This week, we hear from a bevy of celebrities about cannabis, from long-time Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek trippin’ hard on some potent potables edibles, Larry Flint lashing out at the Trump administration, Bill Nye the Science Guy throwing shade at stoned ultimate frisbee players, and Woody Harrelson revealing which of his dinner companions was so narcissistic, he had to smoke a joint to get through the meal.
Plus, President Macron’s got a healthy nose, Chris Christie whinges about cannabis for the umpteenth time, and Singapore’s Home Affairs Minister is not impressed with Colorado’s legalization experiment. Here’s a roundup of quotes from the past week.
“Trump’s failure to mention Big Pharma is like attacking gambling and extortion rackets without mentioning the Mafia, or crystal meth without mentioning Mexican drug cartels. The President’s plan will address all of the symptoms, but not the root cause of the problem: Big Pharma’s greed and deception. Instead he’s letting his throwback attorney general wage war against the one cheap, totally safe alternative to these highly addictive and deadly drugs—cannabis. Oh, and guess which state has the highest rate of prescription opioid use in America: none other than Sessions’ own Alabama.”
– Hustler founder Larry Flynt, who issued a statement criticizing President Trump’s anemic declaration of a national opioid emergency while Attorney General Jeff Sessions continues to “[wage] federal war on states tha thave legalized marijuana for recreational consumption.” Flynt cited a study funded by the National Institutes of Health that showed legal medical marijuana states have experienced a reduction in opioid overdose deaths.
“So, there are some of you who do not only smoke cigarettes, huh?”
– French President Emmanuel Macron, who detected the scent of cannabis in the air during his visit to French Guiana. He joked to the crowd, “I still have a nose,” and advised, “That will not help with your schoolwork.”
“Marijuana legalization will lead to more drug use, not less drug use, will lead to more death not less death, and the national institute of drug abuse has proven it. There is no reason, if I told you today that anything would make your child two and a half time more likely to be addicted to opioids, you would be getting them as far away from it as you possibly could.”
– New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who was the keynote speaker at an annual conference in Indiana that focuses on the state’s opioid and prescription drug crisis. Christie is famously anti-cannabis.
“Colorado has chosen not to measure the outcomes of legalised marijuana, paying more attention to the commercialisation…People have referenced this as the grand experiment…and the only outcome they measure is the tax revenue, and that’s shameful and a disgrace.”
– Singapore’s Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam, speaking at a forum about combating drug use
“Now when I played ultimate frisbee very seriously, these guys I would play with would get high and they sucked when they were high.”
– Bill Nye the Science Guy talking to Now This about the need to push for more cannabis research (while also citing poor ultimate frisbee skills as a negative effect of cannabis consumption). He admitted he doesn’t like cannabis or the smell of it but encourages those of us who do to “knock [our]selves out.”
“It was brutal. It was brutal. Uh, I’d never met a more narcissistic man. He talked about himself the whole time…I had to walk out like halfway through, smoke a joint, just to, just to like, steel myself for the rest of the dinner. It was brutal.”
– Woody Harrelson recounting to Bill Maher about the time he had dinner with Donald Trump
“I had just arrived in California and went to a friend’s house for dinner, and there were brownies. I love brownies—I’m a chocoholic—and I didn’t realize that they were hash brownies. And… whoa. That threw me for a loop. I took down about a half-dozen. The dinner party was on a Friday, and I was not able to leave that house until Sunday afternoon. I spent the next day and a half in bed. It was not a good trip, and I have not done any of that stuff since!”
– Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek to The Daily Beast, in which he recounts the time he first arrived in California and attended a “swanky party at a friend’s house” that had some extremely potent edibles available for consumption
