Ziggy Marley started smoking marijuana ‘too young’

August 23, 2019

Reggae star Ziggy Marley, 50, says he "can't even remember" when he had his first puff of the psychoactive drug marijuana, but he knows that he was "too young" to dabble with cannabis.

Ziggy also said that he only did it because his father, Bob Marley - who died at the age of 36 from a four-year battle with skin cancer - encouraged him to do so as part of their religion.

Speaking to Reader's Digest, Ziggy said: "Smoking marijuana wasn't considered a bad thing in Rastafarian culture. It wasn't something to hide from the kids. I can't even remember when I had my first spliff, I was around nine. I was very young, too young. I wouldn't have let myself do it in my father's place."

He added, "But it was a part of our religion - we're one of those ancient cultures with traditions that modern society wouldn't accept."

Although many people around him were smoking marijuana for "fun", Ziggy actually relied on the drug for other reasons.

He explained: "When I first consciously decided to smoke weed as a teenager, I approached it from a spiritual point of view. It's given me more insight into myself and into my spirituality, and I use it as a form of influence when reading scriptures and books about spirituality. I use it to give me a different perspective so that my mind isn't in the same place that it normally is. I turn into a shaman. It was never just about getting high - I educated myself about it in terms of how yogis in India use it, and I went down that route with it, I didn't go down the fun route."

Ziggy recently launched a campaign to encourage users to 'grow your own' in a bid to rid marijuana of pesticides as he wants to ensure that the weed he inhales is organic.

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