Meghan McCain is walking back her support of legislation legalizing marijuana more than a decade after she publicly talked about its economic benefits.
“I never would have supported the legalization of marijuana had I known what would end up happening to young people and our cities,” McCain, 41, wrote via X on Wednesday, March 4. “I deeply regret it.”
She claimed, “Every major city and uber in them just reeks of weeds [sic] everywhere. It is absolutely vile.”
McCain didn’t expand on what effects marijuana has allegedly had on the country’s “young people.” However, America’s Poison Centers reported via a New York Times article published in August 2025 that the number of cannabis-related incidents reported to poison control centers had increased from “about 930 cases in 2009 to more than 22,000” over the year prior.
McCain’s statement, meanwhile, comes more than 10 years after she voiced her support for the legalization of the drug in her 2012 book America You Sexy Bitch, cowritten with comedian Michael Ian Black.
“Yes, I come out for legalizing marijuana in this book,” McCain told Jay Leno on the Tonight Show in 2012, confirming she did smoke weed in New Orleans while touring HBO’s Treme and doing research for the book.
“I was living in Los Angeles very briefly last year and I was shocked at how people here smoke weed the way people in New York pour wine,” she continued.
The former View cohost noted, “So it was already sort of influencing my opinion,” before pointing to the “parallels” she saw between alcohol prohibition and smoking weed illegally.
“Once I started doing research on the economic benefits for our country by decriminalizing marijuana decided to come out publicly and support it,” McCain concluded.
Following her father, Senator John McCain’s death in 2018, Meghan opened up about how she thought cannabis treatment could have extended his life.
“I just want to tell you what you’re doing with this is really important,” Meghan told Ricki Lake during a March 2019 episode of The View as Lake, 57, spoke about producing the documentary Weed the People about families seeking medical marijuana for children with cancer.
Meghan said, “I’m sorry, but it angered me when my dad was sick that there’s still such stigma attached” to marijuana use.
She referenced a study by Frontiers in Molecular Neuroscience that revealed cancer patients given Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and Cannabidiol (CBD) — both cannabinoids in the cannabis plant — in addition to chemotherapy lived approximately one year longer than patients who only did chemotherapy.
Meghan’s dad, John, died in August 2018 at the age of 81 after battling a form of brain cancer called glioblastoma. The late senator was diagnosed with a cancerous brain tumor in July 2017 and stopped treatment one day before his death.
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