RIP Polly Bergen

Actress, activist and businesswoman Polly Bergen has died at 84. 

Bergen played an enlightened mother who bakes pot brownies for her cancer-stricken daughter on Desperate Housewives. During Episode 3, Season 4 of Desperate Housewives ("The Game"), Lynette (played by Felicity Huffman) gets seriously stoned on her mom Stella's baked goods. Spongebob Squarepants epiphanies, charades and platitudes follow. The show originally aired on October 14, 2007.

Not quite the square she often played, Bergen experimented with LSD along with Cary Grant and Esther Williams, as an aid to psychotherapy back when it was legal. 

According to film critic Rex Reed, Bergen was a women's rights advocate. “She and Gloria Steinem teamed up to raise money and educate people as to the needs of women,” Reed told the LA Times. “She went many times to the White House and spoke before the Senate and at other other functions. She encouraged people to vote -- that was important to her.” She knocked on doors for Hillary Clinton, and Planned Parenthood was a cause particularly close to her heart. Bergen had three adopted children. 

The brunette beauty is known for her role as a wife terrorized by Robert Mitchum in Cape Fear; she later appeared as Mitchum's wife in the miniseries "War and Remembrance." She was the first woman to play a US President, in 1964's Kisses for My President. When Geena Davis portrayed a woman president in the 2005 TV drama "Commander in Chief," Bergen was cast as her mother.

Bergen suffered from emphysema due to heavy cigarette smoking, which interfered with her singing career. She wrote books about beauty and fashion, and started a cosmetic company that she later sold to Fabergé. 

(I misreported here that Bergen played Johnny Depp's grandmother in Cry Baby. Instead, she played the square grandmother who gets corrupted by the "evil influences" of her town. Apologies to Susan Tyrrell, who played Ramona Ricketts so well.)

Myrna Loy and Marijuana

Loy (with back to camera) talks to a pothead with Columbo looking on. 

The 1972 season premiere of the popular TV show Columbo has an interesting exchange about marijuana, featuring movie queen Myrna Loy.

Loy plays a society lady who heads the local symphony board, interviewing a horn player who's been implicated in a murder. Asked about his shady associations, he says of his friends, "Well some of them have been busted for grass...I smoke grass sometimes, just like you drink gin. Didn't you ever have a drink of gin during prohibition when gin was illegal?" Her only response was, "Let's not get smart about how old I am."

Loy's earlier, exotic look in the pre-code days.

Born Myrna Adele Williams in Helena, Montana in 1905, Loy was 28 when alcohol prohibition ended in 1933. She began her career as a dancer during the pre-production code silent film days when she played exotic femme fatales. According to Wikipedia, she was an extra in 1925's Pretty Ladies, in which she and fellow newcomer Joan Crawford entered hanging from a chandelier. In 1929, she played Princess Yasmani, who heads a band of muslim rebels in The Black Watch, and a dancer named Azuri in The Desert Song, which was scrubbed of its sexual innuendoes and homosexual themes before it was re-released later.

Loy is most known for playing the urbane Nora Charles in The Thin Man movies of the '40s, opposite William Powell as a hard-drinking, smooth-talking detective. In the 1932 film Jewel Robbery, Powell plays a thief who sends his marks into giggly submission by offering them his "herbal" cigarettes. "Now inhale deeply," he says to one victim. To another he says, "Two puffs and you'll be hearing soft music... the world will begin to revolve pleasantly."

Loy wasn't necessarily a pothead, but as demonstrated by her willingness to discuss grass (wearing bright green) in the Columbo episode, she was a human rights advocate. She was a personal friend of Eleanor Roosevelt, and stood up against the HUAC Hollywood witch hunt. In later life, she assumed an influential role as Co-Chairman of the Advisory Council of the National Committee Against Discrimination in Housing. In 1948 she became a member of the U.S. National Commission for UNESCO, the first Hollywood celebrity to do so.

