The toke torch is
being passed in Tinseltown.
It used to be that
Hollywood potheads were grizzled and off-the-mainstream grid — think Cheech
& Chong and Willie Nelson. Then edgy rappers like Snoop Dogg and Cypress
Hill became the famous faces of marijuana, with a couple of mischievous Texans
thrown in: Woody Harrelson and a naked-and-bong-playing Matthew McConaughey.
Today's stars caught
with cannabis? Meet the mostly twentysomething toke turks: They're the
antithesis of counterculture, including heartthrobs like Justin Bieber, Chace
Crawford, Michael Phelps and Armie Hammer. And then there's Rihanna, who
readily flaunts her affection for the illegal flora, posting pictures of her
Valentine's present (a bouquet of weed), 25th birthday cake (adorned with a
gilded marijuana leaf) and Christmastime tush tattoo (yep, another leaf of
weed).
Two years ago Lady
Gaga told Anderson Cooper on60 Minutes: "I smoke a lot of pot when
I write music." Justin Timberlake was casually candid to Playboy about
his cannabis use: "Some people are just better high." Last year
Kristen Stewart told Vanity Fair her pot-smoking was no "big
deal."
The transgressions and
admissions are clearly not affecting these young celebrities' careers: Bieber
cheekily apologized in a Saturday Night Live spoof last month;
Rihanna seemed to get as many high fives as head shakes for her ganja gift. On
New Year's Eve, Frank Ocean got cited for pot possession in California. Three
days later, he tweeted the following formality: "hi guys, i smoke pot. ok
guys, bye." And the issue all but went up in smoke.
Ditto Crawford and
Hammer, who were each arrested in Texas for marijuana possession, in 2010 and
2011 respectively. In 2009, a British tabloid infamously ran a photo of Phelps
inhaling from a bong. The swimmer swiftly apologized in a statement and, in a
big barometer of public approval, lost only one major sponsor — Kellogg.
Subway, Speedo and Omega kept their deals afloat. The incident proved more P.R.
puddle than tsunami.
It was a far cry from
what befell Jennifer Capriati when she was busted for pot possession in 1994 at
age 18: The tennis prodigy lost valuable endorsements, including contracts with
Diadora clothing and Prince rackets and a reported three-year, $2 million deal
with Oil of Olay. Capriati became better known for her nose-ring-adorned mug
shot than her moisturizer advertising spot.
Nowadays, when stars
and marijuana mix, "nobody cares. Society has moved on," says Howard
Bragman, a longtime Hollywood publicist and the vice chairman of Reputation.com,
a reputation management company. "It's not in the top 10 of what bad
things celebrities can do. I would much rather have a client get caught smoking
a joint than a DUI. One is potential harm to yourself and one is potential harm
to other people, and that's a huge" difference.
"Nobody smokes a
joint and gets violent," Bragman continues. "They get violent with a
bag of Doritos. That's about the worst thing that happens."
Igniting pot's shift
into pop, of course, is the marijuana legalization movement, which gained major
momentum in November, when measures passed in Colorado and Washington state.
Last year the number of states allowing medical marijuana use rose to 18 plus Washington,
D.C.
Attitudes have
relaxed. A late November USA TODAY/Gallup poll found that nearly half (48%) of
Americans think marijuana should be legal. Among 18- to 29-year-olds, a robust
60% said yes to legalization. Only about a third of the country approved of
such initiatives as recently as 2005. And when Gallup first asked about the
issue back in 1969, a mere 12% supported legalizing pot.
"As more states
embrace marijuana law reform, the cultural stigma surrounding cannabis will
continue to wane, thus opening the door for more public figures to express
their support and be more candid regarding their own private cannabis
consumption," says Paul Armentano, deputy director for NORML, the
marijuana decriminalization organization.
And the movement is
happy to embrace these new pot poster kids. "The truth about mainstream
artists coming out of the closet openly about cannabis is that the younger
generation has come to form a natural alliance with their parents and baby
boomers," says Norm Kent, the chair of the board of directors of NORML.
"NORML welcomes partners from senior citizens to radio hosts, from pop
artists to Olympic athletes who have shared their bongs with buddies."
Indeed, "I
promise the parents of Bieber kids smoked pot," Bragman says, "and I think
that's the big factor" in why the pop prince went relatively unscathed for
blazing up a blunt early this year.
Even some of their
grandparents smoked pot, and still do. Tommy Chong, who, at 74, is the age of
many a Bieber fan's grandfather, says the recent rash of young star smokers
"validates what I've known all my life," that marijuana stokes his
artistic spark. "I directed five major motion pictures and won a Grammy
for writing comedy. And I owe it all to marijuana, because it wasn't until I
found the weed that I became creative … that things started to flow for
me." He's cut way back these days personally, but professionally, he's
still got a buzz: the new Cheech and Chong's Animated Movie gets
a limited theatrical release on April 18 (yes, perfectly synced to the 4-20
high holiday).
Chong, a NORML
advisory board member for 10 years, says he's "very proud" of this
new generation of reefer respect. "These talented kids are realizing the
benefits of pot and they're indulging."
