Like the outspoken celebrity weed lovers before him, actor/comedian Seth Rogen has made it quite clear he has no problem with marijuana, legal or otherwise. The star of The Pineapple Express, This Is The End, Knocked Up, and Superbadhas almost made weed a co-star in his movies.
Rogan recently spoke with The New York Times about his feelings concerning the still-alive resistance to legalized cannabis. In fact, he has boldly stated that keeping weed illegal is simply an underhanded way to just “put black people in jail.”
The actor speaks of how for decades illegal marijuana has been disproportionately managed. Though studies attest as many whites as blacks smoke recreationally, it’s almost four times more likely a person of color will see jail time for indulging.
This imbalance stands regardless of where in America weed arrests were taking place. The “war on drugs” has been a great success if the point was to decimate BIPOC communities and keep its residents disenfranchised.
Rogen and his longtime business partner, Evan Goldberg, founded their cannabis company Houseplant. Rogen’s also a member of the non-profit National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Law, an organization advocating for legalization across the country, medically and recreationally.
Rogen made sure to let us know he felt the purpose of keeping cannabis illegal was, in fact, “racist.” He says marijuana is “a tool we use to make our experience more palatable, and some people need those tools a lot more than others. … It’s insane to arrest people for something that never should have been illegal in the first place. It’s just a way to put black people in jail.
“For me it’s like shoes. For you it might be like sunglasses. Not everyone’s the same. If someone doesn’t need to smoke weed? Great. It’s the same as someone telling me they don’t wear glasses. ‘Mazel tov! You don’t wear glasses. I do!’”
In 2020, Rogen was a sponsor of “Reimagining Justice: Race, Cannabis, and Policing.” Organized by the Marijuana Policy Project, the event revolved around the war on drugs and the unfair targeting of blacks, even as legal cannabis expands and white business owners heavily profit off the new industry.
In that regard, Rogen and Goldberg worked with National Expungement Week to raise awareness and to educate individuals convicted of weed charges on getting their records expunged.
Rogen says he uses his films to highlight how marijuana can be a natural part of your lifestyle and how all the backlash is actually funny. Houseplant uses that thinking, being a home not just for getting strains like Pancake Ice, which boasts 30 percent THC levels, but a site for ceramic home products. Houseplantlaunched in March 2021 in Cali dispensaries and offers shipping. The site crashed shortly after it launched as many of Rogen’s Twitter followers tried to get in.
“If you know anything about me at all, I am going to assume it’s that I really love weed,” Rogen said on Twitter.
