Carlos Santana (b. July 20, 1947 )
Guitar God Carlos Santana, who burst on the scene with an incendiary performance at Woodstock, said in April 2009 he wants to see legal pot. "Legalize marijuana and take all that money and invest it in teachers and in education. You will see a transformation in America," he said in an interview.
Santana said making pot legal is "really way overdue, like the prohibition with the alcohol....I really believe that as soon as we legalize and decriminalize marijuana we can actually afford a really good governor who won't keep taking money away from education and from teachers and send him back to Hollywood where he can do 'D' movies and we can get an 'A' governor," referring to VIP Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Santana, whose incendiary performance at Woodstock in 1969 put him permanently on the charts, was busted at Houston Airport in 1991 for transporting five grams of marijuana from Mexico.
I met him in January 1999 in Albuquerque and invited him to our Hemp convention; he declined due to time pressures of his tour, but blessed the venture and was delivered a packet of products and information. In December of that year, he told reporters in Mexico City, "Marijuana is not a drug and if factories are set up here to make clothes, tofu cheese, medicine and paper from marijuana, we won't have to chop down so many trees."
The musician has also opened a chain of exquisite restaurants with delicious food, named for his tune "Maria Maria" in Danville ad Walnut Creek CA.
Photo by Chris Hakkens via Wikimedia Commons