And they're helping
fuel society's tolerance for pot. "One way in which pot can become
normalized and more accepted is if people who are admired by the general public
are seen admitting to enjoying it and it's not some horrible demon drug,"
says Mike Hughes, a reporter for High Times, the pro-cannabis
legalization magazine, and the host of The High Times News Hit, a marijuana
news podcast.
All of which, not
surprisingly, unsettles members of the anti-cannabis community. "It's
extremely unfortunate and very irresponsible of (young stars) to promote this
kind of a lifestyle to young people. Whether we like it or not, they are role
models," says Calvina Fay, executive director of the Drug Free American
Foundation, who has noticed Hollywood's trend toward mainstream marijuana use.
"It's just really the wrong message to be sending."
"We really need
to protect our children from this, not give them permission to smoke pot,"
Fay says. Until 2012, marijuana use among teens increased for four straight
years, according to the annual Monitoring the Future survey, sponsored by the
National Institute on Drug Abuse. Last year, the rates flattened, to 36%, 28%
and 11% for 12th-, 10th- and 8th-graders, respectively. Since 1991, the
percentage of teens who see "great risk" in using pot regularly has
steeply declined.
When Emerson College
marketing communications professor Kristin Lieb asked a class of juniors and
seniors about celebrities and pot, they shrugged off the issue. "To them,
it's a recreational drug used recreationally that isn't very threatening to
anyone," says Lieb, author of the just-released book Gender,
Branding and the Modern Music Industry: The Social Construction of Female
Popular Music Stars.
"For the
generation of fans that make up these celebrities' primary fan base — ages 12
to 34, let's say — marijuana just isn't 'bad' anymore. And if its use is
normalized, then the 'revelation' of use by a celebrity isn't a revelation at
all," says Anne Helen Petersen is a film and media studies professor at
Whitman College in Walla Walla, Wash., who's at work on a book about scandal
and Hollywood.
What would be
problematic when it comes to stars and drugs? "They wouldn't want to see
one of their favorite artists take meth because it might mean they are hurting
themselves," Lieb says about her Boston students.
No wonder Gaga and
Rihanna aren't concerned about going public with their cannabis consumption:
"It's just not that big of a deal within their target markets," Lieb
says. (And no wonder Bieber did apologize: His market skews far younger.) "For
Lady Gaga, this might be the least controversial thing she's done in her
career," Lieb says.
For Rihanna,
celebrating pot "will not even register as blip on anyone's radar
screen," she says. "Her lyrics are going to get way more attention
than her smoking a joint." (Remember her 2011 song S&M?)
"Rihanna's brand is aggressively unwholesome," and indeed, "her
marijuana consumption is an integral part of her brand identity."
Nor will she, or any
of these smoking stars, register as a chirp on any police scanner.
"Marijuana is probably at the bottom of the list of things that
prosecutors want to prosecute, especially when you're talking about small
amounts" for personal use, such as a joint or dime bag, says New York
criminal defense and trial attorney Stuart Slotnick. "You can't prosecute
when you don't actually have marijuana," he says. "You may believe
it's marijuana in the picture, but you cannot prove that case beyond a reasonable
doubt."
The authorities get
interested when large quantities are involved. "Law enforcement is
concerned with people who deal marijuana and not so much with people who smoke
marijuana," Slotnick says. "This is a personal choice and a personal
lifestyle that's more and more accepted by society today. While it may be
offensive to some people, it's not likely to get great attention by law
enforcement."
A celebrity's image
takes a P.R. hit, however, when taking a hit is seen as off-brand.
"Culturally, we can't stand a hypocrite," Lieb says. And sure,
Bieber's foray into illegal fumes was brand-detouring, but it was also
humanizing. "Here is this 19-year-old boy growing up in the public making
the sort of mistakes that other 19-year-olds make," Lieb says. "It
reminds us that he is becoming a grown-up and probably is going to want to make
different kinds of music." And "anything that sort of ages his brand
is something that could be useful in building a long-term brand strategy."
Which points to the
upside of a celebrity's brush with weed: It can burnish an image. Lady Gaga's
acknowledgment "only makes her cooler," Hughes says.
But as more mainstream
stars embrace pot and as pot becomes more mainstream, does pot undergo an
existential crisis -- does it lose its, well, cool?
Hughes remembers when,
eight years ago, Urban Outfitters started selling a pot cookbook kit complete
with marijuana-leaf-shaped cookie cutters. "At the time, it occurred to me
that the reason pot is — and has been — so cool is because of its history of
being anti-establishment. So the idea of the establishment endorsing it and
turning it into mainstream pop culture struck me as the antithesis of what pot
stands for."
But "the
marijuana movement needs to be embraced by the establishment in order to
progress. And pot hasn't lost any of its 'cool' factor as it has received
increasing mainstream support."
Still, Hughes foresees a potentially flipped
future for the formerly derided drug. "It is possible that, years down the
line — assuming pot is consistently embraced by the blandest of mainstream
celebrities — there could be a backlash against pot in which teenagers choose
to rebel by not smoking."
Source: www.usatoday.com
