couldn't get any sadder. According to the Washington Post, Schlossberg published a New Yorker essay in November revealing her diagnosis in which she harshly criticized her cousin RFK Jr. for his opposition to government-funded medical research and vaccines. She also noted that the drug misoprostol, which she had received to stop a postpartum hemorrhage that nearly killed her, "at Bobby’s urging, is currently ‘under review’ by the Food and Drug Administration.”

After writing investigative pieces for several publications, in 2019 Schlossberg published the book Inconspicuous Consumption: The Environmental Impact You Don’t Know You Have, which was honored by the Society of Environmental Journalists. “Using history, science and a personal narrative, Schlossberg provides a better understanding of both individual and systemic drivers of ecological destruction,” the judges said in awarding her the Rachel Carson book prize. “Readers will find solace, humor and a route to feeling empowered with possibilities for positive change, rather than drained by an accumulation of bad news.” Schlossberg had been planning to write a second book, on the oceans, when she was found to have cancer in May 2024, while in the hospital for the birth of her second child, a great-grandchild of JFK and Jackie Kennedy. Schlossberg's brother Jack is currently running for the Congress in New York. 

Carmen de Lavallade (March 6, 1931 – December 29, 2025)

When dancer and choreographer extraordinaire Carmen de Lavallade was celebrated at the Kennedy Center Honors (back in 2017, when they were still honorable), Stella Abrera performed "Soul Bossa Nova/Dear Quincy" in which the dancers share a pipe. See Carmen dancing it above.

Brigitte Bardot (September 28, 1934 – December 28, 2025)

Born and raised in Paris, Bardot was an aspiring ballerina during her childhood. She started her acting career in 1952 and achieved international recognition in 1957 for her role in And God Created Woman (1956), a Roger Vadim (Barbarella) film in which she played an uninhibited teenage girl who seduces older men, making her an icon of the sexual revolution of the '60s. She was the subject of Simone de Beauvoir's 1959 essay The Lolita Syndrome, which described her as a "locomotive of women's history" and declared her the most liberated woman of France. According Elle, who put her on their list of The 20 Best Legs Throughout History, Bardot "inspired thousands (millions?) of women to tease their hair or try out winged eyeliner." After several award-nominated performances, "La Bardot" retired in 1973 and became a prominent animal-rights activist, while being sued for unapologetic racist remarks made in her books, leading to the most hilariously scathing Kate McKinnon imitation ever on SNL. "La Bardot" never wanted children, but when she became pregnant abortion was illegal in France. She had a difficult relationship with her only child, a son, after whose birth she became depressed and attempted suicide. Source. 

Patricia Montanton (December 26, 1928 - December 21, 2025) 

Born in Texas in 1928, Montandon grew up in Oklahoma as one of eight children of an impoverished preacher during the Great Depression. In 1960, she moved to San Francisco with $400 to her name and got a job working at a high-end department store. She later hosted a TV show and became a newspaper columnist for the San Francisco Examiner; author Armistead Maupin caricatured her as society columnist "Prue Giroux" in his pot-friendly Tales of the City series. She was famous for hosting roundtable luncheons in San Francisco and Beverly Hills with a range of celebrities, including Andy Warhol, Danielle Steel, Joan Baez, Eldridge Cleaver, and Frank Sinatra, who she briefly dated. 

Montandon authored numerous non-fiction books, including the New York Times bestseller How to Be a Party Girl. In 1970, she founded The Name Choice Center to advocate for women's legal right to retain their surnames after marriage, and in 1982 she founded a group called Children as Teachers for Peace (later renamed Children as the Peacemakers), for which she made 37 international trips with grade-school children, meeting with 26 world leaders.

Rob and Michelle Reiner (December 14)

The amazingly accomplished actor and film director (The Princess Bride, Stand By Me, A Few Good Men, to name a few) Reiner proudly told an AP reporter that his mother Estelle, one of the founding members of the group Another Mother For Peace, helped design the famous poster “War is Unhealthy for Children and other Living Things,” and was the parent who inspired his activism.  She also uttered famous the line, "I'll have what she's having" in When Harry Met Sally, a film Reiner altered the ending to after he met his wife-to-be Michelle on the set. “Originally, Harry and Sally didn’t get together,” he told the Guardian in 2018. “But then I met Michele and I thought: ‘OK, I see how this works.’” Michelle, a photographer whose mother survived Auschwitz, was involved in Rob's movies and his political causes. As a photographer, she took the portrait of Donald Trump for the cover of “The Art of the Deal,” his 1987 book. (“She has a lot to atone for,” Mr. Reiner joked to The Guardian.) In 2024, Michelle and Rob earned an Emmy nomination as producers of the documentary “Albert Brooks: Defending My Life” and she was a producer on this year’s “Spinal Tap II: The End Continues,” their final film that revisits Rob's original one.  He was also married to Penny Marshall for 10 years, during which time she said she would roll joints for him and his friends. 

