Cannabis Freedom Index

Famous people

Well-known people and cannabis: arrests, trials and campaigns.

28 entries, 1860–2024 · 0 moved a score · back to the whole history

World average score and Famous people entries per decade

13.2 today, from 99.1 in 1860

World average score, every country counted the same Entries that moved a score Context only

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20241 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇵🇫 French Polynesia Enforcement ✓

    A Papeete court fines Guy Laliberté for cannabis possession and use

    The Cirque du Soleil founder, investigated since 2019 over cannabis plants on his atoll, was convicted of possession and use and fined 2 million francs, and cleared of most other charges. The prosecutor had also asked for a six-month suspended sentence and rejected his reliance on a Canadian prescription.

20171 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇰🇷 South Korea Enforcement ✓

    A K-pop star is sentenced for smoking cannabis

    The singer T.O.P was sentenced to ten months in prison, suspended for two years. Sentences for entertainers caught with cannabis ranged from 25 days to ten months, and those caught were reported to stay off the stage for more than three years on average.

20101 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇺🇸 United States · Texas Enforcement ✓

    Willie Nelson is arrested after a Texas checkpoint stop

    A Border Patrol stop of Nelson’s tour bus near Sierra Blanca leads to a cannabis-possession arrest. His subsequent Teapot Party proposal calls for legalisation, regulation and taxation; it is advocacy rather than an enacted reform.

20081 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇯🇵 Japan Enforcement ✓

    Four sumo wrestlers are expelled over cannabis

    A cannabis scandal in professional sumo ended with the expulsion of four wrestlers. Cases involving athletes and entertainers followed: a rugby player suspended in 2009, and actors and singers given suspended sentences in 2017, 2019 and 2020.

20031 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇺🇸 United States Enforcement ✓

    Tommy Chong receives nine months for a paraphernalia conspiracy

    Following a guilty plea in a case involving Nice Dreams Enterprises, Tommy Chong receives a nine-month federal prison sentence. The offence concerns drug-paraphernalia sales, rather than personal cannabis possession or his comedy performances.

19981 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇨🇦 Canada Culture & science ✓

    A Canadian snowboarder gets back an Olympic gold lost over marijuana

    Ross Rebagliati won the Olympic snowboarding giant slalom at Nagano on 8 February 1998. Days later the International Olympic Committee took the gold medal away after his test was positive for marijuana; he said he had breathed others' smoke at a farewell party. The Court of Arbitration for Sport restored it, finding no agreement between the IOC and the skiing federation that covered marijuana. Its secretary general called it "purely a legal issue".

19971 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇧🇷 Brazil Enforcement ✓

    Brazilian police jail the band Planet Hemp for its songs

    The members of the band were arrested at a concert in Brasília on suspicion of apologia, the offence of advocating drug use. They spent five days in jail before habeas corpus was granted. Fans, musicians, politicians and the press protested, and the band's records sold out.

19941 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇺🇸 United States Debate ✓

    Willie Nelson becomes co-chair of NORML’s advisory board

    NORML founder Keith Stroup dates Nelson’s acceptance of the advisory co-chair role to 1994, following a relationship beginning in the mid-1970s. His support includes fundraising benefits and public advocacy.

19881 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇬🇧 United Kingdom Enforcement ✓

    The cannabis smuggler Howard Marks is arrested

    An agent of the US Drug Enforcement Administration arrested the Welsh smuggler Howard Marks, who claimed to have moved consignments of cannabis as large as 30 tons, and he was extradited to the United States. He was sentenced to 25 years, served seven in the federal prison at Terre Haute and was released in April 1995. His autobiography Mr Nice, published in 1996, became a best-seller, and he campaigned for changes in drug law.

19811 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇺🇸 United States · California Enforcement ✓

    Brownie Mary is arrested for selling cannabis brownies

    San Francisco authorities arrest Mary Jane Rathbun after an undercover investigation of her cannabis-brownie sales. A guilty plea leads to probation and community service. Rathbun later becomes a hospital volunteer and gives cannabis brownies to people with AIDS, linking her public campaigning to patient care. This criminal case did not itself change cannabis law.

