‘SNL’ Alum Jim Belushi Blazed a Trail Outside His Comfort Zone to Farm Cannabis

Jim Belushi is returning to television for a third season of his Discovery docuseries “Growing Belushi,” which is set to premiere on Wednesday.

The show follows the “According to Jim” actor as he works to turn an 80-acre property near Southern Oregon’s Rogue River into a massive cannabis empire known as Belushi’s Farm. He became the founder of the company in 2015 after buying the property from his neighbors Charlie and Becca.

“I didn’t know what to do with it,” Belushi recalled in an interview with TheWrap. “Danny Aykroyd said ‘Jimmy, cannabis is legal in Oregon. Why don’t you grow cannabis? I have a great grower for you, Captain Jack.’ And Captain Jack was the weed dealer for “Saturday Night Live” back in the day. He was known as the smell of “SNL” and he had these proprietary seeds from Afghanistan that were what we call landraces, seed strains, which means they’ve never been a hybrid or mixed, they’re original. So I said, ‘Oh, that sounds fun.’ And then it just snowballed from there and we started growing 12 plants and 48 plants and then expanded. Now, I’m growing four greenhouses and we’re all over Oregon and this year we’ll be in 12 states.”

The 68-year-old noted that becoming a cannabis farmer has made him step outside his comfort zone.

“I’ve never done anything like this. I’m using every piece of knowledge that I’ve gained through all these years of being in this business and trying to put it all in this one show and I think we’re doing it,” he explained. “My purpose has always been as a comic actor to make people feel good … and in cannabis it’s the same purpose.”

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Belushi emphasized that the challenges of being a cannabis farmer range from keeping pests, gophers, deer and other animals from eating his crop to the threat of over-taxation and over-regulation from state lawmakers.

“One of the reasons to legalize [cannabis] was to get rid of the gray market, and the opposite has happened because of the overtaxation and overregulation. The gray market has exploded because nobody wants to pay 22% to 30% more for some weed they can get on the street for less. So that’s been a real challenge,” Belushi explained. “The taxation is actually the new war on drugs and the states are basically saying, ‘Oh, you want to grow cannabis, you’ve got to pay’ and it leaves the margins so thin that it’s putting out the innocent grower, a farmer who’s trying to make a living legally.”

In Wednesday’s series premiere, an unforseen challenge that Belushi encountered was losing one of his barns in a fire, which he described as a “scary” experience that occurred a day after filming on the season had wrapped.

“My first concern was, was there anybody in it? It was done at night, so nobody got hurt, no animals got hurt. So that was the main concern,” he said. “The fire was devastating. It just went through that barn like in an hour, just burned into the ground. We lost $500,000 for the building and another $300,00-350,000 in cannabis and products … it was quite an ending to a season but we’ve gotten past it.”

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Ultimately, Belushi hopes that viewers will walk away from his show having confidence in cannabis and its potential to help anyone struggling with addiction, depression or other medical problems.

“This is a legit industry with great testing, with great care and a great message,” he said. “Everybody knows somebody who’s struggling and this is an alternative medicine, a safe medicine … so I hope they’re entertained and I hope they’re getting the message of the healing possibilities of cannabis. And for the curious and the people that aren’t knowledgeable about cannabis, for them to gain some real knowledge.”

When asked about his plans for a potential fourth season, Belushi said he’d be interested in exploring the healing abilities of psilocybin.

“It’s legal in Oregon, Oakland, Colorado and they’re building like these little kind of spas where you go in and they supervise dosing and experimenting with all kinds of things,” he said. “There’s so much depression that’s going on right now, severe emotional difficulties, struggle. And this is a possible avenue aside from just taking pharmaceuticals.”

The first two seasons of “Growing Belushi” are streaming now on Discovery+. New episodes air Wednesdays at 9 p.m. ET on Discovery.

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