Johnson Used Marijuana Medically

When former Gov. Gary Johnson first came out publicly for legalizing marijuana back in the late '90s, he made it clear that he hadn't used the evil weed since his college daze. It was bad for his skiing and all those athletic activities he so enjoys.

But now, Johnson told The Weekly Standard that he's actually smoked some boo in more recent years.

“It’s not anything I volunteer, but you’re the only person that actually asked about it,” says Johnson, who governed New Mexico from 1994 to 2002. “But for luck, I guess, I wasn’t arrested.” Although smoking marijuana for medicinal purposes was illegal in New Mexico until 2007, Johnson says he needed the drug following a 2005 paragliding accident in Hawaii. His sails got caught in a tree, he stalled—and fell about fifty feet straight down to the ground, he says. Johnson suffered multiple bone fractures, including a burst fracture to his T12 vertebrae. “In my human experience, it’s the worst pain I’ve ever felt.”


“Rather than using painkillers, which I have used on occasion before, I did smoke pot, as a result of having broken my back, blowing out both of my knees, breaking ribs, really taking about three years to recover,” Johnson says. He explains that painkillers had once caused him to suffer nasty side effects and the pain of withdrawing from the pills was unbearable. So, Johnson says, in 2005 "someone" who cared for him gave him marijuana to deal with the pain.

How will this affect Johnson's presidential chances if he becomes a 2012 candidate. I doubt this revelation hurts his standing among the Ron Paul supporters and other libertarian factions of the Republican Party who would be Johnson's main base of support.

But if his candidacy started catching fire in the primaries and Johnson started looking like more of a serious threat than Paul did in 2008, you could expect the GOP establish to use this like a hammer.