Celebrating famous female cannabis connoisseurs throughout herstory to the present day.
All contents copyrighted. "Bright Leaf" artwork by Jean Hanamoto, camomoto at Spoonflower.com
Chapter 12 ("I Got You Babe") of Cher's new autobiography addresses the anti-marijuana PSA her former partner Sonny Bono released in 1968.
She writes:
The mid '60s brought in the counterculture, with ideas advocated by people like beat poet Allen Ginsberg and Timothy Leary, the Harvard psychologist who recommended the use of psychedelic drugs for mind expansion. Leary became famous for his "Turn on, tune in, drop out" message, which I thought was dumb. I never took drugs, and the idea of taking acid didn't turn me on. I was already pretty tuned in, and I had no intention of dropping out.
So, while everyone was tripping, playing acid rock, or marching in the streets to protest the Vietnam war, Sonny and I were the straight, square couple who sang middle-of-the-road songs, didn't engage in drug culture, and now, in the era of free love, we became uncool for being married.
Sonny was never a "march in the streets" kind of guy, but for some reason he felt compelled to abandon his anti-political stance, and he released a statement condemning the use of marijuana, which made us look like part of the establishment and alienated our younger fans. I didn't want to smoke pot myself, but I didn't care if other people did. My uncle smoked pot, and even my mother sometimes did. Him speaking out against it struck me and our audience as so uncool.
Sonny & Cher in the '70s
"Drugs might not have been our thing, but I was far more liberal in my views and didn't agree with telling people what they should or shouldn't do," she continues. "His anti-drug stance seriously backfired, because our record sales dropped almost immediately, and offers began to dwindle. [Their agent] William Morris even switched us from the musical concerts department to the personal appearance department, which we knew was the first nail in our coffin."
"Keeping us relevant and in the public eye required a great deal more time and energy after that, and the more Sonny took on, he moodier he became. Looking back, I think some of his mood swings at this time could have been because he was starting to abuse prescription meds." How ironic. Cher relates that she would sometimes take "a quarter of one of Sonny's Valiums to take the edge off" while dealing with stage fright on the road.
The first president I got to vote for, after campaigning against Richard Nixon four years earlier at the age of 14, was Jimmy Carter. It's been announced Carter has died, after fulfilling his stated wish to vote for Kamala Harris for president, and living through his 100th Christmas. News accounts of his presidency, including his so-called "malaise" speech in which he rightly admonished Americans for being more concerned with their possessions than their deeds, somehow seem more poignant and apt during this Holiday season, when we face living under a very
different kind of president.
On his second day in office in 1977, Carter pardoned all Vietnam War draft evaders. During his term, two new cabinet-level departments—the Department of Energy and the Department of Education—were established.
During his presidential campaign, Carter responded to a candidate survey from NORML stating that he was in favor of decriminalization of marijuana. Six months into his administration, on August 2, 1977, he issued a Drug Abuse Message to Congress stating:
Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself; and where they are, they should be changed. Nowhere is this more clear than in the laws against possession of marijuana in private for personal use. We can, and should, continue to discourage the use of marijuana, but this can be done without defining the smoker as a criminal.
States which have already removed criminal penalties for marijuana use, like Oregon and California, have not noted any significant increase in marijuana smoking. The National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse concluded five years ago that marijuana use should be decriminalized, and I believe it is time to implement those basic recommendations.
Therefore, I support legislation amending Federal law to eliminate all Federal criminal penalties for the possession of up to one ounce of marijuana.
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.
Gotta admit Trump is something of an evil genius: his ploy to call for a mutual workplace employment drug test before June's Presidential Debate may well have lead to Biden trying to perform without Jacking Up, with disastrous results for the Democrats, and the country.
Among the bizarre political incidents this year, Trump met with the 95-year-old mother of Butler, PA–born schoolteacher Marc Fogel, who has served three years of a 14-year sentence in Russian for bringing a small amount of medical marijuana into the country, just before the candidate spoke at the rally where a sniper shot at him before he could say Marc's name.
Both our Vice President / Presidential candidate Kamala Harris and Usha Chilukuri Vance, the wife of Republican Vice President-elect JD Vance, have roots in the Hindu religion, which has sacred connections to cannabis.
University of Oregon professor Stuart Ray Sarbacker writes, 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 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."
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.
Sadly, this page has been updated throughout 2024, with an emphasis on women and those connected with cannabis and its legalization, through their lives and/or work.
Carter "was way ahead of his time when he called on Congress to decriminalize marijuana in the mid-70s,” NORML founder and legal director Keith Stroup said. Read more.
Michael Brewer (April 14, 1944 - December 17, 2024)
Brewer and his partner Tom Shipley were best known for their song, "One Toke Over the Line," which they added to their set when they ran out of songs while opening for Melanie at Carnegie Hall. It was a Top 10 hit in 1971 until then-VP Spiro Agnew condemned it along with the Beatles' "With a Little Help From My Friends" and the Byrds' "Eight Miles High" as "latent drug culture propaganda," and the FCC pressured radio stations to ban it. But first, it was performed on the Lawrence Welk show, with Welk calling it "a modern spiritual." Country music's Maybelle Carter was similarly confused, wanting to sing the song she thought was a spiritual, according to her granddaughter Carlene Carter in the Ken Burns Country Music documentary series.
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, painted it yellow, installed a roof light and a meter, and joined the Yellow Cab Company in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where she 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. 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 that it was a hot-rodding term. She taught an Oprah Winfrey Show audience how to change a tire and jump start a car, and edited the book Road Trips, Head Trips, and Other Car-Crazed Writings.
Anita Holmes Johnson (May 8, 1929 - December 15, 2024)
In 1951, while studying journalism at the University of Oregon, Johnson broke a national story about a cross burning on the lawn of a sorority house because a sister there was dating a black man,. After earning her degree, she got a job at the Washington Post where she was assigned to the woman's desk, ironically so, since she had eliminated the women's page at her college paper. She went on to co-found the Eugene Weekly newspaper in 1991, and remained active at the paper until her death. The EW has published the work of 150-plus journalism students from OU and Lane Community College - more than any other professional news outlet in Oregon. The paper investigated rape allegations against two Eugen police officer who later went to prison, and recently the reported on OU officials' efforts to cover up a string of fraternity party druggings.
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 aired 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.
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 Congress on “FDA regulations” for the tobacco company Swisher International while running the Trump campaign. Common Dreams reports that she lobbied for blocking health restrictions on candy-flavored cigars.
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.
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