I read the whole article to try to find out what relevance cannabis had to the story.
The answer is: it didn’t. The author just decided “this guy was a hippie and he still smokes weed like he did back then” was somehow relevant.
My dad wasn’t a hippie, but he used cannabis edibles for a few years before he died after never having used it his entire life to treat pain. On top of that, plenty of Republicans are avid cannabis users.
Why try to divide people on an issue that is widely agreed upon across the political spectrum?