Columbo, which had a 13-season run, was conceived and written by Richard Levinson and William Link. In 1970, Levinson and Link penned the teleplay for the TV movie "My Sweet Charlie," starring Patty Duke as a bigoted, unwed pregnant teenager who encounters Charlie Roberts, a militant African American attorney falsely accused of murder, during a demonstration in rural Texas. The film was made on location in Port Bolivar, Texas.

According to Duke's autobiography, her friendship with Al Freeman Jr., who played Roberts, led to rumors of an affair. Marijuana was planted in Duke's Galveston hotel room by locals, though it was quickly determined not to belong to Duke. Texas governor John Connally intervened with local authorities to stop harassment of the production company and Duke (Source: Wikipedia). Freeman also appeared in Finian's Rainbow which Petula Clark said was fueled by "flower power." 

“Code of the West,” a documentary on the Montana medical marijuana debate that took center stage in the 2011 legislative session, premiered at the Myrna Loy Center in Helena, which sponsors live performances and alternative films for under-served audiences.

RIP Joan Rivers, Forever Outrageous

UPDATE 10/15: Rivers is included in the new book Tokin' Women: A 4000-Year Herstory.

Joan Rivers, a breakthrough artist who was the first comedienne to perform at Carnegie Hall, has died at age 81.

As well as her stand-up career, which continued well past retirement age, Rivers was a prolific writer. She authored the films The Girl Most Likely To... and Rabbit Test, which she directed. She also wrote 12 books, starting with Having a Baby Can Be A Scream and the best-selling The Life and Hard Times of Heidi Abramowitz. She appeared on the Late Night with Seth Meyers to promote her final book, Diary of a Mad Diva, on August 4.

"My heart is torn in half. She wasn't done," tweeted Sarah Silverman, who just showed off her vape pen before picking up a writing Emmy for her new HBO special. Silverman and Jimmy Kimmel traded insults in Joan's honor on a guest appearance where Silverman's "clutch cam" moment at the Emmys was reprised.

As self-deprecating as Phyllis Diller before her, Rivers was a favorite of Johnny Carson while telling jokes like, "At 30, a woman is an 'old maid'; at 90, a man is still 'a catch.'" But when Rivers accepted an offer for her own talk show on the Fox network, produced by her husband Edgar, Johnny never spoke to her again. Edgar committed suicide after Joan's show was cancelled, leaving her to raise their daughter Melissa alone. She did what she could after that, turning her shrewd eye outwards, and was open about the plastic surgeries she endured to stay viewable.

Rivers won an Emmy for her daytime talk show, and was nominated for Drama Desk and Tony awards for her performance in the title role of “Sally Marr ... and Her Escorts,” a 1994 Broadway play based on the life of VIP Lenny Bruce’s mother. Later, she won Celebrity Apprentice, headed the hilarious Fashion Police and did a reality TV show with her daughter Melissa.

It was on her reality show that Rivers smoked pot in 2012.  When TMZ asked her who else she'd smoked with back in the day, she replied, "Oh, Betty White, George Carlin, Woody Allen, Bill Cosby...we had fun."

Rivers and Lily Tomlin were the two females picked to honor Carlin after, a few days before his death, he was awarded the Mark Twain prize for humor. That night, she said of Carlin, "We met in Greenwich Village, but we couldn't pinpoint the date because he was high on acid and I was totally wasted."

“Can we talk?” was Rivers's catch phrase, and she talked up a storm about marijuana on an Access Live appearance (below), where she says she loves marijuana "because it makes you giggly," but that she rarely smoked it because "it makes you eat." But interestingly, a new study says that although females seem more sensitive to marijuana, it's males who most often get the munchees.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED: "Life of Crime" with Jennifer Aniston

UPDATE 12/15: See deleted scene from Life of Crime where Aniston's character tries grass for the first time.

