BY MIKE BIVINS
WEED IS MORE THAN THE MONEY
Punk rock legend and OMBC keynote speaker Henry Rollins talks about marijuana’s checkered past
G
etting into the marijuana business shouldn’t be
just about making a quick buck, according to leg-
endary punk rocker and entertainer Henry Roll-
ins. He says getting into the legal weed economy
should be instead about bucking a system of ra-
cial injustice.
The Black Flag and Rollins Band frontman is coming to
Eugene as the keynote speaker for the fourth annual Ore-
gon Marijuana Business Conference (OMBC) on April 28.
While Rollins says he is passionate about cannabis and
its potential to do good in the world, the kicker is that he
doesn’t actually consume cannabis — though he tells EW
he did try it once in Trenton, New Jersey, in 1987 after a
Rollins Band practice session. “After band practice, and
out of boredom, I asked my bandmates who were smoking
a joint if I could try the joint, and I got extremely high, and
I didn’t enjoy it.”
Rollins says his lack of cannabis consumption works
in his favor. “The irony is fun,” he says, adding that this
makes him the “perfect person” to talk to others about can-
nabis.
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But Rollins hasn’t ruled out future cannabis consump-
tion if it becomes medically necessary. “Say I get to a cer-
tain age and I can get pain relief from using cannabis, then
I want to use it right away. I don’t want to have to sneak
around — I want to get it from the store.”
Rollins says that on his agenda for the OMBC is stress-
ing to the entrepreneurs in attendance that their reason for
getting into the cannabis business “has to be more than
about you making a buck.”
Attendees “are probably gonna make money — that’s
gonna happen,” Rollins says. And he isn’t against people
making money in the marijuana business, but his talk at
the OMBC will be about the need to go beyond making
money, focusing instead on “doing a great service” for the
community.
“It’s not my shop, it’s not my rules,” Rollins says when
asked what “doing great service” looks like.
But he does offer up a concrete example to consider: “I
want these vendors to be reaching out in the community to
help with getting people away from Big Pharma.”
Rollins reasons that it wouldn’t set a dispensary owner
Due to an editing error the introduction to Melissa
“Mimi” Nolledo’s “Our Stories: Immigrants of America”
photo spread in the 4/6 issue was wrongly attributed to
Arts Editor Bob Keefer. Our misprint also said more pro-
files could be seen online. They can be seen on Face-
back much to gift a sample to an aging person with arthritis
who wants to ditch opiates and give weed a chance.
And before OMBC attendees dive headfirst into the
relatively uncharted waters of the quasi-legal cannabis in-
dustry, Rollins would like them to realize that “the history
of cannabis and hemp in this country is all about racism
and bigotry.”
“It’s still a Schedule One drug,” he says. “It’s right up
there with heroin and angel dust, and it’s designed to get the
brown guy in jail, the poor person in jail, so that companies
can charge the government $15 for an inmate’s sandwich.”
Rollins says that while it’s important for entrepreneurs
entering the American marijuana industry to become edu-
cated about these unsavory details, exactly how one applies
the history of marijuana and the prison industrial complex
to their business endeavor is entirely up to the individual.
The OMBC is April 28 at Eugene’s Valley River Inn,
with an April 27 VIP reception featuring Rollins available
to VIP ticket holders. Conference-only tickets are $199,
while VIP tickets cost $299. Ticket prices increase by $100
on April 26. Visit oregonmbc.com to purchase tickets.
book at facebook.com/immigrantstoriesofamerica.
We’ll take this moment to let you know that Nolledo is
a sponsor of the DisOrient Asian American Film Festival
of Oregon you can check out April 21-23 at Bijou Art Cin-
emas. For a schedule go to hosteugene.com/disorient.