Bill Maher welcomed Jim Belushi with wide-open arms on the latest episode of Real Time on HBO. The two celebs have embraced marijuana - Maher for many years and now Belushi, who runs a weed farm in Oregon these days, which is the subject of his reality-TV show Growing Belushi currently airing on Discovery.
Here's an abridged transcript of their 10-minute pot talk:
Maher: As a lifelong pothead, when I read you'd gotten full into the pot business, I said to myself: Is he holding?
[Belushi reaches into his pocket, takes out a colorful package with the Blues Brothers logo on it and tosses it to Maher.]
Maher: You've got thousands of acres of pot and you give me this?
Belushi: It's just a little bit.
Maher: I've been watching your reality TV show about being in the pot business. Are you enjoying it?
Belushi: I love it. I love the farming. I get my hands in the soil. I'm having a ball.
Maher: Your family is involved with this. Happily? "We're moving to a pot farm." It's a little Green Acres.
Belushi: It's very Green Acres. The show actually feels like Green Acres. My family had an intervention on me... But this plant...
Maher: I think I smoke more than you.
Belushi: I'm a microdoser.
Maher: What's the point of that?
Belushi: It chills you out.
Maher: Isn't the goal to get high?
Belushi: It's a medicine now. You smoke to chill out. There's a lot of PTSD going around... I do 2.5 mg of Bhang chocolate at night to go to sleep... It's a beautiful way to medicate anxiety, trauma, sleep and hopelessness... It makes you feel good and when you feel good you have more compassion for people.
Jim Belushi: "If we knew what we know about cannabis today back then, I think it would've been a great medicine for my brother John and I do believe he'd be alive today."
Maher: You've said that your brother would be alive today if he stopped at pot. [Ed. note: John Belushi died of a drug overdose in 1982.]
Belushi: Danny Aykroyd [Belushi's Saturday Night Live cast mate and Blues Brothers partner] is the one that said it. He said, "You know Jimmy, if John was a pothead he'd be alive today." That really made me think about it. I know John suffered from CTE (Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy). He was a star football player (at Wheaton High School in Chicago). He was a middle linebacker, he banged his head so many times. He actually seizured in front of me at home one time. We didn't know what it was. I actually saved his life. I wish I could've done it a second time, but the first time I did. When he went to college (College of DuPage) and started using cannabis, I think he found his medicine. But back then it was considered a drug. It's still considered a Schedule I drug. If we knew what we know about cannabis today back then, I think it would've been a great medicine for my brother John and I do believe he'd be alive today.
RELATED: On a 'Mission from God': Blues Brothers Weed Launches in Illinois
Maher: I know the Last Prisoner Project is really important to you. You want to get people out of prison who are there because they shouldn't be for marijuana.
Belushi: It's never been about the plant, it's about who's using it. The disparity in the community of color being arrested (for marijuana) is four to one... I got busted for pot twice in high school.
Maher: I never smoked in high school. I saved myself.
Belushi: I'm a white guy who runs a pot farm and is making money selling pot and I've got a TV show out. I sit on my farm doing something they did. There are 40,000 people incarcerated (in the U.S. for marijuana).
Maher: We've got to get them out.
Belushi: Set them free!
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