Tokin' Woman Jennifer Aniston stars in Life of Crime, the new film by Elmore Leonard (Get Shorty), in which she plays a society wife kidnapped by a couple of pot-smoking Detroit hoods.

Leonard told the LA Times in 2012, "Years ago, a reviewer for the Detroit News said my female characters were like [Mickey] Spillane’s. After that, I paid more attention. I don’t think of them as women. I think of them as a person and go from there. Sometimes female characters start out as the wife or girlfriend, but then I realize, 'No, she’s the book,' and she becomes a main character."

Jen pulls off what could be a stereotypical role with pluck and heart, aided by supporting cast starting with her heinous husband (Tim Robbins) and his scheming girlfriend (Isla Fisher, who played Mary Jane in the Scooby Doo movie and Myrtle in The Great Gatsby). Also in the film are SNL's Will Forte, Mark Boone Junior from Sons of Anarchy, rapper Mos Def (aka yaslin bey), and John Hawkes as the crook with a heart.  

I particularly like the scenes where Aniston's character Mickey gives the Peeping Tom Nazi who has her imprisoned what he deserves, and where she has a little fun laughing at the classic Sanford and Son scene involving marijuana. In the film, as so often in life, smoking a little weed leads to a woman looking at the world in a different, better way. Nicely, subtly done.

Beauty in a Bhang-Leaf Bikini

Dutch model and TV personality Sylvie van der Vaart (aka Sylvie Meis) has been spotted in a pot-leaf bikini (left).

Sylvie may have a medical reason to celebrate marijuana. According to Wikipedia, she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2009 and underwent surgery and chemotherapy. She reports she is now cancer free.

The bikini's fabric, with blue pot leaves, looks rather like the pot-leaf tie worn by Robin Williams on a 2012 TV appearance. 

"The world is changing… nicely," remarks cannabis historian Michael Aldrich.

Hempy Summer, everyone.

RIP Robin Williams: The Craziest, Most Wonderful One

Robin Williams as Albert Einstein, creator of the nuclear bong. 

I must report here the extremely sad news that Robin Williams is dead, of an apparent suicide.

Williams liked to call himself "legalized insanity." He told a joke about Nixon and pot in "Good Morning Vietnam," and was the inspiration for Bob Rivers' parody song "What If God Smoked Cannabis" for his bit about God and the platypus. Noting that the act of creating causes an endorphin rush, he speculated about Einstein developing the nuclear bong ("When the smoke clears, everyone's happy and very hungry").

I always wanted to contact the Northern California resident and Comic Relief co-host about doing a benefit for marijuana reform; then I would realize that since he had problems with cocaine and alcohol, he thought he had to be "sober" at all times. As he noticed, being called to testify before the grand jury that investigated John Belushi's death pushed him in that direction.

Williams faking a toke. 

"When you clean up your act, you either get married or go to court," he joked recently on VIP Craig Ferguson's show, where he was wearing a pot leaf motif tie but said he couldn't smoke it because it made him laugh too much (which it seems like would have been a good thing for him).

In his latest riff on pot, Williams jokes about California wildfires being extra dangerous because, "Those parks are full of weed!" He says if they legalize it they're going to have to label it with a Surgeon General's warning saying, "This will make your music AWESOME!"

Taking a toke in "World's Greatest Dad" 

Williams smoked weed and ate pot brownies onscreen in 2009's "World's Greatest Dad" (to the tune of, "When I get high/This world's so nice"). In the film, written and directed by Bobcat Goldthwait, Williams's teenage son dies by autoerotic asphyxiation, and his father covers it up by writing his son's suicide note and making it look like a hanging. Only after the outpouring of sanctimonious grief that follows does the truth come out.

Asked by Time magazine in 2011, "Is addiction the price of fame, or is it the price of talent?" Williams replied, "It's the price of drugs, actually. Most of the time with drugs, if you're famous, they give them to you. It's good for business to say that they get you high."

