Louis "Stachmo" Armstrong enjoyed smoking reefer on a regular basis. There's even a great story about "Pops" arriving at the airport after some gigs in Jamaica. Richard Nixon was arriving at the airport at the same time and was a huge fan. He insisted on meeting "Pops" and asked if he could carry his horn. Nixon carried the case right through customs/security...it was loaded with weed! Louis Armstrong was first turned onto marijuana in the mid-1920s, and he smoked it all his life, including before performances and recordings. In 1954 Louis published a book titled, Satchmo: My Life in New Orleans. Gary Giddins reveals that Joe Glaser an Al Capone acolyte who was Armstrong's manager later in his career, suppressed parts of the book that dealt with marijuana. Armstrong planned to publish a sequel which he said he would call "Gage"--slang for marijuana. He said, at one point, "This whole second book might be about nothing but gage." Never a heavy drinker, he gave up cigarettes and "from the later 1920s on he smoked marijuana on a daily basis, although Dr. Gary Zucker, one of Armstrong's doctors, saw no evidence that it did him any harm." Armstrong told John Hammond, "It makes you feel good, man, makes you forget all the bad things that happen to a Negro. It makes you feel wanted, and when you're with another tea smoker, it makes you feel a special kinship." Later he wrote President Eisenhower, advocating legalization. It was, he felt, less harmful than alcohol.