Celebrities often go through trends in regard to their relationship with weed. There’s been a trend of celebrities starting weed businesses, another trend of celebrities quitting weed, and yet another trend of celebrities blaming weed for their problems. According to Max Simon, CEO of Green Flower Media, that last trend needs to stop.
“If you look at history so far, it’s been very easy to demonize cannabis as something that makes you irresponsible, lazy, or a bad person,” says Simon. “The science today is painting a very different picture of the benefits cannabis can provide. But the problem with the media blaming weed for celebrities’ downfall is that it’s still a really easy target.”
If you look at the stats, Simon explains, a majority of cannabis users are high functioning, successful, family oriented people who benefit from the plant and use it mindfully. “It’s a scapegoat used by the media and the press to spin a story into something that isn’t supported by the reality of what cannabis looks like and who’s using it today,” says Simon.
For instance, the role of cannabis in the Brangelina break up was blown far out of proportion, he says. “There was the whole focus of Angelina Jolie getting divorced from Brad Pitt because he was a ‘marijuana addict,’ endangering the safety of the children and being a bad husband,” Simon says. “There are a lot of reasons why relationships fail. That was a perfect example of nobody knowing the whole story and it was slated to make Brad look like a terrible irresponsible person, with a lot of it revolving around cannabis.”
Moreover, Simon adds, you don’t often see headlines about all the business moguls whose marriages fell apart because they were working 20 hours a day — so why pin the Brangelina break up on cannabis? “There’s an enormous amount of people whose addiction to work, alcohol, or power is the demise of their life, not cannabis,” he says.
Another celebrity, pro football player Eugene Monroe was ostracized from the NFL because he advocated in favor of cannabis, citing its benefits for players to use for pain relief and brain injury. “He wasn’t even a cannabis user while he was playing in the NFL,” says Simon. “His pure association with it caused him to get dropped from the team. You see stuff like that, and even with legalization happening and public support for medical marijuana, it’s an outdated narrative.”
