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of famous folk who've consumed cannabis
WALKER EVANS
Photographer
Walker Evans was an important
contributor to the development of American documentary photography in the 1930s.
His precisely detailed, frontal depictions of people and artifacts of American
life have influenced each succeeding generation of photographers.
During his lifetime Evans was the recipient of many awards. He was a Guggenheim
Fellow in 1940 and received an honorary degree from Williams College in 1968.
His photographs were exhibited all over the world, including several major shows
at the Museum of Modern Art.
Walker Evans at the age of 68 had "conspicuous tastes in pornography and
marijuana," according to a review by Henry Allen of the Walker Evans exhibit
at the New York Metropolitan Museum and a book, Unclassified: A Walker Evans
Anthology by Jeff Rosenheim and Douglas Eklund. Allen's review was published
in the New York Review of Books, March 23, 2000, p. 10.
GARY HALL
Olympic Medalist Swimmer
American Swimmer Gary Hall Jr. overcame diabetes to win four medals in the 2000
Olympic games in Sydney, Australia. He anchored the US 4x100 medley relay to
victory in world record time and also won a gold in the 50 freestyle relay,
plus a silver
medal in the 4x100 freestyle relay and a bronze in the 100 meter freestyle.
Hall nearly missed the Games
after refusing to pay a fine for marijuana use. He appealed against a three-month
suspension imposed in 1998 by world swimming's governing body FINA after he
tested positive for marijuana. FINA considered it was a second offence but Hall
maintained it should have been considered a first infraction since the first
time he tested positive -- at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics -- marijuana was not
on the list of prohibited substances. Hall refused to pay the fine, saying:
``If that means I won't compete in Sydney, then so be it. It's a matter of principle.''
However, the US swimming federation decided to pay the fine on condition that
Hall agree to conduct several swimming clinics for American youngsters without
pay, which the swimmer accepted.
Source: Phil Whitten, Four Olympic medals for pot smoker, Reuters 09-23-00
MYTH: Pot Smokers Don't Contribute to Society
DAVID HOCKNEY
Painter and collage artist; hangs in every major art museum in the world
British-born, California-residing artist David Hockey took the occasion of his exhibit at London's Royal Academy of Arts in the summer of 1999 to call for the legalization of marijuana. "I remember Jack Straw [UK's home minister] in 1968 saying 'you can't legalise marijuana as we haven't got enough information'. Thirty years later, he's said exactly the same thing. I don't know what life has taught him, I've learnt quite a lot. I've smoked a lot of marijuana. It hasn't harmed me."
Hockney said he smoked a regular "joint" with a glass of whisky in the evening. But, he hastened to add, he had never indulged in stimulants when working because "drugs and art don't mix…You have to be very clear-headed," he said. Drugs made you "too pleased with everything", and to create great work "you have to struggle".
Source: Dalya Alberge, HOCKNEY
SAYS DRUGS ARE FINE BUT NOT FOR ART, The Times (UK), May 27, 1999
Shown: Pearblossom
Highway (1986) photocollage by David Hockney.
MYTH: Scientists Say Pot Should Be Illegal
MARGARET MEAD
Anthropologist and author
When Margaret Mead died in 1978, she was the most famous anthropologist
in the world. Indeed, it was through her work that many people learned about
anthropology and its holistic vision of the human species. Mead taught at a
number of institutions, authored some twenty books and co-authored an equal
number. She was much honored in her lifetime, serving as president of major
scientific associations, including the American Anthropological Association
and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and she received
28 honorary doctorates. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom following
her death in 1978.
Mead testified before Congress in favor of the legalization of marijuana on October 27, 1969, and she told Newsweek in 1970 that she had tried it once herself.
Source: Library of Congress, Margaret Mead Collection
MYTH:
Drug Tests Detect Incompetence
ROSS REBAGLIATI
Olympic Gold Medalist Snowboarder 1998
Canadia Ross Rebagliati
won the first-ever Olympic gold medal in Snowboarding in 1998, but was almost
stripped of his medal after testing positive for marijuana after the race. Rebagliati
admitted that he had smoked marijuana in the past, but said the positive test
was the result of accidently inhaing nearby marijuana smoke at a going away
party in his hometown of Whistler, BC. The Olympic committee allowed Rebagliati
to keep his medal.
