This story was originally published in Straight Cannabis.
It was April 1987 in Trenton, New Jersey. In an apartment on Hamilton Avenue, the rhythm section of the newly formed Rollins Band sparked up an afternoon joint as they wrapped up one of the group’s first jam sessions.
“I was so bored, so I said: ‘Let me try that,’ ” says Henry Rollins, one of America’s punk-rock pioneers and the longest-serving frontman of the group Black Flag.
“I don’t know how much I smoked, not much, but it didn’t take much. I couldn’t even put a glass of water down on the table.”
From then on, barring one time when he unintentionally got high during some cloudy interviews for a pot-focused episode of 10 Things You Didn’t Know, a History Channel show, Rollins has had no interest in smoking weed—or doing any other drugs, for that matter.
“I just sat there feeling extremely self-conscious and it just wasn’t fun. And that’s kind of been my experience with almost every stimulant I have ever tried,” he says over the phone to the Georgia Straight.
Channeling his trademark stage rage into a more digestible denunciation of the 21st-century drug war, Rollins hasn’t let his substance-free lifestyle stop him from becoming one of the cannabis community’s fiercest advocates.
He is the keynote speaker for the International Cannabis Business Conference (ICBC)—a two-day industry-focused event coming to Vancouver on June 24 and 25—and his message is not a far cry from his poetic and politically laden lyrics. But instead of a sweaty mosh pit of thrashing fans, his audience now is a room full of steamed suits and budding entrepreneurs.
The actor, author, and radio-show host, now 57, says he was aware when young of the