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Go ahead and chalk Elton John down onto the “nightmare blunt rotation” list, as the acclaimed British pop star recently railed against the decision to legalize marijuana, calling it one of the “greatest mistakes of all time.” Yes, all time, like in the history of humankind.
During a recent interview with Time, the legendary “Rocket Man” musician made the extreme comments about the legalization of marijuana.
Canada legalized the use of medical and recreational marijuana in 2018, while the United States currently has 38 states that have legalized the medical use of cannabis and 24 states that have legalized recreational use — Washington was the first state to do so, legalizing weed in 2012. In 2023, Delaware, Maryland, Minnesota, and Ohio all put forth measures to legalize marijuana.
John, however, believes the widespread legalization of marijuana is a grave mistake, unintentionally yet still literally putting it on par with Chernobyl, prohibition, the Treaty of Versailles, Hitler’s decision to invade Russia in WWII, the 1929 stock market crash, and the widespread use of led (these are a few of the things listed when asking ChatGPT to name the “greatest mistakes of all time”).
“I maintain that it’s addictive. It leads to other drugs. And when you’re stoned — and I’ve been stoned — you don’t think normally. Legalizing marijuana in America and Canada is one of the greatest mistakes of all time,” John told Time Magazine for his Icon of the Year interview.
“You make terrible decisions on drugs,” he said of his own personal experiences with drugs. “I wanted love so badly, I’d just take hostages. I’d see someone I liked and spend three or four months together, and then they would resent me because they had nothing in their life apart from me. It really upsets me, thinking back on how many people I probably hurt.”
John, 77 years old, most recently released his 31st studio album Regimental Sgt. Zippo in 2021. From 2018 to 2023, John embarked on the Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour, which consisted of 330 concerts across the world.
With its earnings of $929.1 million, the Farewell Yellow Brick Road is the third-highest grossing concert of all time, behind only Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour, which concluded earlier this month, and Coldplay’s Music of the Spheres World Tour, which began in 2022 and will wrap up next year.