Williams, who was set to reprise his role as Mrs. Doubtfire, starred in the "The Crazy Ones" on CBS, but the series was cancelled in May. Two of the more remarkable roles he left us with are in the Oscar-nominated movie "Awakenings," directed by Tokin' Woman Penny Marshall and based on a book by VIP Oliver Sacks, and "Moscow on the Hudson," directed by VIP Paul Mazursky. Williams said his voicing of the Genie in "Aladdin" was influenced by VIP Lord Buckley. In his youth, he worked at a busboy at Sausalito's Trident restaurant, owned by VIP Frank Werber. And don't get me started on Popeye. 

The Robin Williams Tunnel in Marin County, CA. 

A wise woman recently opined to me that the youth aren't feeling the spiritual effect of marijuana because of their preference for the less mind-expanding strains like the OGs; the couch-lock varieties Williams called "California catatonic." I've encountered a lot of younger men who were fed Ritalin in their youth and seem to need something like that to take the edge off. And it's too bad the father in the "World's Greatest Dad" felt he had to hide his marijuana use from his troubled son.

If anyone could be said to be hyperactive, it was the brilliant comedian Robin Williams. I couldn't help thinking: if he'd been able to puff a little Blue Dream now and then, perhaps he wouldn't have been so depressed. Our great loss.

VIP Barack Obama issued a statement on Williams' passing.

UPDATE: Turns out, Williams had early stage Parkinson's disease, something cannabis can be helpful with. The annual, huge 4/20 Festival at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco is now being held at Robin Williams Meadow. 

Macy Gray Gets Stoned

Macy Gray has brought her distinctive voice and style to a new single, "Stoned," now available on iTunes, from her forthcoming album "The Way."

Born Natalie McIntyre in September 1970 in Canton, Ohio, the 6-foot-tall black girl didn't fit in with her mainly white classmates at her Ohio prep school. She moved to Los Angeles and was a mother of three with a rocky marriage when she catapulted to fame on the strength of songs like "I Try," for which she won the Best Female Pop Vocal Grammy in 2001.

The singer admittedly didn't handle her fame well, indulging in excesses but denying rumors she used hard drugs. She told one interviewer that drugs play an important part in her creativity. "I think everybody needs a little oblivion. It is important to get out of your mind sometimes so you meet a different side of yourself. I have had some really incredible revelations on drugs but at the same time they can do horrible things to you, like make you have to spend a lot of money on rehab."

The "Stoned" video shows Gray smoking and giggling while looking at online pictures of other famous stoners, including Tokin Women Miley Cyrus, Martha Stewart, Marilyn Monroe, Maya Angelou, Oprah Winfrey, Lady Gaga and Rhianna. And it looks like she's seen VeryImportantPotheads.com because the video picks up the Bob Marley and Bill Gates photos from their pages there:


Gray has been diagnosed as bipolar, a condition for which many report relief from cannabis, although studies show mixed results. A 2012 study found marijuana can improve cognitive functioning in those with bipolar disorders.

Gray covered The Toyes song "Smoke Two Joints" in 2012. In 2013 she was named in a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court by a security guard from Universal, alleging rampant marijuana use at the company's headquarters.

Starring recently in The Paperboy (2012) with Zac Efron, Matthew McConaughey and Nicole Kidman, Gray also has a successful acting career. In Little Lake for first-time filmmaker Jasmin Sharon, she plays a "hippie psychic" who assists a young girl's coming of age.

Gray is touring in California starting at the end of August, then nationwide. Read more.

CelebStoner names Gray's "Stoned" video in its Top 10 Stoner Songs of All Time.

Amy Tan's Wild Past with Pot

Novelist Amy Tan on NPR's "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me" spoke about the time, at the age of 16, she was arrested in Switzerland for marijuana. "Everybody smoked pot and hash over there," she said. "I thought it was legal."

