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Top 50 Most Influential Marijuana Consumers
The Marijuana Policy Project's list of the Top 50 Most Influential Marijuana Consumers is intended to identify individuals who have used marijuana and achieved high levels of success or influence. It was created using the criteria employed by Out Magazine to produce its "Power 50" list of LGBT Americans, including “power to influence cultural and social attitudes, political clout, individual wealth, and a person’s media profile.”
To qualify for MPP’s list, individuals must (1) be alive, (2) be a U.S. citizen, and (3) have consumed marijuana at least once in their life according to either their own account or that of a legitimate source. They do not need to currently consume marijuana or support marijuana policy reform.
This list was assembled and selected from a non-partisan position; placement on this list does not indicate endorsement or support from MPP or MPP Foundation.
1. Sen. Bernie Sanders (VT)
"I smoked marijuana twice — didn’t quite work for me. It’s not my thing, but it is the thing of a whole lot of people."
Source: Yahoo News
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
2. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (CA)
"the first time in a year and a half that I had a decent night’s sleep because the arthritis pain was gone..."
Source: The Washington Post
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
3. Sen. Ted Cruz (TX)
Cruz spokesperson: "When [Cruz] was a teenager, he foolishly experimented with marijuana. It was a mistake, and he’s never tried it since."
Source: Daily Mail
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
4. Barack Obama
"When I was a kid, I inhaled. Frequently. That was the point."
Source: YouTube
Photo: Wikipedia
5. Clarence Thomas
"The White House said today that Judge Clarence Thomas, President Bush's Supreme Court nominee, had smoked marijuana while in college."
Source: New York Times
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
6. Stephen Colbert
"First, [in high school], I smoked a lot of pot...and that’s how I got to know the people ‘half in’ the society of my high school and we waved at each other over the bong. Then I got to know people by making jokes."
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
7. Oprah Winfrey
"Uh … 1982. I hear it's gotten better." [In response to a question about when she last consumed marijuana.]
Source: New York Daily News
Photo: WhiteHouse.gov
8. Bill Clinton
"When I was in England, I experimented with marijuana a time or two."
Source: NBC News
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
9. George Soros
"He said he had tried marijuana, enjoyed it, 'but it did not become a habit and I have not tasted it in many years.'"
Source: Reuters 2/6/97
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
10. Bill Gates
"As for drugs – well, Gates was certainly not unusual there. Marijuana was the pharmaceutical of choice…"
Source: Gates: How Microsoft's Mogul Reinvented an Industry -- and Made Himself the Richest Man in America
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
11. Jon Stewart
"Do you know how many movies I wrote when I was high?"
Source: The Daily Show
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
12. Bill Maher
"Look, I have never made a secret of the fact that I have tried marijuana... About 50,000 times."
Source: YouTube
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
13. Gov. John Hickenlooper (CO)
"As I've already been open about in the past — and as I assume many would expect — I made personal choices when I was younger that I neither support nor condone for others and certainly wouldn't encourage through public policy."
Source: Denver Daily News
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
14. Roger Stone
"Only when I’m in the states where it’s legal."
Source: The Hill
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
15. Sen. Rand Paul (KY)
"Let’s just say I wasn’t a choir boy when I was in college and that I can recognize that kids make mistakes, and I can say that I made mistakes when I was a kid." [In response to a question about whether he ever consumed marijuana. Also, one of his college friends said, "Randy smoked pot."]
Source: The Hill
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
16. Rihanna
"Kush rolled, glass full...I prefer the better things!"
Source: Daily Mail
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
17. Rush Limbaugh
"Admitted to Playboy in 1993 that he smoked marijuana twice, inhaled, but didn’t like it."
Source: Politico
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
18. Jay Z
"I smoked some weed, and that’s how I finished 'Izzo.'"
Source: XXL Magazine
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
19. Jordan Peele
"The answer is a resounding yes." [When asked if he smokes as much weed as he implies on the show.]
Source: Reddit
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
20. LeBron James
"James also revealed he and his teammates smoked marijuana one night after getting access to a hotel room in Akron."
Source: ESPN
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
21. Eugene Monroe
"He prefers to say that he's "medicating" or "taking my medicine" or, most often, using or consuming cannabis."
Source: ESPN
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
22. Jim McMahon
"This medical marijuana has been a godsend. It relieves me of the pain — or thinking about it, anyway."
Source: Chicago Tribune
Photo: Chicago Sun Times
23. Gov. Charlie Baker (MA)
"At one of the gubernatorial debates, Baker said he had smoked marijuana in the past."
