The influential Jazz musician, Louis Armstrong (b. August 4, 1901), was an advocate for cannabis use medicinally and socially. In his era is was called many things including: “gage,” “mugs,” and “Mary Warner.”
Armstrong used cannabis for relaxation before and after performances and expressed the following sentiment about the camaraderie he felt:
“That’s one reason we appreciated pot, as y’all calls it now, the warmth it always brought forth from the other person … It makes you feel wanted, and when you’re with another tea smoker it makes you feel a special sense of kinship.”
He was arrested several times for cannabis. Luckily, his status as an entertainer and cultural ambassador helped him to receive suspended sentences – many others, especially people of color, have not been so lucky.
On his cannabis use, “As we always used to say, gage is more of a medicine than a dope. But with all the riggamaroo going on, no one can do anything about it.” Ultimately, the penalties for illegal cannabis were too much even for Louis Armstrong: “Well, that was my life and I don’t feel ashamed at all. Mary Warner, honey, you sure was good and I enjoyed you heap much. But the price got a little too high to pay.”
We’ve come a long way in reducing the “riggamaroo,” behind cannabis use and still have a long ways to go …
For more background:
Louis Armstrong and Cannabis: The Jazz Legend’s Lifelong Love of ‘the Gage’ (Leafly)
Smoke Signals: A Social History of Marijuana (PopMatters)
Legal History of Cannabis in the United States (WikiPedia)