To get out of jail, "I had to promise I would listen to my mother and always obey her," she said. Her mother promptly narced out Amy's 24-year-old boyfriend and "he and all my friends were arrested and deported." Still, she joked, she was relieved "because I really did want to break up with him."

Playing "Not My Job" on the show, Tan answered the first quiz question wrong, because, she reasoned, "A lot of people like to get high."

Of course, there were many jokes and a question about the New York Times's endorsement of marijuana legalization this week.

Paul Mazursky, Who Brought Marijuana to The Movies

Before Easy Rider portrayed marijuana smoking on film, and long before American Beauty, Peter Sellers played an uptight Jewish lawyer whose life is pried open by Leigh-Taylor Young's pot brownies in 1968's I Love You, Alice B. Toklas!

It was the breakthrough film for Paul Mazursky, who wrote and nearly directed the cult classic. Mazursky died yesterday, and all his obituaries linked him with marijuana because of that film.

Growing up in New York, Mazursky worked as an actor, appearing in the seminal Blackboard Jungle (1955). Venturing into stand-up comedy and writing, he wrote for Danny Kaye before moving his office to the Sunset Strip, where the hippies he saw inspired his Toklas screenplay. He followed up with his directorial debut, Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969), based on experiences he had at Esalen. In that film, unlike Easy Rider, the women (Natalie Wood and Dyan Cannon) also get in on the pot-smoking fun.

In his 1999 book Show Me the Magic, Mazursky describes going to the jungle to take Ayahuasca, and mentions that a shamanic healer used tobacco smoke, "not weed," during the journey. Although he describes himself as a "Greenwich Village hipster" (and his mother as "a hipster, a gypsy, a beantik, a hippie"), he doesn't mention that he smoked marijuana himself. Perhaps it went without saying.  Or maybe he preferred psychedelics.

In the book, he describes a very interesting exchange with famed director Federico Fellini, when Mazursky was planning a trip to Italy and wanted to know whether to visit Florence or Venice. "Do you want marijuana or LSD?" Fellini asked. "Firenze is like marijuana. You will be very happy there. Venezia is not like any place you have ever experienced. She is like an acid trip." "I think I'll take Venice," Mazursky replied.

George Segal and Kris Kristofferson, playing the new boyfriend of Segal's ex-wife, smoke together and form a goofy bond in Mazursky's 1973 film Blume in Love. In his feminist-minded An Unmarried Woman (1978), a 15-year-old girl (Lisa Lucas) matter-of-factly states, "I smoke pot sometimes" upon meeting her mother's new boyfriend, played by Alan Bates. "I do too," he responds. "Got any?" she asks.

Among the remarkable films Paul Mazursky left us are: Down and Out in Beverly Hills, Moscow on the Hudson, Harry and Tonto, Enemies: A Love Story and Moon Over Parador. He even took a stab at Shakespeare in Tempest  (1982).

Mazursky's voice opens the movie Antz (1999), playing the psychiatrist who diagnoses the dissatisfied ant Z (Woody Allen) as the insignificant creature he is. But Paul Mazursky was more like what Z becomes, the little guy who broke the mold. 

The 2019 movie The Last Laugh, wherein Andie McDowell turns Chevy Chase onto marijuana and more, and Richard Dreyfus tokes and jokes his way through, is dedicated to Mazursky.

Streisand Smoked With Sellers, But Not with Seth

UPDATE 11/23: Streisand's new memoir My Name is Barbra contains the revelation that she lost her virginity after smoking marijuana, something she claims she did only "rarely" before and after. The affair didn't end well, but the experience was illuminating. She writes, "At least it gave me some more material to work with....When I sang about wanting someone, for the first time I actually understood it."  

Writing about her first husband Elliott Gould, she says, “I wasn’t a pot smoker, although I do remember one night in LA when we went out with Peter Sellers and Britt Ekland. I must have had a puff or two of what they were smoking, or else I just got a contact high, because we were giggling all through dinner. At one point we were making up all sorts of crazy flavors for ice cream.”

