Morgan Freeman Shoots Straight: On Legalizing Marijuana and His Escape From New York

he Oscar winner sat down to discuss his new film 5 Flights Up, why

he left the Big Apple, and how marijuana is the only thing that can help ease his pain.

ou’ve all heard the voice—at once authoritative and passive, weaving every soothing syllable into an epic yarn. It’s guided you through forbidding prisons, alien invasions, and the icy plains of Antarctica. That the voice is attached to an equally arresting, freewheeling persona has the cumulative effect of, to quote his Shawshank Redemption character, making him seem “like a man in a park without a care or a worry in the world.”

It’s a testament to his acting ability, as these days Morgan Freeman, the Oscar-winning film legend, is in a great deal of pain.

Seven years ago, he was driving across Mississippi when his vehicle, a 1997 Nissan Maxima, skidded off the highway, flipping over several times. Freeman was rescued using the Jaws of Life and medevaced to a nearby hospital in Memphis. His left shoulder, arm, and elbow were shattered, and doctors operated for four hours to repair the nerves in his arm. He still hasn’t regained the full use of his left hand and wears a yellow compression glove to prevent blood pooling.

 ask him about his stance on the legalization of marijuana, since he’s a longtime user. “They used to say, ‘You smoke that stuff, boy, you get hooked!” says a chuckling Freeman. “My first wife got me into it many years ago. How do I take it? However it comes! I’ll eat it, drink it, smoke it, snort it! This movement is really a long time coming, and it’s getting legs—longer legs. Now, the thrust is understanding that alcohol has no real medicinal use. Maybe if you have one drink it’ll quiet you down, but two or three and you’re fucked.”

He pauses, and points to the glove-aid jutting out from his left suit sleeve. “Marijuana has many useful uses,” he says. “I have fibromyalgia pain in this arm, and the only thing that offers any relief is marijuana. 

They’re talking about kids who have grand mal seizures, and they’ve discovered that marijuana eases that down to where these children can have a life. That right there, to me, says, ‘Legalize it across the board!’”

“And what negative effects does it have?” Freeman continues. “Look at Woodstock 1969. They said, ‘We’re not going to bother them or say anything about smoking marijuana,’ and not one problem or fight. Then look at what happened in ’99,” he says, referencing the less marijuana-friendly 30th-anniversary event, which resulted in riots and arrests.

Despite his injury, the 77-year-old actor remains one of the most prolific film stars in Hollywood, having appeared in no less than four movies in 2013 and 2014. His second of four movies out in ’15 is 5 Flights Up, a lighthearted romantic comedy about a couple (Freeman, Diane Keaton) looking to shed their cozy Brooklyn apartment and start anew.

Directed by Richard Loncraine and executive-produced by Freeman, the film is a rarity: It’s both down to earth, something that’s become quite scarce in tentpole-obsessed Tinseltown, and a casual depiction of a loving interracial couple. Sadly, even in 2015, that’s not something you see too often on the big screen.