Will He or Won't He? (Reschedule, That Is)

Trump's immediate reaction to a question about rescheduling on Monday. 

The Washington Post reported last Thursday that President Trump was planning to issue an executive order directing federal agencies to move ahead with cannabis rescheduling. The outlet also said the president met last week in the Oval Office with marijuana industry executives, Health and Human Services Secretary RFK Jr., and Medicare Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz. During that meeting, Trump phoned Mike Johnson, the House speaker, who reportedly expressed his opposition.

Trump is also interested in pushing Medicare to allow for the reimbursement of CBD products, a person with direct knowledge of the meeting told WP Intelligence. It’s a priority of Trump’s longtime friend and Mar-a-Lago club member Howard Kessler, who was among those in attendance at the Oval Office meeting. In September, Trump posted a video created by a group Kessler founded that endorsed Medicare coverage of CBD. 

Other industry execs who were part of the discussion at the White House were Kim Rivers, a Trump donor from the cannabis company Trulieve, and Jim Hagedorn from Scotts Miracle-Gro. Also present was Trump chief-of-staff Susie Wiles, who has ties to Trulieve, and whose daughter Caroline is reportedly dating "King of Gas Station Weed" Bret Worley. 

RIP Frank Gehry, Whose Architecture Soared High (and So Did He)

I can't believe I am so soon writing another RIP post for a Very Important Pothead, this time architect Frank Gehry who has died at the age of 96. 

Gehry re-made architecture in Los Angeles and beyond with mind- and form-bending buildings crafted from materials like plywood and chain-link fence. Among his many worldwide accomplishments, he won the coveted commission to design the Walt Disney Concert House in downtown LA (pictured). Among his many awards was the including the Pritzker Architecture Prize, the National Medal of Arts and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. 

In 2014, Tommy Chong said on the cable TV show "Getting Doug with High" that he smoked pot with Gehry. Others have claimed that Gehry was a stoner over the years. 

A 2015 biography of Gehry by Paul Goldberger, former architecture critic for The New Yorker, confirms that Gehry can be counted amount the many Successful Stoners that populate the arts and other fields. According to Goldberger’s book Building Art: The Life and Work of Frank Gehry, in 1967 Gehry visited Paris with his office manager Babs Altoon, when "high on some marijuana they had brought along, they went to the Eiffel Tower, took the elevator to the top, and ran all the way down the stairs." 

Later, before fellow architect Philip Johnson came by to see a house in Malibu that Gehry had designed for artist Ron Davis, Gehry and Davis got stoned and were "somewhat giddy" by the time Johnson arrived. [I interviewed Gehry for a story I wrote for the LA Reader about the Malibu house; he was very personable, humble and kind, like most potheads.] 

RIP Todd Snider, the "Alright Guy" who left us "High, Lonesome and Thensome"

Sadly, singer songwriter Todd Snider has died at age 59 following an incident in Utah where he was assaulted and then arrested for a creating a disturbance when the hospital where he was being treated insisted on releasing him. 

Snider titled his last album and tour "High, Lonesome and Thensome." In the video for the title track (my new favorite song), he enjoys a sesh before the session. The tour was cancelled on November 3 following his attack. 

Snider was known to fans of John "Illegal Smile" Prine, for whom he often opened. The two had similar song-writing styles: simple and straight to the point, yet beautifully poetic and universal. And always amusing, if not downright hilarious. NPR reports he modeled himself on — and at times met and was mentored by — artists like Prine, Kris Kristofferson and Guy Clark. Jimmy Buffett was a fan who produced his first two albums. 

Looking online for Snider's hit "Alright Guy," I could only find a video version with the word "dope" censored from the line, "Now maybe that I'm dirty, and maybe I smoke a little dope / It ain't like I'm going on TV and tearing up pictures of the pope" [a reference to Sinead O'Connor calling out the Catholic church's child-abusive ways long before anyone else did]. 

In his popular singalong song "Beer Run" he sings;

A couple of frat guys from Abilene 

Drove out all night to see Robert Earl Keen ...

They wanted cigarettes, so to save a little money 

They got one from this hippie that smelled kinda funny 

And the next thing they knew they were both really hungry 

And pretty thirsty too

According to CelebStoner, in 2014 Snider formed the supergroup Hard Working Americans with Dave Schools, Neal Casal, Chad Staehly and Duane Trucks; in the video for "Blackland Farmer" from their self-titled album, a struggling farmer switches to marijuana.