The Herbalist: Jim Belushi Is Changing The World One Cannabis Plant At A Time

Actors moving into the cannabis industry is nothing new. 

But it’s a shame to realize that many of these ventures are nothing more than an easy cash grab. 

For actor, musician, and comedian Jim Belushi, cannabis is personal. He’s even done some major rebranding. 

His Twitter account is a page for cannabis advocacy and reminds us of the industry’s many injustices. 

In terms of his relationship with the plant, Belushi wrote on Twitter that cannabis heals his traumas. He believes growing the plant is his “mission from God.”

His brother, the late John Belushi, passed away from a drug overdose in 1982. Jim knew his brother struggled with addiction, and he writes, “if my brother John was a pothead, he’d still be with us today.”

The actor turned cannabis farmer is still very much an entertainer. You can catch his hilarious jabs and playful energy in his Discovery show, Growing Belushi. 

The show takes a close look at the actor’s cultivation site, Belushi’s Farm. 

The series helps viewers understand that Belushi’s Farm was created to heal people from their woes. 

The farm uses natural sunlight for growth and rigorous testing to ensure each strain is up to Belushi and the consumer’s standards. 

Although it’s quite the fun recreational plant, Belushi strongly supports its therapeutic properties. 

“Every time I cultivate the land, I get pulled more and more into the medicine and the joy of this work,” reads the Belushi’s Farm website. 

He adds that believing in the “spirit and medicine cannabis offers” can heal the world, our communities, families, and individuals suffering from varying conditions. 

Having his own weed farm might seem like enough, but Jim Belushi’s cannabis advocacy efforts stretch far wider than that. 

He firmly believes that cannabis prisoners are the real industry pioneers.

In a handful of interviews, he’s opened up about his partnership with The Last Prisoner Project, an organization helping release cannabis prisoners and assisting them in re-entering society and the workforce.

With the 40,000 cannabis prisoners behind bars for activities that are legal today, Belushi proudly supports the LPP and its efforts to expunge all cannabis-related records. 

In more recent news, Belushi is looking forward to delivering a keynote speech at the inaugural Grow Up Conference & Expo this June in British Columbia. 

He truly stops at nothing to inform the world that cannabis is medicine. “It’s not the Devil’s Lettuce- it’s the Lord’s Kale!” 

Read our exclusive interview with Jim Belushi below.

It was totally by accident. I bought a beautiful property next to the Rogue River in Southern Oregon, which to my surprise, is in an area called the “banana belt.” There is an area shaped like a big banana leaf that is the perfect vortex for growing pinot, pears, and cannabis. The 80-acre farm behind me came up for sale, I bought it, and I thought, “What the hell do I grow now?”

Cannabis became legal in the state of Oregon, and I thought, “A-HA! The new agriculture.” I talked to Dan Aykroyd about the idea, and he introduced me to Captain Jack, the old weed dealer for Saturday Night Live, who had a strain that he brought back from the bottom of the Kush Mountains in 1972. I began to grow Captain Jack’s strain. Once you start the journey with this plant, she takes you for the ride. And now I have 4 light deprivation greenhouses and produce 1600 pounds a year, and we are expanding into other states- Colorado, Oklahoma. But I did do one movie this year. I am still an actor! Kind of. Actor/Farmer.

Everybody knows somebody who is struggling. Everybody. Whether it’s parents with dementia or Alzheimer’s, arthritis, friends with serious trauma and PTSD, people who can’t sleep, or people suffering from seizures. Especially the opiate addict. Severe illness and drug-related deaths, car accidents, overdoses, epilepsy… these ailments and events collapse families, who continue to perpetuate the trauma. Everybody needs medicine somehow to treat everything from pulled muscles to hospice. This plant offers a pathway to soothing and healing of all these traumas.

It’s safer than pharmaceuticals and alcohol consumption. I believe that if my brother John was a pothead, he’d be alive today. I believe in the power of healing of this plant. I’m not saying there aren’t positive and effective pharmaceutical drugs out there, and I’m not saying not to have a drink once in a while. But I am saying that when you use those medicines to excess because of the excessive struggle that you live with, it sneaks into a family like a snake and slowly strangles until somebody dies, like my brother John. Why did I start in cannabis? For so many reasons. But I guess the number one fear in life is death and the number two fear in life is the collapse of family. I come from a collapsed family. I come from that trauma. This plant has helped soothe my own PTSD. I hear stories and see stories every day of other families for whom this plant has helped put on a pathway to healing.

The family that we have created on the farm. The sense of camaraderie, the feeling that we’re all doing something that helps others, and of course being close to the ground, hands in the soil, sun on our faces. It literally and figuratively keeps you grounded. In the world we live in today, that is one of the benefits of farming.

I was not expecting the aphids, mites, gophers, squirrels, deer, mold. They never tell you that stuff when you put your money out and invest in this industry. Wow! We lost 300 pounds last year to mold alone. That’s why I have made this shift to GroTech greenhouses, Fohse Lighting, Advanced Nutrients, and other products in order to help us control the environment enough to eradicate pests and mold and only using natural pest management.

We have in our library of around twenty different genetics. With our new GroTech greenhouses, we can grow up to eight genetics at a time. With four cycles and four greenhouses, we have a lot of flexibility.