<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><rss version="2.0" xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/"
     xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
     xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"
     xmlns:sy="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/syndication/"
     xmlns:slash="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/slash/"
     xmlns:georss="http://www.georss.org/georss"
     xmlns:geo="http://www.w3.org/2003/01/geo/wgs84_pos#"
     xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/">
    <channel>
        <title><![CDATA[‘Growing Belushi’ goes inside Jim Belushi’s cannabis empire]]></title>
        <atom:link href="https://usagag.com/2020/08/18/growing-belushi-goes-inside-jim-belushis-cannabis-empire/" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
        <link>https://usagag.com/2020/08/18/growing-belushi-goes-inside-jim-belushis-cannabis-empire/</link>
        <lastBuildDate>Tue, 18 Aug 2020 22:44:29 +0000</lastBuildDate>
        <sy:updatePeriod>hourly</sy:updatePeriod>
        <sy:updateFrequency>1</sy:updateFrequency>
        <generator>https://usagag.com</generator>
        <media:content url="/uploads/2020/08/growing-belushi-goes-inside-jim-belushis-cannabis-empire.jpeg" medium="image">
            <media:title type="html">‘Growing Belushi’ goes inside Jim Belushi’s cannabis empire</media:title>
        </media:content>
        <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Jim Belushi is eager for you to see how his career has gone to pot.</p><p>The actor, Blues Brother and TV veteran (ABC&#8217;s &#8220;According to Jim&#8221;) stars in &#8220;Growing Belushi,&#8221; a three-part Discovery series taking viewers inside the legal cannabis business he runs from his southern Oregon spread, Belushi&#8217;s Farm. It premieres Wednesday at 10 p.m.</p><p>&#8220;Once you engage with this plant, it kind of leads you where you want to go,&#8221; says Belushi, 66, who brought the now-93 acre farm on the Rogue River just as marijuana was being legalized in Oregon. &#8220;I was like, &#8216;Wow, new agriculture, let&#8217;s do that,&#8217;&#8221; he says. &#8220;And it started me on that path.</p><p>&#8220;It&#8217;s taken me to a whole different level.&#8221;</p><p>Belushi says he&#8217;s &#8220;a boots-on-the-ground guy&#8221; and regularly visits marijuana dispensaries. His business philosophy changed, he says, when he encountered an Iraq War vet on one of those visits.</p><p>&#8220;He said, &#8216;I was a medic and I saw things that happened to the human body that nobody should ever see.&#8217; He had PTSD and had gotten off Oxycontin with cannabis and said, &#8216;I couldn&#8217;t talk to my kids or my wife and I couldn&#8217;t sleep, but your Black Diamond OG [cannabis] allows me to do that.&#8217; He teared up and hugged me.</p><p>&#8220;This is a business about healing,&#8221; he says. &#8220;People are suffering from depression, PTSD, Alzheimer&#8217;s, anxiety. I always followed my passion and the money came and the business behind it &#8212; but this vet changed my purpose.&#8221;</p><figure id="attachment_16155574"  class="wp-caption aligncenter"><strong><noscript><img data- data-src="/uploads/2020/08/jim-belushi-02.jpeg" class="lazyload" src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==" /><noscript><img  data-src="/uploads/2020/08/jim-belushi-02.jpeg" /></noscript></noscript><img class="lazyload" src='data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns=%22http://www.w3.org/2000/svg%22%20viewBox=%220%200%20210%20140%22%3E%3C/svg%3E' data- data-src="/uploads/2020/08/jim-belushi-02.jpeg" /></strong><figcaption class="wp-caption-text"><span>Jim Belushi runs an legal cannabis business from his southern Oregon spread, Belushi&#8217;s Farm.</span><span class="credit">Discovery Channel</span></figcaption></figure><p>And, if you&#8217;re wondering, Belushi doesn&#8217;t sample his product too much.</p><p>&#8220;I&#8217;m a microdoser. If I have a joint it lasts me like 10 days,&#8221; he says. &#8220;I take 2.5 milligrams of [THC-infused] Bhang Chocolate &#8212; it&#8217;s an easy sleep and I wake up feeling great &#8212; and maybe a little hit of [hybrid cannabis] Cherry Pie &#8212; which makes me pleasant and charming and chills my anxiety and I get along with my wife.</p><p>&#8220;I call it &#8216;The Marriage Counselor.&#8217;&#8221;</p><p>Most of &#8220;Growing Belushi&#8221; shows him running the business he started in 2015 and interacting with his staffers, including his prone-to-exaggeration cousin, Chris &#8212; who oversees the day-to-day operations &#8212; and young growers Ben and Alex, whom he&#8217;s known since they were kids (he&#8217;s friends with their father). Viewers also get a glimpse at his personal life.</p><p>Another featured character is Jack Murtha, aka marijuana celebrity &#8220;Captain Jack,&#8221; whose rare strain of Afghan weed was known as &#8220;The Smell of &#8216;SNL&#8217;&#8221; when Belushi&#8217;s late brother, John, rose to stardom on &#8220;Saturday Night Live&#8221; in the mid-&#8217;70s.</p><p>&#8220;I met Jack when Danny [Aykroyd] and I started doing the Blues Brothers and we were playing an East Coast gig,&#8221; Belushi says. &#8220;Jack and Danny were friends, and when I started my business, Danny said, &#8216;You can have Captain Jack&#8217;s strain. It&#8217;s very unique.&#8217; Where else would those guys [on &#8216;SNL&#8217;] stay up and get stimulated and come up with &#8216;The Coneheads?&#8217;&#8221;</p><p>Belushi mentions his brother several times &#8212; John&#8217;s wife, Judy, appears in the series, along with Aykroyd &#8212; and says he thinks Belushi&#8217;s drug use, and eventual overdose death in 1982, was partly caused by a traumatic brain injury he suffered while playing high school football.</p><p>&#8220;I saw my brother have a seizure in my house and we didn&#8217;t know what that was from,&#8221; he says. &#8220;It was from banging his head and getting his bell rung. That&#8217;s what I believe. If Johnny was a pothead, he&#8217;d be alive today.</p><p>&#8220;In the second episode I go to Colombia and I go up in a helicopter and ride into the &#8216;Red Zone,&#8217; which is where all the coke is grown,&#8221; he says. &#8220;I look down on those fields and there&#8217;s a moment that really struck me. I went, &#8216;Wow, these fields are really cemeteries, all those people who died from that coke.&#8217; I wondered, looking at these fields, if I&#8217;m looking at the coke my brother used.</p><p>&#8220;If Colombia can take these fields and convert them to cannabis fields, they can heal people instead of killing them.</p><p>&#8220;Everybody is screaming inside,&#8221; he says. &#8220;Sometimes we take a Xanax or Ambien or a prescription medication. [Cannabis] is the safest, most non-violent choice. It helps repair families in trauma &#8212; not only losing a sibling, like me, but illness in the family, the loss of a job or a house &#8230; I&#8217;ve experienced it myself with divorce. It&#8217;s for the battle in all of us.</p><p>&#8220;One of the reasons cannabis is so prolific is that it finds a peaceful way to stop the screaming.&#8221;</p>]]></content:encoded>
                <dc:creator><![CDATA[USAGAG]]></dc:creator>
            </channel>
</rss><!--Time: 0.063172101974487-->