Ziggy Marley, the son of late legendary Jamaican singer, Bob Marley has revealed he started smoking marijuana at the age of nine, with the blessing of his reggae legend father.
The 50-year-old, who followed in his father’s footsteps to become a musician is a Rastafarian like his father, who died in 1981 aged just 36.
He admitted he was ‘too young’ to start smoking the drug but said it was always a common thing in the Rastafarian culture.
‘Smoking marijuana wasn’t considered a bad thing in Rastafarian culture’, he told Reader’s Digest. ‘It wasn’t something to hide from the kids.
‘I can’t even remember when I had my first “spliff”, I was around nine. I was very young, too young.’
The singer admitted that if not for his father’s blessing he wouldn’t have started smoking at a young age.
‘I wouldn’t have let myself do it in my father’s place’, he explained.
But it was a part of our religion – we’re one of those ancient cultures with traditions that modern society wouldn’t accept.’
He explained that he didn’t smoke marijuana for ‘fun’ and instead used it to heighten his spirituality.
‘When I first consciously decided to smoke weed as a teenager, I approached it from a spiritual point of view’, he went on.
‘It’s given me more insight into myself and into my spirituality, and I use it as a form of influence when reading scriptures and books about spirituality. I use it to give me a different perspective so that my mind isn’t in the same place that it normally is. I turn into a shaman.
‘It was never just about getting high – I educated myself about it in terms of how Yogis in India use it and I went down that route with it, I didn’t go down the “fun” route.’
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