Cannabis Cultural Figures — The People Who Shaped the Scene

Last verified: April 2026

Cannabis culture did not write itself. The rituals, brands, books, laws, and comedic touchstones that define modern cannabis life were built by specific, named people — most of whom are still alive, several of whom went to prison for it, one of whom literally descends from the Post etiquette dynasty. This page introduces the nine figures whose biographies this section covers in depth. Each name links to a full profile.

The Etiquette Authority

Exactly one person on this list writes books about how to pass a joint properly — and it happens to be the great-great-granddaughter of Emily Post.

• 

  Lizzie Post — Co-president of the Emily Post Institute and author of Higher Etiquette: A Guide to the World of Cannabis, from Dispensaries to Dinner Parties (Penguin Random House, 2019). Her three-principle framework — consideration, respect, honesty — is the backbone of most modern cannabis etiquette writing, including much of this site. "Cannabis culture is baked in etiquette, has been for a long time, and goes far beyond puff-puff-pass."

The Artists

Four people who used music, film, television, and design to drag cannabis from stigma to mainstream — a process that took roughly five decades and produced both Grammy wins and federal prison time.

• 

  Willie Nelson — 92-year-old country music icon, founder of Willie's Reserve (2015), NORML advisory board co-chair, and the living embodiment of "my stash is your stash." Smoked on the White House roof with Jimmy Carter's son in 1978. Out-smoked Snoop Dogg in Amsterdam by using a vape, a joint, a blunt, and a pipe simultaneously. Now mostly an edibles user after lung issues forced him to quit smoking.

• 

  Snoop Dogg — The world's most recognizable cannabis personality. Founded Leafs by Snoop in 2015, reacquired Death Row Records in 2022 and launched Death Row Cannabis the same year. Employed a full-time blunt roller at $50,000/year. In November 2023, announced he was "giving up smoke" — a stunt for Solo Stove that generated 19.5 billion impressions and over $100 million in earned media before being revealed as a marketing campaign, after which the Solo Stove CEO resigned.

• 

  Seth Rogen — Actor, writer, and co-founder of Houseplant (with Evan Goldberg), launched in Canada in 2019 and the U.S. in March 2021. Made cannabis a design object: his handmade ceramic ashtrays appeared in Architectural Digest, and the Houseplant home-goods Instagram has twice the following of its cannabis account. "This is a creative endeavor."

• 

  Tommy Chong — Half of Cheech & Chong, who invented stoner comedy as a genre in the 1970s. Los Cochinos won the 1974 Grammy for Best Comedy Album. Up in Smoke (1978) remains the cult classic of the form. In 2003 Chong was sentenced to nine months in federal prison in Operation Pipe Dreams — the only person imprisoned in the entire operation — for selling bongs through his family business. See the bogart page for the cinematic lineage his work drew on.

The Pioneers

Three figures who — through a ballot initiative, a self-published book, and a globally translated cultivation manual — built the legal, ideological, and technical foundations of the legal cannabis era.

• 

  Dennis Peron (1945–2018) — "The father of medical cannabis." Co-founded the San Francisco Cannabis Buyers Club in 1991, the first public cannabis dispensary in the U.S., which served 4,000 members at its peak. Co-authored California Proposition 215 in 1996, the nation's first state medical marijuana law. Arrested over twenty times. His activism was fueled by the AIDS death of his partner Jonathan West in 1990.

• 

  Jack Herer (1939–2010) — "The Hemperor." Self-published The Emperor Wears No Clothes in 1985 while serving 14 days in federal prison. The book is now in its 14th edition with more than 800,000 copies sold, and offers a standing $100,000 bounty to anyone who can disprove its claims about industrial hemp. Dutch breeders at Sensi Seeds named the Jack Herer strain in his honor — one of the most influential cultivars in cannabis history.

• 

  Jorge Cervantes — Pen name of George Van Patten. Author of Marijuana Horticulture: The Indoor/Outdoor Medical Grower's Bible (1983, now in its 5th edition, 500,000+ copies in 8 languages) and The Cannabis Encyclopedia (2015, Benjamin Franklin Gold Award). High Times calls him "the most trusted name in marijuana cultivation." Wrote the "Jorge's Rx" column for a decade. Concealed his real identity for 27 years behind black dreadlocks and a beret.

The Entrepreneur

One figure whose rise — from behind a dispensary counter to the cover of Forbes — most clearly maps the modern commercial trajectory of legal cannabis.

• 

  Berner (Gilbert Anthony Milam Jr.) — Co-founded Cookies in 2010 with cultivator Jai Chang, who developed the Girl Scout Cookies strain. Berner started as a budtender at San Francisco's Hemp Center dispensary; Cookies now operates 70+ retail locations across 6 countries with 2021 sales exceeding $700 million. In August 2022 he became the first cannabis executive on the cover of Forbes. In 2021 Cookies was named one of America's Hottest Brands by Ad Age — the first cannabis brand to receive the honor.

Who's Not On This List

Plenty of people belong in a more exhaustive cultural figures catalogue and don't appear here: Tom Forcade (founded High Times in 1974), Steven Hager (created the Cannabis Cup in 1988), Keith Stroup (founded NORML in 1970), Vivian McPeak (Seattle Hempfest), Dr. Ethan Russo (endocannabinoid researcher), Philip Wolf (Cultivating Spirits sommelier program), and the five Waldos of San Rafael High School. Several of them are covered in detail elsewhere on this site — see 420 culture, the lounges section, and the three principles page. The nine figures profiled here were chosen because their biographies most clearly illustrate how modern cannabis etiquette got built.