'Workaholics' Actor Adam Devine Talks Cannabis: 'I'm Basically A 50's Dad, But Instead Of Whisky I Do Weed'

“I've liked weed from the second I smoked it under a freeway underpass, when I found weed for the first time. My friends and I tried it out and smoked it for a summer; it gave us the worst headache, and probably didn't even get high, but we thought maybe we were, maybe that headache was what it felt like to be high… I grew up in the Midwest: We didn't really have good weed there, it was hard to get, it was just a lot of ditch weed,” says actor, comedian, singer, screenwriter and producer Adam Devine, best known for his roles in “Workaholics,” “Adam Devine's House Party” and “Pitch Perfect.”

As Adam got older, he managed to get his hands on some better weed, but nothing too crazy. That is, until he moved to California.

For a while, weed remained a party substance. But as time went by, Adam started to conceive cannabis differently.

“Now I smoke weed and I feel like when I see old TV shows: the dad would come home and he'd take off his shoes and pour himself a glass of scotch and then sit and watch TV. That's my relationship to weed now, I'm basically a 50's dad, but instead of taking my shoes off and watching ‘Leave It to Beaver,’ I take my shoes off and smoke a joint. That’s my comedown at the end of the night,” he discloses.

Adam also likes alcohol a lot less than he used to. This is not to say we won’t enjoy a cold beer or some good old scotch while watching the Super Bowl, but hangovers are not his favorite thing. “The older you get, the worse the hangovers are. I recently entered into the age that I'm getting these two-day bangers.”

A Cann Of Bliss

Not being a fan of alcohol any longer, the cannabis beverages (or social tonics) made by celebrity-favorite brand, Cann, proved to be an ideal option for Adam. When he first came across them at a dispensary, he simply bought every flavor he could get his hands on, and tried them all.

Adam Devine - CANN

Before his experience with Cann, Adam found most cannabis beverages “gross.” But Cann was different. “Weed is like a flavor that’s an acquired taste. And you have to reacquire the whole damn thing if you're drinking it because it's not the best-tasting drink – if you really can taste the weed. So when I found Cann, I just fell in love with it right away. And admittedly, Cann didn't reach out to me to be an investor; I actually tracked him down and reached out to them.”

Surprisingly, every major celebrity behind Cann (the list includes names like Rebel Wilson, Gwyneth Paltrow, Rosario Dawson and Darren Criss) has said the same: Cann didn’t come looking for me, I went looking for them.

“I always liked the idea of owning a part of something and being a part of building something. When I found out that I was coming in on the ground floor of Cann, I was excited. I want to be the person that spreads the word about Cann and builds this company up to what I think it could be,” Adam declares. “The hope is that this will be the Coca-Cola of weed drinks. And I really think, especially here in America, that within the next decade cannabis will be legalized on a national level.

And he adds: “I think we're right on the cusp of really building something great, an amazing company that, when you look back 10, 40, 50 years, I think this is going to be the type of company that resembles Coca-Cola, in the way that people probably in the fifties were like, ‘damn, I wish I would have been invested in Coca-Cola 30 years ago.’ So that is why I decided to put my own money up and invest in Cann.”

‘You Better Keep Sending This Stuff’

For Adam, the appeal of Cann isn’t just in its tasty flavor, but also in its convenience. You can take it anywhere, whether it’s indoors or outdoors, and get discreetly high without disturbing anyone with your smoke. In fact, he argues, opposite to lighting a joint, which may cause some bad looks or bother some people, cracking open a can of Cann tends to generate interest among people around him: what’s that you’re dirking? It looks cool!

Cann - COURTESY

Beyond social settings, Cann is part of Adam’s nightly routine. “It is definitely my ‘okay, I'm done with work now. I'm gonna drink a couple of Canns and smoke a little bit and watch that show I've been wanting to catch up on, or just hang out in the kitchen with my wife… My family's from Ireland, so when we drink my face gets very red. So if I drink like two or three or four drinks a night, like some people do, at the end of the week I'm all fat-headed. And then I watch the show or the movie that I'm shooting and I go, ‘Oh, man, what did I do?’”

The dosing is a central element as well. In the actor’s experience, the fact that Cann’s THC dose is low is perfect because it allows him to enjoy a few drinks without getting overly stoned.

To illustrate the importance of proper dosing, Adam shares a story: “A buddy of mine got caught smoking cigarettes when he was a kid, and his parents made him smoke an entire pack of cigarettes until he puked. Then the kid was like, ‘Well, now I don't like cigarettes because I vomited when I smoked too many of them.’ And that's how I feel that a lot of people relate that to edibles and cannabis intake. They just tried way too much at first and they got way too high and they didn't like that feeling. But it's nice to ease your way into it and to realize how much you can have.”

After investing in Cann, Adam decided to develop a flavor of his own: Blue Rhuberry. Featuring a punch of big fuzzy raspberries and little rhubarb stalks, the drink includes 5mg of THC. An unspiked version is also available.

Blue Rhuberry was inspired by Adam’s favorite colors, tastes, a design preferences. “They sent me a ton of different flavors. I got to really dial in exactly what I liked about each one and what I didn't like about each one. And we found something that I think is really unique and fun and different.”

“Also the great part about investing in Cann is that they give me a lot of free Cann. So I told Luke, one of the co-founders, ‘even if I don't ever make my money back from this investment, I plan on drinking the amount that I invested in. So you better keep sending this stuff,’” he jokes – or does he?

America’s Best Interest At Heart

Prompted about some of his key arguments to state why cannabis should be legal, Adam is unhesitant.

“It's not hurting anybody. And I know this for myself, I know I am a better person on marijuana than I am on any other substance, whether it's alcohol or any other drug that I allegedly may have tried. Besides being sober, I am the best version of myself on marijuana. In addition, it helps cancer patients, helps people that don't have an appetite, it helps you go to sleep at night... Something that's that good can't be bad,” he states.

“Also: Why is there still an illegal marijuana market in America when you could tax that makes billions of dollars for the government to put back into substance abuse programs, put that into schools and hospitals, build the infrastructure and take care of the country? Now, we're just giving this money to the people that don't have the best interests of America at heart.”

Finally, he gets into the racial bias in cannabis arrests and what can be done about this huge issue.

“On a local level, you can petition your local government to make it legal and to expunge the records of nonviolent criminals who were caught with marijuana, because, to go to jail over a bag of marijuana or a joint seems absolutely medieval to me; it doesn't seem like it should happen in modern society, and the fact that it still does is absolutely insane. So I think the more we petition to get cannabis legalized, I think the better off we'll all be.”

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This article was originally published on Forbes and appears here with permission.