19801 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇯🇵 Japan Enforcement ✓ Article

    Paul McCartney is arrested at Tokyo airport with 219 grams

    Customs officers at Narita airport found 219 grams of marijuana in the luggage of Paul McCartney, who had arrived for an 11-concert tour with his band Wings. Japan had refused him a visa in 1976. He was held for ten days, released without charge on 25 January and deported; his music was banned from Japanese television and radio.

19781 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇯🇲 Jamaica Debate ✓

    Peter Tosh demands legalisation at the One Love Peace Concert

    On stage in Kingston, Tosh lit a spliff and lectured the audience about legalising cannabis, attacking the attending political leaders Michael Manley and Edward Seaga for failing to do it. According to The Gleaner he became a regular target for the police; in September he was arrested at Half Way Tree for smoking marijuana and attacking a police officer, and reported being badly beaten in custody.

19771 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇬🇧 United Kingdom Enforcement ✓

    Bob Marley is fined for cannabis in London

    Living in London after an attempt on his life in Jamaica, Bob Marley and his bassist Aston Barrett were arrested in March after police stopped their car in Ladbroke Grove and found two joints; a search of Marley's home found about a pound. At Marylebone Magistrates' Court each was fined £50. The chairman warned them that whatever the attitude in their own country, cannabis was still an offence in Britain.

19762 entries0 score changes

  1. 🇧🇷 Brazil Enforcement ✓ Article

    Gilberto Gil is arrested for cannabis in Florianópolis

    Police detained the singer and his drummer in a Florianópolis hotel during the Doces Bárbaros tour and found about thirty cannabis cigarettes among Gil's belongings. Nine days later he was sentenced to a year of reclusion, converted into treatment in a psychiatric clinic, and a fine of fifty minimum wages. Rita Lee received a similar sentence in August, converted into house arrest. The cases drew criticism from artists and showed a growing public tolerance: the city's mayor guessed that most residents disapproved of the arrest.

  2. 🇯🇲 Jamaica Debate ✓

    Peter Tosh releases Legalize It

    The former Wailer's first solo album, recorded in Kingston, was released by CBS Records. Its title track became popular among supporters of cannabis legalisation, reggae audiences and Rastafari around the world, and a favourite at his concerts.

19721 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇺🇸 United States · Michigan Easing ✓

    Michigan Supreme Court reverses John Sinclair’s conviction

    In People v. Sinclair, the court reverses and sets aside the possession conviction and orders his discharge. The justices write separate opinions. This is distinct from his earlier release shortly after the December 1971 rally.

19711 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇺🇸 United States · Michigan Debate ✓

    Lennon and Ono headline the John Sinclair Freedom Rally

    John Lennon and Yoko Ono join musicians, poets and political speakers at Ann Arbor’s Crisler Arena to demand John Sinclair’s release and oppose cannabis prohibition. The concert brings public attention; it does not itself overturn a conviction.

19701 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇺🇸 United States Debate ✓

    Keith Stroup founds NORML

    The lawyer Keith Stroup founded the National Organization for the Repeal of Marijuana Laws, with 5,000 dollars in seed money from the Playboy Foundation, and soon changed "Repeal" to "Reform". It became the leading advocacy group for decriminalising marijuana in the United States.

19691 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇺🇸 United States · Michigan Tightening ✓

    John Sinclair receives a lengthy sentence for two cannabis cigarettes

    John Sinclair receives nine and a half to ten years for possession of two marijuana cigarettes. The sale count had been dismissed on entrapment grounds. His case becomes the focus of a campaign later joined by John Lennon and Yoko Ono.

19681 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇯🇲 Jamaica Enforcement ✓

    Bob Marley is jailed for ganja

    The singer Bob Marley, who had recently taken up the Rastafari faith and its use of ganja as a sacrament, was arrested for possession. According to the historian Martin Booth he spent a month in jail, under a law that since 1941 had made prison compulsory for any ganja conviction, and used the time to learn more about Rastafari.