Source: Mike Downey, Rebagliati Gets to Keep Gold Medal, Los Angeles Times, 2/13/98
QUEEN
VICTORIA
Reigned Great Britain from 1837-1901
Sir John Russell Reynolds served a thirty-seven year tenure as Queen Victoria's personal physician. During his extensive services, Reynolds found cannabis useful for treating menstrual cramps, dysmenorrhea, migraine, neuralgia, epileptic convulsions, and senile insomnia. He wrote a scientific review of cannabis in 1890 that noted, "When pure and administered carefully, it is one of the most valuable medicines we possess." (J.R. Reynolds, "On the Therapeutical Uses and Toxic Effects of Cannabis Indica," Lancet 1 (1890): 637-38.)
Source: C. Conrad, Hemp for Health, 1997, Healing Arts Press (Rochester, VT)
MYTH:
Hemp is Marijuana
PANCHO
VILLA (POSSIBLE POTHEAD)
Mexican Revolutionary General
To many, Pancho Villa is
revered as a hero who pushed foreign "proprietors" out of Mexico and
fought for the common man. He was a fierce general who also helped those in
need and rescued orphans. Villa's troops were said to smoke marijuana, a term
they used for the flowering tops of the hemp plant (pos-sibly named for a juana
(female soldier) in Villa's army.) The folk song "La Cucaracha" tells
of a cockroach who cannot function because he lacks marijuana to smoke.
During the Spanish American
War, Villa's troops seized 800,000 acres of prime timberland from newspaperman
William Randolph Hearst. Hearst soon began a smear campaign against marijuana,
claiming its dark-skinned users turned murderous. The campaign was useful in
racist attempts to deny Mexican laborers work in the U.S. Americans didn't realize
the scary-sounding drug marijuana was in fact their old friend Cannabis hemp.
Hemp is perhaps the most useful natural resource on the planet, a source of
paper, fiber, fuel, food, and medicine, which continues to be denied to mankind
due to ignorance and fear.
Source: J. Herer, The Emperor Wears No Clothes
POSSIBLE
POTHEAD
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Playwright and poet
Clay pipe fragments excavated from Shakespeare's Stratford-upon-Avon home contain small amounts of cocaine and myristic acid - a hallucinogenic derived from plants, including nutmeg. The pipes, which were examined with the help of Inspector Tommie van der Merwe of the South African Police Service's Forensic Science Laboratory, also show hints of residues of cannabis. The findings were published in the South African Journal of Science.
Source: E. Stoddard, Pipes show cocaine smoked in Shakespeare's England, Reuters, March 1, 2001.
Evidence of cannabis use by Shakespeare is also found in Sonnet #76, the "noted weed" sonnet:
Why is my verse so barren
of new pride,
So far from variation or quick change?
Why with the time do I not glance aside
To new-found methods and to compounds strange?
Why write I still all one, ever the same,
And keep invention in a noted weed,
That every word doth almost tell my name,
Showing their birth, and where they did proceed?
O, know, sweet love, I always write of you,
And you and love are still my argument;
So all my best is dressing old words new,
Spending again what is already spent:
For as the sun is daily new and old,
So is my love still telling what is told.
POSSIBLE
POTHEAD
GEORGE WASHINGTON
Father of Our Country
Washington's diary reports that he
separated males from females in his hemp garden, "rather too late."
Much speculation has ensued about whether or not Washington's reason for sexing
his plants was to make a more smokable product. One thing is for sure: hemp
was grown in the US colonies as far back as Jamestown, with several colonies
ordering their farmers to grow it. Thomas Paines's pamphlet Common Sense lists
hemp as the first requirement for revolution, writing that in the colonies "hemp
flourishes almost to rankness." Thomas Jefferson also grew hemp on his
plantation and went to great lengths to smuggle hemp seeds out of China. Jared
Eliot wrote, "I am informed by my worthy friend Benjamin Franklin, Esq.,
of Philadelphia, that they raise hemp upon their drained lands.
SOURCE: C. Conrad, Hemp: Lifeline to the Future, p. 25.
See our Main Page with links to over 200 stories
of famous folk who've consumed cannabis