Seventy-seven year old actor Morgan Freeman uses marijuana for medical purposes. While promoting his new movie 5 Flights Up with Diane Keaton, he reflects on the benefits of cannabis.
"They used to say, 'You smoke that stuff, boy, you get hooked!' My first wife got me into it many years ago.
'How do I take it? However it comes! I’ll eat it, drink it, smoke it, snort it!
"This movement is really a long time coming, and it’s getting legs - longer legs. Now, the thrust is understanding that alcohol has no real medicinal use. Maybe if you have one drink it’ll quiet you down, but two or three and you’re fucked.
'Marijuana has many useful uses. I have fibromyalgia pain in this arm, and the only thing that offers any relief is marijuana.
"They’re talking about kids who have grand mal seizures and they’ve discovered that marijuana eases that down to where these children can have a life.
'That right there, to me, says, "Legalize it across the board!"
"And what negative effects does it have? Look at Woodstock in 1969. They said, ‘We’re not going to bother them or say anything about smoking marijuana,’ and not one problem or fight."
Freeman appears in the drug-war documentary, Breaking the Taboo. He won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 2005 for Million Dollar Baby. He's also starred in The Shawshank Redemption, Invictus, Driving Miss Daisy and dozens of other films.
