Rollins to raise green flag at cannabis conference
When Henry Rollins takes the stage in Vancouver this weekend, his audience probably won’t be singing along with his every word.
Yes, the radio host, columnist, actor and former frontman of hardcore punk band Black Flag has become an advocate for the legalization of cannabis, and on June 24 will be keynote speaker at the International Cannabis Business Conference in Vancouver, his fifth time speaking at the event.
But what does an entertainer and commentator — who doesn’t even use cannabis — have to offer a conference room in a fancy hotel packed with pot entrepreneurs and investors, some only recently on board?
“I want them to know that they’re all going to get rich, but they’re selling the future,” he said in a phone interview with Postmedia earlier this month. “It’s not just a cannabis product. You’re selling civil rights, you’re selling adjustments made to the legal system, you’re selling ways to help everything from the traumatized person to the person with an eating problem to someone with back pain. You’re not a doctor but you’re a helpful part of your community.”
Rollins said he’ll be calling on his audience to foster “goodwill” in cannabis as Canada closes in on Oct. 17 legalization, and to challenge government as well as the pharmaceutical and agricultural industries.
Put more bluntly, Rollins summarized: “Don’t let money turn you into a schmuck.”
Rollins believes the actions of the first wave of cannabis entrepreneurs under legalization will determine how the next one behaves.
He sees cannabis as a treatment for the side-effects of cancer chemotherapy and for helping people with anxiety related to post-traumatic stress disorder. He supports it as an alternative to overprescribed painkillers such as OxyContin and Percocet.
And Rollins believes it is high time to end the criminalization of cannabis in the U.S., which has led to a disproportionate number of black people being imprisoned for non-violent crime. Meantime, alcohol is pitched as “everyone half-naked and having a great time, when it’s really a depressant,” a hypocritical approach to the two substances, he said.
“The history of cannabis and hemp in America is fraught with corruption and bad policing and crooked justice, and brown people going to prison,” he said.
Several times during his interview, Rollins excoriated U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, whose anti-cannabis statements and policies he believes perpetuate the war on drugs and imprisonment of minorities.
“Jeff Sessions misses, like, 1953, when you could kind of get away with killing African-American people and throwing them in jail for a wink,” he said.
“That’s his Making America Great Again, and that’s why he doesn’t want the cannabis thing to end.”
However, Rollins said he believes legalization in Canada without amnesty for people with past cannabis charges is no good.
“There’s no way that has not been across your prime minister’s desk,” he said. “I just think it would be completely un-Canadian to have something be legal and have somebody be jammed up in prison for four years, and the permanent mark on their record for something that is no longer illegal.”
But he lamented that amnesty would “probably be more difficult and politically thorny than legalizing ” alone, requiring plenty of time, lawyers, paperwork and tax dollars, and he expects political fallout come next election over what to do with all the Canadians jailed on pot charges.
Rollins also said he has concerns about calls in Canada for the legalization of all drugs, pitched by doctors, politicians and harm-reduction advocates as a way to slow the toll of the devastating fentanyl-related overdose crisis, which claimed nearly 4,000 lives across the country in 2017, according to Health Canada.
“I think you’d have a lot of deaths,” Rollins said.
“I think if you made crystal meth legal, there would be so much death and pain.”
While working in the music industry in the ’80s and ’90s, Rollins said he lived through agony caused by easy access to“terrifyingly addictive” substances, some of which killed his friends.
“I just wonder if that would be worth it,” he said.
The history of cannabis and hemp in America is fraught with corruption and bad policing and crooked justice, and brown people going to prison.