smoothmix presents
HIGHLY REGARDED.
8 women. 8 fields. One thing in common.
Some of the most brilliant, boundary-breaking women in modern history have had a quiet relationship with the herb — one they've been honest about, unapologetic for, and in some cases, arrested over. Here are eight of them.
#01 — Whoopi Goldberg
Actor & Entrepreneur
Whoopi Goldberg is one of the most decorated and outspoken voices in American public life — EGOT winner, comedian, longtime co-host of The View, and fearless cultural commentator. She's also a longtime advocate for the plant, famously using a vaporizer pen she named “Sippy” to manage the chronic headaches caused by her glaucoma.
In 2016, she co-founded Whoopi & Maya alongside edibles pioneer Maya Elisabeth, one of the first wellness companies built specifically around women's health, targeting menstrual pain at a time when no one else in the industry wanted to touch the subject.
“They didn't think of menstrual cramps as real pain,” she said. “That tells me there's a lot of education to do.”
The company closed in 2020, but Goldberg relaunched the brand in 2024 and continues to build in the space.
Sources: Hollywood Reporter / CNN
#02 — Maya Angelou
Poet & Memoirist
Maya Angelou is one of the defining literary voices of the 20th century — poet, memoirist, civil rights activist, and the first poet since Robert Frost to read at a Presidential inauguration.
In Gather Together in My Name, the second volume of her seven-part autobiography, she wrote openly and without shame about her use of the herb as a young woman — at a time when doing so was both taboo and genuinely dangerous for a Black woman in America.
She described how it eased the strain of a brutally hard stretch of life and how she disciplined her use with the same rigour she brought to everything else.
A woman who broke every rule, on every page, on her own terms.
Sources: Leaf Nation / Wikipedia
#03 — Fiona Apple
Singer-Songwriter
Fiona Apple walked onto a VMA stage at 19, accepted her Best New Artist award, and told the entertainment industry exactly what she thought of it in front of millions of people.
She has made only four albums in thirty years, each one on her own timeline, each one a critical landmark.
For years, Apple struggled with severe chronic insomnia, cycling through medications that brought as many problems as they solved. She eventually found relief in the herb, telling Vulture plainly:
“I was on way too much medication for a while. Now I'm on way less. But pot helps me.”
Unapologetic, always.
Sources: Merry Jane / Fresh Toast
#04 — Lady Gaga
Artist & Performer
Lady Gaga is not just a pop star — she is a conceptual artist who built an entire aesthetic universe from scratch, then rebuilt it several times over.
In 2013, she fractured her hip during her Born This Way Ball tour, which triggered fibromyalgia — a chronic pain disorder characterised by widespread, daily, full-body pain.
For years, she relied on the herb to manage the pain well enough to perform. Her struggle with the condition was documented in her 2017 Netflix documentary Gaga: Five Foot Two.
She has since said she is now pain-free and no longer uses it, but for a significant chapter of her creative life, it was part of how she kept showing up.
#05 — Margaret Mead
Anthropologist
Margaret Mead rewired how the Western world understood gender, sexuality, and human society — her 1928 book Coming of Age in Samoa alone was enough to change a century of thinking.
On October 27, 1969, she appeared before the U.S. Senate Subcommittee and argued, drawing from decades of cross-cultural research, that marijuana should be legalised.
Florida Governor Claude Kirk Jr. responded by calling her a “dirty old lady.” She later told Newsweek she had tried it herself.
The Library of Congress preserves her testimony in full.
Sources: Library of Congress / Stars and Stripes
#06 — Susan Sarandon
Actor & Activist
Susan Sarandon has spent five decades refusing to play by Hollywood's rules — using her platform for activism, her craft for risk-taking, and her weekends however she likes.
In a High Times interview, she described the herb as “more of a lifestyle choice — like yoga or meditation.”
She told Andy Cohen on Watch What Happens Live that she attended almost every major awards show elevated — “except the Oscars.”
As she told the New York Times: “I'm not a drinker, I'm more of a stoner.”
Sources: High Times / CBD Village
#07 — Ilana Glazer
Comedian & Writer
Ilana Glazer co-created Broad City with Abbi Jacobson — one of the most original and genuinely feminist comedies of its generation.
The show was groundbreaking in part because it portrayed cannabis as simply part of everyday life.
At the 2016 SXSW panel, Glazer stated plainly:
“I smoke every day.”
Sources: High Times / Entity Magazine
#08 — Rita Lee
Rock Icon
Rita Lee was the Queen of Brazilian Rock — over 60 million records sold and a career spanning five decades.
In August 1976, while three months pregnant, she was arrested at her São Paulo home — widely seen as the dictatorship targeting her for her defiance.
In her autobiography, she wrote:
“My generation suffered the claustrophobia of a brutal dictatorship, and using drugs was a way to breathe airs of freedom.”
Sources: Wikipedia / Washington Post
Highly regarded, in every sense.
Here's to the women who did it their way.
— smoothmix
