Do you consider yourself an advocate of the legalization of marijuana?
I'm not an advocate, but I'm definitely am a firm believer. How many trees do we cut down in a year to make paper? Hemp yields so much. You can even make gas out of it, but they refuse to allow it to be used because they're not gonna backlash the oil industry or the cotton industry when all of these people are making a living off of it. I like to smoke pot but my belief in legalizing it is 100% environmental. It has nothing to do with wanting to get stoned. But the branding of being associated with it is what sucks. Once you say, Let's legalize hemp.' Usually, the reaction is, Oh, another stoner.' But it's just a fact. The government is too right-wing to even hear it. Marijuana is natural herb that can take pain away, but they don't want to hear that, either. Sometimes it seems like a losing battle. Surfer' asked about that in that interview, "Sex, Drugs, and Rock n' Roll". Personally, I don't appreciate the way they singled me out. When they called, I said, "Am I the only one that is saying anything?" They said, "No. You're on a long list." They named off all of these people like Nat, and said that they gave total consent. So I just fired off and then it came out, and the whole article was about what I said.
What was it you said?
All I said was, that 80-90% of everybody that surfs gets stoned. What are you gonna do? No one wants to talk about it. My use is recreational. I like to smoke and go surf, so crucify me. They didn't even print half of the shit I said. I also said, What's better? Smoking a joint recreationally or drinking a beer in the parking lot, and drinking ten more beers, losing your health, getting out of shape, and drinking around your kids, and then your kids start drinking? The way they put it was, Yeah, I smoke pot.' It just didn't come across the way I was explaining it. It's more of a spiritual thing. It's a lifestyle as much as you might want to bash it. It's one of the first communicating things you see if you run into a surfer in a foreign country. He's making hand gestures to roll a joint. It's the passing of the peace pipe. I grew up around Nat and those guys, and Nat would say, "Take a hit. Shit. I won a world title. I won five. You think this is gonna hurt you? It's not going to hurt at all. There are guys surfing on heroin and you're smoking weed. Who cares? You aren't doing anything else." That's how it always weighed out around those guys. They were really proud of me being stoned instead of boozing it up. If anything, it's going to motivate you to go out even when the waves are small. Or say you're in a contest and the waves look like shit and everyone is complaining. You can go to your car, turn on some jazz, take a hit and get amped up. You go out and have a blast. When you lose you're like, "Who cares? I'm still surfing." I can't tell you how many contests I've been to where someone makes an ass of themselves because they lost when they could've just walked away and taken a puff instead of making a scene and embarrassing themselves.
