Shortly after the headline-making interview with Willie Nelson appeared to indicate that he had quit smoking marijuana, the Associated Press reached out to a spokesperson for the country singer, Elaine Schock, to confirm the report. The AP wrote that Schock implied that Nelson was partaking in "different ways" than just smoking. "That said, Willie does what he wants, when he wants, when it comes to smoking," the spokesperson replied in an email in December 2019.
It would be difficult to believe that the "On the Road Again" singer had quit cannabis entirely, as earlier that year — in April 2019 — he told Rolling Stone that he was high "pretty much all the time." Nelson might have swapped out smoking weed for ingesting edibles, but he was previously on record as not being a fan of eating cannabis products. "Honestly, I don't do edibles. I'd rather do it the old-fashioned way, because I don't enjoy the high that the body gets," Nelson told The New York Times in 2014. Perhaps Nelson's thoughts on edibles had changed over time, especially as his lung issues developed.
Nelson may have curtailed his weed smoking, but he did not abandon it for good. During an interview with Forbes in April 2023, the interviewer asked which celebrities Nelson would want to have a smoke session with. "I think if you got one, let's burn it," Nelson replied. Not only had Nelson not quit smoking, but he even stopped another celeb from quitting.
