According to Seth Rogen, there would be no Superbad, or Knocked Up, or 50/50, without weed.
“Every creative decision you’ve ever seen me make throughout my entire life has been made after smoking weed,” Rogen said recently while promoting his latest film, An American Pickle.
Now, in an interview with the Canadian Press, he’s doubled down on that sentiment.
“I smoke weed all day and every day and have for 20 years. For me, it’s like glasses or shoes. It’s something I need to navigate my life,” he said.
“People have tried to make me feel shame about it over the years or have tried to make me seem like I’m weak or stupid for integrating it so completely into my life, but I’m almost 40 now, I’m married, I have a good job and I have just found that none of the stigmas I was told to be true are true.”
For Rogen, highlighting how cannabis has helped fuel his creative process is necessary work in the continued battle against cannabis stigma.
Rogen is also keenly aware of the disproportionate enforcement of cannabis laws and has used his platform to advocate for expungement for those who have been convicted of cannabis crimes.
“Canadians deserve freedom, not forgiveness,” Rogen captioned an Instagram post last year while promoting the Campaign for Cannabis Amnesty, a non-profit working towards cannabis justice and equity in Canada.
Rogen has lent his voice to similar campaigns in the U.S., including narrating a video for National Expungement Week.
“Seventy-seven million people in the United States have a criminal record… and a large amount of these records are for minor offences and seriously impede millions of people’s ability to live, restricting access to jobs, housing, education, and the right to vote,” he said last year. “It doesn’t help them and it doesn’t help this country.”
In Canada, Rogen is also advocating for cannabis use to be normalized and he says loosening restrictions around the plant is one way to get there.