Later in the book, she recounts calling her lyricists Marilyn and Alan Bergman for help after producer Ray Stark gave her a hash brownie at a party without telling her it was loaded, causing her heart to race. 

10/15: Streisand is included in the new book  Tokin' Women: A 4000-Year Herstory.

"It's still illegal?"

On Wednesday's Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen, Seth Rogen was praised for being brave enough to come out of the closet as a pot smoker, and was asked about others he'd smoked with: Snoop (check); James Franco (no); Paul Rudd and Sarah Silverman (yes, "a lot"). Rogen hadn't smoked weed with Willie, he said, but Cohen said that he had.

Perhaps the most surprising answer came when Rogen was asked if he'd smoked with Barbra Streisand, who played his mother in 2012's The Guilt Trip.

"No, but we talked about it a lot," Rogen said, adding, "She smoked weed with Peter Sellers though. That's the craziest shit ever!"

It's rather too bad Rogen and Streisand didn't toke up, on or off screen, in their "for airplanes only" movie, in which Streisand's character drinks when she needs to blow off steam, instead of using something more interesting (and less harmful, according to our President).

La Streisand tells George Segal, "Now I'm going to make you happy" as she lights a joint to share with him in the 1970 film The Owl and the Pussycat. 

She recounted to Rolling Stone in 1971:
 
"Since I get nervous in places like Vegas, it occurred to me to do this funny little routine - actually telling the audience about my hangup. The point was, you shouldn't rely on emotional crutches. It was almost a sermon - no crutches, people; crutches are a no-no. Then at the end, I'd take out a joint and light it. First, just faking it. Then I started lighting live joints, passing them around to the band. It was great - it relieved all my tensions. And I ended up with the greatest supply of grass ever. Other acts up and down the Strip heard about what I was doing - Little Anthony and the Imperials, people like that - and started sending me the best dope in the world. I never ran out."

Barbra, The Way She Is by Christopher Anderson (2006) says Streisand's role in The Way We Were was dependent on her appearing at a McGovern rally organized by Warren Beatty on April 15, 1972 at the LA Forum (pictured above). According to David Crosby's book, Stand and Be Counted, after a second standing ovation at the McGovern event, Barbra stopped to talk to the crowd, reprising her Vegas act.

Speaking of her stage fright, she said, "I was even more scared until I spoke to friends of mine, also performers you know, and they were telling me. . . that in order to conquer their fear. . . some of them drink. But I really hate the taste of liquor so I can't do that. Some of them take pills, but I can't even take aspirin." At that moment she took an exaggerated drag of what appeared to be a joint. After huge laugher and applause, she made a confused face and asked, "It's still illegal?" Taking another toke she spoke through clenched teeth (as though holding the smoke in) she said, "We should face our problems head on."

She then sang, "On a Clear Day You Can See Forever" (with the trippy lyric, "You'll feel part of every mountain, sea and shore / You can hear, from far and near, a world you've never heard before.") She received a total of six standing ovations. Listen to a recording of her marijuana monologue.

Streisand's current husband, James Brolin, played a pivotal role as an outgoing drug "czar" in the anti–drug war movie Traffic (2000). Her first husband, Elliott Gould, said in 1974, "I have no problem with drugs." Not even marijuana? he was asked. "No one has a problem with marijuana," he replied. The actor told Playboy in 1970 (while married to Streisand), "I'm able to switch into certain inner places with marijuana. I've also taken a couple of trips that have been incredible." Gould puffed pot in Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice and appeared in the pot-friendly "Oceans 420" movies.

ADDENDUM 3/20: Streisand has published a HuffPo piece on carbon farming as a solution for climate change.

