Cannabis Advocates You Need to Know About

Canada became one of the first G7 nations to federally legalise cannabis under the Cannabis Act in October 2018 — a milestone that didn't arrive by accident. It arrived because decades of relentless, often thankless advocacy had already shifted public opinion far enough that Parliament had no real choice but to act. The names behind that shift span every industry and era you can imagine: Nobel laureates and UFC champions, Silicon Valley legends and outlaw country icons. Some will make you nod; a few will genuinely surprise you. All of them matter.

And here's the thing worth remembering before we dive in: marijuana advocacy has been going on a lot longer than most people realise. The modern legalisation conversation didn't start with a viral tweet or a celebrity Instagram post. It has roots stretching back generations — which makes the advocates below all the more impressive.

Musicians Who Made Cannabis Impossible to Ignore

No industry has done more to normalise cannabis than the music world. For better or worse, musicians have always lived outside society's tightest guardrails, and for cannabis specifically, that outsider status became a megaphone.

Start with Bob Dylan, who encoded cannabis culture directly into the rock canon. "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35" — released in 1966, when simple possession could destroy a career, is an extended, barely concealed ode to getting stoned in public, and it hit number two on the Billboard Hot 100. Dylan used commercial success as a shield and a platform simultaneously.

Bob Marley carried the cause even further. Cannabis wasn't incidental to his music; it was theological. A committed Rastafarian, Marley viewed cannabis as a sacrament, a tool for meditation and communal understanding. His words still circulate on dispensary walls from Victoria to Halifax: "Herb is a plant. Herb is good for everything." Few public figures have ever made a more elegant, unapologetic case.

Then there is Willie Nelson, the red-headed Texas troubadour who has become arguably the most visible cannabis advocate alive today. Nelson co-chairs the advisory board of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), launched his own cannabis brand, Willie's Reserve, and has smoked on the roof of the White House — twice, by his own account. He is, in a word, committed. It is no coincidence that a feminised seed strain carries his name.

Other musical torchbearers worth naming:

• The Beatles, who credited cannabis with opening the conceptual doors that led to Revolver and Sgt. Pepper's
• Jimi Hendrix, whose lyrical and sonic explorations were openly intertwined with the plant
• Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead, who built an entire touring subculture around communal cannabis use
• Lil Wayne, who has spoken candidly about cannabis as a therapeutic tool for his epilepsy
• Miley Cyrus and Rihanna, who have brought the conversation forward with younger audiences in ways that resonate across demographics

Snoop Dogg, of course, requires no footnote. He is the footnote.

Tech Visionaries Who Demolished the "Stoner" Stereotype

There's a stubborn myth that cannabis impairs long-term cognition. The two most powerful tech entrepreneurs of the late twentieth century — both active cannabis users, represent the most efficient possible rebuttal.

Steve Jobs acknowledged marijuana and LSD use openly, describing both as part of what shaped his creativity and his philosophy. The co-founder of Apple — a man who built a company now valued in the trillions, was not exactly losing brain cells. He once said cannabis made him "relaxed and creative."

Bill Gates goes a step further as an advocate. He publicly backed Washington State's Initiative 502 in 2012, which put cannabis legalisation on the ballot and won. A biography captures his college-era relationship with the plant simply: "As for drugs — well, Gates was not unusual there. Marijuana was the pharmaceutical of choice." This is a man who made his first software sale for $4,200 at age seventeen, went on to found Microsoft, and became one of the most consequential philanthropists in human history. If the "cannabis makes you dumb" narrative had any real grounding, someone probably should have mentioned it to him.

These aren't anomalies. They're data points. High-functioning, visionary people have always used cannabis — they simply didn't always feel safe saying so.

Athletes Who Proved Performance and Cannabis Aren't Opposites

Professional sport is perhaps the most physically demanding arena in which to argue for cannabis acceptance, because the stakes — a body that must perform at its absolute ceiling, are so visible. That makes the athletes who have advocated publicly all the more credible.

Michael Phelps is the obvious starting point. The most decorated Olympian in history — 23 gold medals across four Games, was photographed taking a bong hit in 2009. The photo caused a brief scandal. It also made a point no press release could: peak human athletic achievement and cannabis use are not mutually exclusive. Full stop.