19651 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇺🇸 United States · New York Debate ✓

    Allen Ginsberg joins a Greenwich Village cannabis demonstration

    A United Press International photograph shows poet Allen Ginsberg and other demonstrators outside the Women's House of Detention on Greenwich Avenue, demanding the release of people arrested for cannabis use or possession. Ginsberg's placard uses the slang word pot. The Library of Congress catalog dates the image to 10 January 1965. The demonstration documents early public opposition to cannabis prohibition; it did not itself change the law.

19491 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇺🇸 United States Culture & science ✓

    Lila Leeds plays a showgirl ruined by marijuana after her own arrest

    Made to cash in on the 1948 arrest of Robert Mitchum and Lila Leeds, She Shoulda Said No! starred Leeds herself as a chorus girl whose marijuana smoking drives her brother to suicide. It was directed by Sam Newfield under another name, and the showman Kroger Babb reissued it as The Devil's Weed and Wild Weed.

19481 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇺🇸 United States · California Enforcement ✓

    Robert Mitchum is jailed for smoking cannabis at a Laurel Canyon party

    Detectives burst into a small party in the Laurel Canyon area of Los Angeles and arrested the actor Robert Mitchum, who was smoking a joint. Expecting the end of his career, he accepted 60 days in jail and probation, and was released from a county prison farm on 30 March 1949. His next film, Rachel and the Stranger, was a box-office hit. The arrest may have been staged to publicise the police's anti-drug work. The actress Lila Leeds, whose house it was, was arrested with him and given the same jail term; her film career did not recover, and in 1949 she played a showgirl ruined by marijuana in the exploitation film She Shoulda Said No!

19471 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇺🇸 United States · California Enforcement ✓

    The singer Anita O'Day serves 90 days for marijuana

    Police searched the North Hollywood home of the jazz singer Anita O'Day and her husband Carl Hoff and found marijuana and rolling papers. Both were convicted of possession, lost their appeals and served 90 days in jail. She was arrested for marijuana again in 1952 and found not guilty.

19431 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇺🇸 United States · California Enforcement ✓

    The drummer Gene Krupa is jailed on a falsified marijuana charge

    Gene Krupa, the most famous drummer of the swing era, was arrested in San Francisco and sentenced to one to six years at San Quentin for using a minor, his teenage valet, to carry marijuana; he served six months. The charge is now described as falsified, and the case broke up his orchestra.

19401 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇺🇸 United States · New York Enforcement ✓

    Mezz Mezzrow, jazz's best-known marijuana seller, is jailed in New York

    The clarinettist Milton "Mezz" Mezzrow was so well known for selling marijuana to musicians that "mezz" became slang for the drug. In 1940 he was arrested with sixty joints at the entrance to a jazz club at the New York World's Fair and jailed for intent to sell. Inside, he told the guards he was Black and was moved to the prison's segregated Black section.

19301 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇺🇸 United States Enforcement ✓

    Louis Armstrong is jailed for marijuana

    The trumpeter Louis Armstrong, a heavy marijuana smoker for much of his life, was arrested outside a club for drug possession and spent nine days in jail. He was convicted of marijuana possession and received a suspended sentence. He described marijuana as a thousand times better than whiskey.

18601 entry0 score changes

  1. 🇫🇷 France Culture & science ✓ Article

    Baudelaire publishes Les Paradis artificiels

    Charles Baudelaire's book on the state of being under the influence of opium and hashish described the effects of the drugs and the motives of the user. It drew on Thomas De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium-Eater and on the gatherings of the Club des Hashischins, where Baudelaire and Théophile Gautier first met.

Most entries

  1. 🇺🇸 United States170
  2. 🇮🇳 India53
  3. 🇧🇷 Brazil51
  4. 🇬🇧 United Kingdom45
  5. 🇨🇦 Canada44
  6. 🇮🇹 Italy39
  7. 🇲🇽 Mexico39
  8. 🇩🇪 Germany34

Fewest entries

  1. 🇰🇵 North Korea3
  2. 🇬🇼 Guinea-Bissau4
  3. 🇹🇻 Tuvalu4
  4. 🇾🇪 Yemen4
  5. 🇬🇶 Equatorial Guinea5
  6. 🇪🇷 Eritrea5
  7. 🇲🇻 Maldives5
  8. 🇵🇼 Palau5
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