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Celebrities and Marijuana in the News

• Woody Harrelson has most recently been involved with backing Medical Marijuana Patient & Caregiver B.E. Smith in his trial and on July 29th, Harrelson and Smith's Defense Lawyers Called for a Reduced Sentence for Smith. For more information on B.E. Smith and this trial visit our CommUnity/Drug War Victims/B E Smith category.
• Harrelson is also on the board of a new foundation called AHEMP "Artists Helping End Marijuana Prohibition" at http://www.ahemp.org. AHEMP is a nonprofit membership organization comprised of people in the all of the arts, writing, performing, musical, visual, and athletics.
• In August '97, he also put up $500,000 in bail for Todd McCormick, a medical marijuana proponent.
• He has endorsed a hiking shoe made of hemp and funded a hemp museum in kentucky. He was also arrested for planting 4 hemp seeds in Kentucky.
• For more information and links on Woody Harrelson, visit our CommUnity/Celebrities/Woody_Harrelson category.

• Tommy Chong, famous for his part in Cheech and Chong movies has continued to be involved in the marijuana culture. He recently appeared on www.nightravenradio.com for a live real audio interview.
• His most recent movie which he produced was "Best Buds". Visit Tommy Chong's website at http://www.tommychong.com

• Ann Landers, the famous advice columnist, replied to a distraught mother whose son had been arrested for a small amount of marijuana with refreshing honesty in her column on January 5, 1999. "I have long believed that the laws regarding marijuana are too harsh.  Those who keep pot for their own personal use should not be treated as criminals. Thirty years in prison makes no sense whatsoever.  I'm with you."
  Text of the full column courtesy of Media Awareness Project
• Ann also wrote a letter to the Marijuana Policy Project in 1996, expressing her agreement with MPP's statement that adults should be allowed to grow and consume marijuana in the privacy of their own homes.
  Description of events and and scan of Ann Landers letter from MPP
• Ann can be contacted via her webpage located at http://www.creators.com/lifestyle/landers/writelan.asp

• Prince Charles has joined the medical cannabis debate. In a conversation with a Multiple Sclerosis sufferer in December '98, the prince inquired whether she had experimented with alternative remedies.  "He asked me if I had tried taking cannabis, saying he understood that, under strict medical supervision, it was one of the best things for it."
  News article from the Media Awareness Project

• Ross Rebagliati the Canadian Olympic snowboarder and Gold Medal winner tested positive for marijuana at the '98 Winter Olympic games in Nagano. Instead of this harming his endorsement potential, it may have helped. Marketers have realized that having an "anti-drug" – meaning anti-marijuana image can actually be a negative when appealing to the Canadian youth market.
  News articles from marijuananews.com

• Bob Denver more commonly known as Gilligan, received six months probation in August '98 after being arrested for signing for a package containing about 30 grams of marijuana. Denver told police that the pot was for personal use and not medicinal purposes.
  News article from Mr. ShowBiz
  Follow-up article from Mr. ShowBiz

• Queen Latifa was arrested in February '96 when police found marijuana in her car.
  Brief mention of this from Mr. ShowBiz

• James Brown was charged with marijuana possession in January '98. The sixty-four-year-old Godfather of Soul was released on bond, and he quickly explained that he uses the kind bud for medicinal reasons. "I have bad eyes," he told Augusta, Georgia's Chronicle newspaper.
  News article from Mr. ShowBiz

• Paul McCartney who was arrested in Japan  in 1980 for possession of marijuana, said in September '97 that he believes the drug should be legalized. "I support decriminalization. People are smoking pot anyway and to make them criminal is wrong," he told New Statesmen magazine. In his biography the fifty-six-year-old musician reminisces about the early days of Beatlemania, telling how he was "turned on to pot" by Bob Dylan in a New York hotel room in 1964. Two years later in London, he gave Rolling Stone Mick Jagger his first joint.
  News article from Mr. ShowBiz
  Second news article from Mr. ShowBiz
  Another article from Mr. ShowBiz

• Candice Bergen in her role as Murphy Brown touched on the issue of medical marijuana in November '97 when the episode "Waiting to Inhale" was aired. Murphy Brown was shown smoking a joint to ease the discomfort of her chemotherapy treatments.

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