In Person of Interest we talk to the people catching our eye right now about their projects past and present. Next up, we chat with actor and comedian Seth Rogen, about Houseplant, the cannabis lifestyle brand he cofounded, and how the landscape and conversations around THC have changed since his early ‘Pineapple Express’ days.
Seth Rogen smokes weed “pretty much all day, every day,” and that’s how he refers to it, incidentally. “I can't call it cannabis,” he says. “I just can't do it. It's not within me.” It was a natural progression for him to cofound Houseplant, a cannabis-focused lifestyle brand, with his friend and frequent collaborator Evan Goldberg.
Houseplant began in Canada in 2019, but after some US states began loosening cannabis restrictions, the duo expanded the company stateside. They sold design-focused ceramic ashtrays designed by Rogen, stash jars, rolling tray sets, as well as some less expected items like a set of sake cups and housecoats. Houseplant’s newest offering, a THC seltzer, is the company’s first-ever beverage, a reflection of the growing culture around hemp-infused drinks.
We spoke to Rogen about how his relationship with weed has changed, why drinking your THC might be the best way to consume it, and the misconceptions many people still hold about cannabis.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Do you remember the first time you smoked weed?
I first smoked weed when I was around 13 years old on the railroad track near my high school. I'm from Vancouver, British Columbia, which is a very weed-saturated city, and especially at that time it was probably one of the more weed-friendly cities in North America. It wasn't officially decriminalized, but it pretty much was. There were cannabis cafes and stuff like that.
How has your relationship to weed changed since those days?
There was some stigma that told me I shouldn't, but weed always made me feel more functional. I feel like the [anti-weed] propaganda got to me. By the time I was around 18, I was like, fuck it. I was gonna smoke weed whenever I want, not think about it, and if it starts to have a deeply negative impact on my life, I will reassess the strategy. But it never did.
Has there ever been a time when you’ve made the conscious decision to cut back on your weed consumption?
It’s ebbed and flowed naturally. It's funny; some people, when they're feeling more anxious, they smoke more weed. When I'm feeling anxious, I smoke less weed. The weed I usually have on hand is a pretty strong sativa. That is not something I would say is generally helpful for anxiety.
What do you think people most misunderstand about weed and THC-infused products?
From my experience, a lot of people who don't consume THC probably have either had a bad experience or are afraid of it. A lot of people drink alcohol. A lot of people are looking for some sort of release, and I actually think weed is probably a very good choice for a lot of people who don't think it is a good choice for them. It's all about finding the right way to consume it.
Weed is just so strong these days. You can take one hit off a joint that's really strong, and if you don't smoke a lot of weed, it'll really send you on a journey. What we saw [with Houseplant seltzers] is that they’re a really good entry level weed product.
How has the culture around weed changed over the years?
People have started to see that the reasons weed was illegal in the first place were highly dubious. They’ve started to question why weed would be so hard to access when alcohol is so easy. It seems like a new lie kind of prevails every now and then from whomever wants weed to remain illegal. First it was it'll just make you go fucking crazy, and then it'll make you lazy, and then it's a gateway drug. And slowly, people's own experience tells them that you can be lazy and crazy and become a drug addict without ever trying weed, and you could smoke weed and never have any of those things happen to you.
People saw that with their own eyes, and slowly, these stigmas started to go away.
I’m sure you’ve been told this before but your work, Pineapple Express in particular, has had a lot to do with destigmatizing weed in this country.
I remember David Letterman telling me “no one talks about this.” Even Woody Harrelson, at the time, was very coy about it, and wouldn't directly say he smoked weed all the time. Now he does, and now he has a dispensary. But at the time, it was not a thing that actors in mainstream movies did.
Recently Houseplant has released its first line of THC-infused seltzers. How does drinking one make you feel?
Different amounts will make you feel varying degrees of high. They're low dose—we didn't want anyone to have a bad experience with them. There was a time 10 years ago where everyone was trying to max out. I remember having a 500-milligram brownie years ago and it was like “what is this for?”
The industry has changed a lot even in the past five years. Where do you see it heading?
I think [THC] beverages are very clearly a hot area of discussion, and you see clearly someone is very threatened by them because a lot of states have a lot of lobbying and pressure to not sell them. The idea that that shouldn't be allowed to happen in every state is really patronizing to people—it's treating people like they're idiots. We're not stupid. We know what this does. We know it's not more dangerous than alcohol.
The idea that it's getting into some restaurants and bars and sports arenas, to me, is really exciting. I've always said until it's as easy to buy weed as it is alcohol, there is a major gap in logic at play. If you sell beer, there's no reason not to sell [THC beverages], and some places have actually started to do that. That is really encouraging and exciting, and suggests a cultural shift that is tremendous.