4/16: Anderson now claims Streisand had an affair with Prince Charles, who's been pretty open to medical marijuana. In December 1998, Charles surprised a Multiple Sclerosis sufferer by suggesting she try medical marijuana. Karen Drake, 36, said: "He said he had heard it was the best thing for relief from MS. In February 2000, Charles visited Trench Town, Jamaica, the neighborhood of late reggae legend Bob Marley, and was greeted by Marley's widow, Rita, and former bandmate Bunny Wailer. Mrs. Marley gave Charles a red, yellow and green Rastafarian knit hat with false dreadlocks, and the prince put it on.

11/15: Streisand has been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, along with Congresswoman Barbara Mikulski, who introduced an amendment in June to prohibit the Department of Justice and Drug Enforcement Administration from using money to interfere in state medical marijuana laws.

Martha Stewart On Rolling a Joint with Andy Cohen

UPDATE 3/24: "The Many Lives of Martha Stewart" on Max interviews Stewart's fellow prisoner Susan Spry, who was serving time on a meth charge when they met at Alderson prison (where Billie Holiday was also incarcerated). Stewart wrote a note of recommendation that got Spry the job she still holds after she left prison.

The series reveals that part of Stewart's rehab/rebranding after her prison stint included appearing at the 2015 roast of Justin Bieber, during which she gave tips on making a shiv, and joked about smoking a joint (and having a three-way) with him. She now says (upon posing at age 80 for the cover of Sports Illustrated), that sitting next to Snoop at that roast "cemented" their relationship. 

“He smoked all day long,” Stewart told the LA Times. “All he did was smoke, and everybody was in such a good mood and we were all roasting each other. And luckily, Snoop’s secondhand smoke really kind of eased the pain for me a lot, and it was hysterical because I just felt, ‘OK, I’ll go with the flow here.’ After like 6 billion views around the world, it turned out to be one of the best things — and it cemented my relationship with Snoop.”

UPDATE 9/20: Stewart has announced a line of CBD edibles. "The flavorful citrus medley of wellness gummies includes Meyer lemon, kumquat, and blood orange, while the delicious berry medley includes red raspberry, huckleberry, and black raspberry."

6/13 - Huffington Post reports that Martha Stewart, the woman who does everything perfectly, also knows how to roll a joint. Or so she said in an interview with Andy Cohen, where she also said she almost asked for a puff off a sloppily rolled one she'd seen on the way to the studio. "That would have made for a very interesting interview," quickly quipped Cohen. Perhaps Stewart ought to demonstrate her joint-rolling skills in an upcoming show, as Canadian historian Pierre Berton did in 2010. 



It seems Stewart had her eyes opened to the injustices of the drug war when she took a prison rap for the true stock manipulators who bankrupted our country. In her 2005 holiday message from prison, Stewart wrote, "I beseech you all. . . to encourage the American people to ask for reforms, both in sentencing guidelines, in length of incarceration for nonviolent first-time offenders, and for those involved in drug-taking."

In April 2013, Stewart said on The Today Show that she and Snoop hang out and bake brownies together. It's true: Stewart and the artist formerly known as Snoop Dogg baked brownies and rapped together about the green kind on her show in 2009. "Why not bake 'em at 4 hundred and 20 degrees?" asked Snoop. 

In 2017, the Martha Stewart and Snoop Dog: T-Mobile Super Bowl Ad won a Tokey Award for Best Commercial:

 

In 2014, Stewart offered free patterns for craft projects made with her hemp/cotton yarn line. She commented upon the September 2020 release of her CBD edibles line: "I've found that CBD supplements are a simple way to enhance my own health and wellness, especially when it comes to managing the stresses of daily life. I set out to create the most delicious CBD products on the market, drawing inspiration from some of my favorite recipes and flavor profiles from my greenhouse and gardens. 

"My wellness gummies closely resemble the French confections, pâte de fruits, rather than the sticky, overly sweet versions you might find elsewhere. Created in collaboration with top researchers and scientists at Canopy Growth, I am very proud of the end result: wellness gummies, oil drops, and soft gels that taste as wonderful as they make you feel."