Willie Nelson, 86, stops smoking weed after 65 years because it almost killed him: 'Need to take better care of myself'
Willie Nelson has stubbed out his joint for good after smoking pot for almost six decades. In a recent interview with KSAT, the country singer and marijuana advocate said he was taking better care of himself.
The 86-year-old, who still loves touring and is currently living on a bus, said, "I have abused my lungs quite a bit in the past, so breathing is a little more difficult these days and I have to be careful. I started smoking cedar bark, went from that to cigarettes to whatever," he said, "And that almost killed me. I don’t smoke anymore - take better care of myself."
Nelson is one of the most legendary stoners of our time, even smoking at the roof of the White House with James Earl Carter III, whose father Jimmy Carter was the President at the time. He also owns a marijuana brand, Willie's Reserve, launched in 2016, and is the co-chair of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) advisory board. In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, he had also credited the herb with saving his life.
"I wouldn’t be alive," he had said about pot, "It saved my life, really. I wouldn’t have lived 85 years if I’d have kept drinking and smoking like I was when I was 30, 40 years old. I think that weed kept me from wanting to kill people. And probably kept a lot of people from wanting to kill me, too — out there drunk, running around."
He smoked his first joint in 1954 and has said that it took him six months to feel the buzz. "It's nice to watch it being accepted — knowing you were right all the time about it: that it was not a killer drug," he had said in the interview, "It's a medicine."