Brittney Griner (b. October 18, 1990)
Brittney Griner made international headines when she was caught bringing two cannabis vape pens containing less than a gram of hash oil into Russia in March 2022. A seven-time WNBA All-Star center for the Phoenix Mercury, Griner won Olympic gold medals with the U.S. women’s national basketball team in 2016 and 2021. She had played for the Russian team UMMC Ekaterinburg for several years, like many WNBA players who aren't paid anything like their male counterparts are in the US.
Griner, who said she noticed an inordinate amount of customs agents at the airport the day she was arrested, never denied carrying the vape pens, only saying it was an oversight that she packed them in her luggage. On the witness stand at her trial, she said that she used cannabis to deal with the pain from injuries she's suffered during her career. "The benefits from medical cannabis definitely outweigh the painkillers that they prescribe," she said. "The painkillers have really bad side effects. Medical cannabis, there are honestly no side effects that harm you."
Found guilty and sentenced to nine years in prison, Griner received a great deal of support and pressure for her release, from people like Very Important Pothead Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Rep. Shelia Jackson-Lee. Ben Proudfoot, upon winning an Oscar for the documentary short "The Queen of Basketball," took the occasion to say, "President Biden, bring Brittney Griner home." NBA champ Steph Curry gave a shout-out to Griner on her birthday at the Warriors Ring Ceremony in October 2022, and he and Megan Rapinoe--the soccer star with a Portland-based CBD company--spoke of Griner's plight at the ESPY Awards that July, the same month that Rapinoe was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom wearing a blazer with the initials ‘BG’ and a flower embroidered onto the lapel in tribute to Griner.
In December 2022, President Biden announced Griner would be released in exchange for arms dealer Victor Bout. After she came home, she called for the release of other Amercians "wrongfully detained" in foreign prisons, and wrote a book about her experiences. Named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine in 2023, she returned to basketball, and was part of the US Olympic team that won the Gold Medal at the 2024 Olympics in Paris.