Conor McGregor brings a different dimension to the conversation. The UFC, as a governing body, has been notably progressive on cannabis compared with major North American sports leagues. McGregor has been candid about his use, photographed smoking up casually — including, as documented, at marijuana cafes across Amsterdam. Under current UFC anti-doping policy, cannabis is only flagged if detected in-competition; out-of-competition use carries no penalty. The organisation's full endorsement of CBD is a further signal of where professional sport is heading.

The broader athletic community is shifting quickly. NBA players have lobbied for removal of cannabis from the league's banned substances list. NFL veterans use CBD openly for recovery. Canadian Olympic athletes have pushed for reclassification. The trend line is clear, and the athletes who spoke up early — at real professional risk, deserve direct credit for bending it.

The Food Industry's Most Surprising Cannabis Alliance

You know the ice cream conglomerate Ben & Jerry's? The men behind it — Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, have one of the most quietly fascinating cannabis histories in the business world. Both sold cannabis as a side-hustle in their youth, and they famously named a flagship flavour after Jerry Garcia, their fellow traveller in countercultural commerce. More recently, they've stated publicly that they would have no hesitation infusing cannabis into their products in markets where it's legally permitted, a position that carries real weight when it comes from a global brand with hundreds of millions of consumers.

The pairing of cannabis and food culture is intuitive to anyone who's ever experienced a well-timed munchie, but Cohen and Greenfield represent something more specific: mainstream consumer-goods entrepreneurs treating cannabis normalisation as a natural extension of their brand values. That crossover is becoming more common in Canada's regulated edibles market — and figures like these helped make it culturally thinkable.

Pop Culture Voices Who Kept the Conversation Alive

No list of cannabis advocates is complete without acknowledging the figures who advanced the cause from the cultural margins — often outrageously, always memorably.

The late Hugh Hefner, founder of Playboy, was a more substantive cannabis advocate than his reputation might suggest. Beyond what former Playmate Holly Madison revealed in her autobiography Down the Rabbit Hole about his personal habits, Hefner's magazine published serious long-form journalism on drug policy reform for decades, lending mainstream credibility to arguments that were otherwise confined to countercultural publications. Playboy's advocacy work on cannabis legalisation predates most organised political efforts on the topic.

And then there are the names who almost made the main list but deserve their moment:

1. Cheech & Chong — who turned cannabis comedy into a genre and a gateway for millions of curious, non-threatening first conversations about the plant
2. Hunter S. Thompson — journalist, author, and gonzo provocateur who documented American drug culture with a precision that was, paradoxically, deeply serious
3. Brad Pitt — who has spoken candidly about cannabis use during various periods of his life, adding a different kind of Hollywood candour to the mix
4. Bill Murray — a vocal advocate who has supported legalisation publicly and with characteristic wit
5. George Washington — who cultivated hemp at Mount Vernon and whose agricultural records document a deliberate interest in the plant's properties beyond fibre production

Washington's presence on that list is worth sitting with for a moment. Cannabis advocacy did not begin in the 1960s, or the 1990s, or with the passage of Colorado's Amendment 64 in 2012. It is woven into the fabric of North American history in ways that tend to get quietly edited out of the standard curriculum.

What This Means for Canadian Growers and Consumers Today

Canada's Cannabis Act didn't materialise out of thin air. It was the downstream consequence of every musician who sang about it honestly, every entrepreneur who funded a ballot measure, every athlete who refused to lie about their recovery routine, and every ordinary person who kept growing, kept buying, and kept having frank conversations despite the legal risk.

The advocates above — spanning seven decades, every industry, and multiple continents, demonstrate something that often gets lost in policy debates: normalisation is a cultural process before it's a legislative one. Laws follow people. People follow stories. And stories follow the brave individuals willing to tell the truth publicly at personal cost.

For Canadian growers and consumers operating under a legal framework most of the world still envies, the work isn't finished. Legalization under the Cannabis Act was a beginning, not an endpoint — provincial access gaps, banking limitations for licensed producers, and the ongoing global patchwork of prohibition all remain live issues. The advocates profiled here built the foundation. What gets built on top of it is, in no small part, up to us.

In the words of Stewie Griffin: "Everything is better with a bag of weed." Eloquently put, as always.