Ted Turner
(1938)
American media mogul and philanthropist.
Ted Turner was approached in 1998 by Cable Sitters, a media-monitoring group which complained that Scooby-Doo is "laced with subliminal drug references" and demanded that Turner's Cartoon Network stop broadcasting re-runs of the series.
Turner wisely ignored them, just like he didn't cave in to pressure from the DEA in 1996, after his CNN network broadcast a documentary on marijuana called Higher Times. The DEA demanded that Turner give them "rebuttal time," to the news broadcast, but Turner refused.
In fact, Ted Turner has been known as a toker since his youth – he even got caught growing marijuana in his dorm room at school! Yet unlike most stoner celebrities, Turner is willing to put some of his fortune where his bong is. Although nowhere near the $1 billion that he pledged to the United Nations in 1997, the Turner Foundation is a major sponsor of the Kentucky Hemp Museum, through a program which provides grants to groups that may "benefit the environment." Museum coordinator Craig Lee told the media that he has met personally with Ted Turner, and that Turner expressed "interest" in the industrial use of cannabis. Another prime sponsor of the Kentucky Hemp Museum is the ultimate pro-hemp celeb – Woody Harrelson.
In 1987, Turner's then-girlfriend Jane Fonda was quitting smoking cigarettes, and so Turner flamboyantly declared that his TBS network would not hire cigarette smokers. Tobacco giant Philip Morris tried to get a lawsuit going, and in a statement, tobacco smoker and former CNN anchor Gwenn Scott claimed Turner's ban was hypocritical, because "it is common knowledge that Turner sits in his office and smokes marijuana."
source: Cannabis Culture
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