Celebrities

Morgan Freeman Speaks Out in Strong Favor of Legalization, Source: http://hempbeach.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/morgan-freeman.jpgLongtime hero of the cannabis movement, Morgan Freeman, is back at it again, touting the seemingly endless benefits of cannabis and calling for “across the board” legalization.

The following is an excerpt from Freeman’s most recent statement on cannabis to the Daily Beast:

“They used to say, ‘You smoke that stuff, boy, you get hooked!…How do I take it? However it comes! I’ll eat it, drink it, smoke it, snort it! This movement is really a long time coming, and it’s getting legs—longer legs. Now, the thrust is understanding that alcohol has no real medicinal use. Maybe if you have one drink it’ll quiet you down, but two or three and you’re fucked… I have fibromyalgia pain in this arm, and the only thing that offers any relief is marijuana. They’re talking about kids who have grand mal seizures, and they’ve discovered that marijuana eases that down to where these children can have a life. That right there, to me, says, ‘Legalize it across the board!’”

Freeman is a widely loved figure and regarded as an intelligent, respected man. It does my heart much good to hear him echoing my own thoughts about cannabis and the truly dangerous alcohol. The steamroller of the cannabis wave is gaining more momentum every day.

We are seeing a lot more acceptance these days, but the countermeasure to that acceptance is a push to really find something dangerous and scary about cannabis. You see headlines all the time that read something like, “Man high on marijuana crashes his speeding car, killing his passengers.” Yet, only when you read beyond the ad-selling hook of the articles will you find out that the driver was also drunk, or on meth, or had a history of reckless driving and that his passengers weren’t wearing seat belts.

We are also seeing more and more studies popping up that question the safety and efficacy of cannabis. So far, everything substantial that has been discovered has been positive. And that will continue to be the case. For every “marijuana kills your memory” and “weed causes schizophrenia” article you see, you can easily find ten more that illustrate how it has ameliorated some formerly intractable pain or stopped the seizures of some child. Dig all you like and let the media machine churn till its gears jam, you just won’t find any compelling reasons to put cannabis back in the corner like Baby from Dirty Dancing.

Naysayers want so desperately to find some hidden aspect of cannabis that will justify their fear-mongering and reawaken the black days of prohibition. How long can they keep wasting everyone’s time trying to find a boogeyman that simply doesn’t exist? Humans have used cannabis for thousands of years with basically no measurable negative effects, what are they actually hoping to find?

I want to say a hearty “thank you” to Morgan Freeman. I’ve been a fan of his since I was a kid, but now I feel like he’s a kindred spirit, one of us — a true weedist.