EXCLUSIVE: Louisiana Senate Candidate Gary Chambers On Why He Smoked A Blunt For His Campaign Ad & Why Smoking Marijuana Hasn’t Yet Been Normalized

Gary Chambers

EXCLUSIVE: Louisiana Senate Candidate Gary Chambers On Why He Smoked A Blunt For His Campaign Ad & Why Smoking Marijuana Hasn’t Yet Been Normalized

In an exclusive interview with theJasmineBRAND, Louisiana Senate candidate Gary Chambers explained why decided to smoke a blunt for his campaign ad.

The 36-year-old said that his communications team came to him with the idea.

“[Erwin Marionneaux, media director] kind of had this image of, you know, the seriousness of the message we were trying to convey. We didn’t want to make it gimmicky, we wanted to be very intentional about the tone of the video.”

He added:

“We knew it would get traction, we know it was gonna do this. We thought we would get maybe a million plus views on this and that it would definitely bring us into the national conversation.”

Chambers estimated that the 37-second clip amassed about 6 million views in 48 hours on Twitter.

When asked if he was apprehensive prior to filming the ad, Chambers stated:

“I knew it was the right thing to do because we need to destigmatize [marijuana] in this country. But the night before, I hit Erwin I say, ‘uh, we sure we want to do this, you know…uh because…you know with everything, there’s some controversy and people criticize you.'”

He continued:

“And i’m not opposed to being criticized, I understand that that comes with this, but I also want to make sure that I don’t waste this platform and the opportunities that I have to try and convey. I didn’t want to do something that I felt was detrimental to the overall goal.”

My first campaign ad, ‘37 Seconds.’ #JustLikeMe

I hope this ad works to not only destigmatize the use of marijuana, but also forces a new conversation that creates the pathway to legalize this beneficial drug, and forgive those who were arrested due to outdated ideology. pic.twitter.com/G0qKvmUGKD

— Gary Chambers (@GaryChambersJr) January 18, 2022

Chambers also spoke about why smoking marijuana hasn’t been normalized and how he feels our country could benefit from the plant.

“People being afraid to do it and admit they do it. I know a bunch of professionals, CEOs, executives, politicians, doctors, lawyers who smoke and who smoke casually. But the public doesn’t know.”

He continued:

“Until it’s not just something that people in art and entertainment and hip-hop and young, cool, trendy people do then it’s not mainstream yet, you know.”

He went on:

“There are people making millions of dollars black folks white folks and everything in between, this is big business, this is something that has the potential for us to pave roads and fix schools and do things that are really tangible for people in are really tangible for people in this.”

He concluded:

“But we got to start having conversations about it and everybody’s got to stop pretending that, you know, they don’t do it–no you smoke the sh*t! Own it.” 

Watch our full interview with Gary Chambers here:

Do you think Gary Chambers’ ad campaign was effective? Leave us a comment and let us know!