Source: boston.com
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
24. Jay Williams
"Our culture is progressive about a lot of things, but in some corners, marijuana is still vilified and misunderstood. I believe that marijuana, which many experts agree is less addictive and less prone to overdose than pain meds like OxyContin, must be an integral part of the conversation about how we treat pain in our everyday lives."
Source: The Players' Tribune
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
25. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
"I use it to control the nausea which comes with the headaches."
Source: ABC News
Photo: Wikipedia
26. Gov. Andrew Cuomo (NY)
"I did experiment with marijuana when I was a youth."
Source: NY Daily News
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
27. Stephen King
"I think that marijuana should not only be legal, I think it should be a cottage industry. It would be wonderful for the state of Maine. There’s some pretty good homegrown dope. I’m sure it would be even better if you could grow it with fertilizers and have greenhouses. . . ."
Source: Civilized.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
28. Dave Grohl
I recently thought, "Oh, I’m going to start smoking pot again to cure insomnia. I’d put the kids to bed, go upstairs and smoke a bit of pot. But then I’d get stuck in front of the Kardashians on TV for 45 minutes. And it freaked me out. I was like, 'I’m never doing this ever again. It’s definitely not for me.'"
Source: Ultimate Classic Rock
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
29. Wiz Khalifa
"We all need weed sometimes."
Source: Twitter
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
30. Emma Stone
"We went to Disneyland. We ate pot brownies. It was literally heaven," Garfield said, winning the award for best birthday celebration ever. "How about Space Mountain three times in a row?"
Source: Maxim
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
31. George W. Bush
"I wouldn't answer the marijuana questions. You know why? Because I don't want some little kid doing what I tried."
Source: New York Times
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
32. Whoopi Goldberg
"The vape pen has changed my life. No, I’m not exaggerating. In fact, her name is Sippy. Yes, she’s a she. And yes, I named her Sippy because I take tiny, little sips — sassy sips, even — from her. And with each sip comes relief — from pressure, pain, stress, discomfort."
Source: TIME
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
33. Neil deGrasse Tyson
"The last time I was like, in a cloud of it? That's how people spoke."
Source: The Washington Post
Photo: Wikipedia
34. Justin Timberlake
"The only thing pot does for me is it gets me to stop thinking. Sometimes I have a brain that needs to be turned off. Some people are just better high."
Source: Us Weekly
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
35. Dr. Dre
"Yeah." [In response to "So you actually smoked 'the chronic,' that particular strain?]
Source: GQ, 2007
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
36. Lady Gaga
"I take a puff and I'm me when I was 17 again in my white gogo boots looking for a job and there's something quite creative and liberating about that."
Source: Daily Mail
Photo: Wikipedia
37. Ted Turner
"Turner reportedly grew pot in his college dorm room."
Source: Civilized.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
38. Montel Williams
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Source:
Photo:
39. Aaron Sorkin
"From time to time, I would smoke pot. Granted — it's illegal."
Source: Fox News
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
40. Morgan Freeman
"My first wife got me into it many years ago. I have fibromyalgia pain in this arm, and the only thing that offers any relief is marijuana."
Source: Us Weekly
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
41. John Kerry
"Yes." [In response to the question, "Which of you are ready to admit to having used marijuana in the past?"]
Source: The New York Times
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
42. Michael Bloomberg
"You bet I did. And I enjoyed it."
Source: New York Times
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
43. Snoop Dogg
"It makes me feel the way I need to feel."
Source: Esquire
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
44. Rick Steves
"I have used cannabis all over the world."
Source: LA Weekly
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
45. Jack Nicholson
"These days the hard drugs are gone, but he continues to smoke cannabis."
Source: Daily Telegraph
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
46. Susan Sarandon
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
47. Al Gore
"The next day, Gore told reporters that he had been an 'infrequent and rare' marijuana smoker, nothing more than a few times at Harvard, 'once or twice' while off duty in Vietnam and occasionally as a divinity student and journalist in Nashville."
Source: Newsweek
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
48. Danny DeVito
"We both had long hair. I was a hippy and so was he. We were the only ones. We bonded over pot. He’s still that hippy at heart."
Source: Civilized.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
49. Sanjay Gupta
"I have tried it."
Source: CNN
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
50. Willie Nelson
"I think people need to be educated to the fact that marijuana is not a drug."
Source: LA Times
Photo: Wikimedia Commons