Actor Jim Belushi firmly believes that if his brother, comedian John Belushi, had been into cannabis instead of cocaine he would be alive today. Instead the Blues Brother died of a drug overdose.
Jim Belushi is on a campaign to cultivate change and marijuana on a 37-hectare farm in Oregon. He shares his passion for pot as a way to ease pain in a three-part documentary, Growing Belushi.
Belushi tells Jesse Mulligan he got into farming in Oregon somewhat by accident. His family had spent Springs and Autumns in the area throughout his childhood and he went returned recently to visit a friend.
“I was skinny dipping in the river and when I came up, it was like a baptism. I turned to the farm manager and said, ‘you know what, I should look for some property’.”
He says he found a beautiful plot of land which was ‘in shambles.’
“I just kind of revamped it, built a house, and had the farm behind me.”
Belushi wasn’t sure what to do with the farm and had a few ideas, but the year he bought it, cannabis become legal in the state.
“I thought, wow, it’s a new agriculture in Oregon and we’re in a part of Southern Oregon called the banana belt which has perfect growing conditions for pears, grapes, and cannabis.”
He had a lot to learn in the beginning and said aphids kept him up at night. Early on, he sprayed the plants with an organic material but, because he left lights on, the photosensitive chemical burnt his entire crop.
Belushi makes no secret of the fact that he’s been a stoner for a long time. He says there used to be a lingering smell of Captain Jacks (their favoured weed) around Saturday Night Live.
“When you’re on Saturday Night Live, you’re writing until 4 or 5 in the morning and around 1am, you’re getting a little beat so you have a little Captain Jack and it just reenergises you and you can get through the night.
“I swear some of these creative ideas on Saturday Night Live came right out of Captain Jack’s smoke, like Coneheads and all that stuff. I mean, cmon, where are you gonna come up with that?”
He’s a strong believer in the medicinal use of cannabis for things like Alzheimer’s, PTSD, and arthritis, but also using it just to feel good.
“You shouldn’t feel guilty about feeling good. It brings a lightness to you, a lightness of being and of higher consciousness. All of that is part of the wellness of cannabis.”
Belushi believes that making cannabis legal and more widely available would reduce the harm of other drugs in the community such as opioids and methamphetamine. He has personal experience, with the death of his own brother.
“What happens with addicts is there’s so many other people around them that it just destroys. These addictions crawl into a family like a snake and it slowly goes up the body until it gets to the throat and it squeezes and strangles until somebody dies.
“It was devastating for our family, the trauma, and there’s so many people with addictions here.”