Hosted by: Montel Williams
Format: Podcast / Interview / Education / Advocacy
Recognition: Voted Best Podcast 2024

SERIES DESCRIPTION
Montel Williams is one of the highest profile advocates for cannabis in the country. He has used cannabis products to effectively manage the symptoms of his chronic illness since his diagnosis in 1999.
Voted Best Podcast 2024.
Williams earned his media celebrity status as an Emmy Award winning television personality whom Americans invited into their homes for more than 17 years. Alongside his TV career, he’s become an inspirational speaker, author, entrepreneur, and advocate for patients worldwide. At the height of his TV career, in 1999, Williams experienced his first symptoms of MS—a sharp and 24-hour neuropathic pain in his feet and legs. When pharmaceuticals proved ineffective for pain management, his doctor recommended he try cannabis.
Williams became an early advocate of cannabis law reform in the US. Back when he started as an advocate, patients were being dragged out of their homes in wheelchairs by the police for using cannabis to treat their pain, and Williams was one of the few high-profile voices on Capitol Hill fighting for their rights. Over the past two decades, he has worked to pass cannabis legislation in key states and led the push for military veterans to access medical cannabis without the threat of losing benefits. Now, he serves as Founder of Lenitiv Scientific and the Montel by Select brand, while also hosting the “Let’s Be Blunt” podcast, which provides education and information on the cannabis industry.
WHY MONTEL AND LET'S BE BLUNT ARE ON AIN
Absolutely Indie Network is proud to feature Montel Williams because his work represents something fundamental to AIN: the willingness to have conversations that matter.
Montel's advocacy did not begin when an issue became popular or easy to discuss. He used his enormous public platform to speak for patients at a time when doing so required courage, and he continued that work for decades.
His advocacy for military veterans carries particular meaning when viewed alongside his own 22 years of service in the United States military. Montel has spent his life serving — first in uniform and later through advocacy, humanitarian work, broadcasting and his determination to give a voice to people who might otherwise go unheard.
Let's Be Blunt continues that mission through conversation, education and information.
AIN respects Montel's willingness to keep evolving, branching out and using the platform he built over a lifetime to explore subjects he believes matter.
That is why Let's Be Blunt belongs on Absolutely Indie Network.

AIN BACKSTAGE SECRETS & AINTOIDS

FROM PERSONAL EXPERIENCE TO PUBLIC ADVOCACY
Montel's involvement in cannabis advocacy grew directly from his own experience after being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1999. What began as an intensely personal search for relief ultimately became decades of public advocacy on behalf of other patients.

AN EARLY HIGH-PROFILE VOICE
Montel became an outspoken advocate for medical cannabis long before widespread legalization and today's mainstream discussion of the subject. He took that advocacy to lawmakers and became one of the recognizable public figures arguing for reform and patient access.
THE VETERANS' VOICE
Veterans have remained an important part of Montel's advocacy. Drawing upon his own 22-year military career, he has advocated for veterans seeking access to medical cannabis without jeopardizing their veterans' benefits.

MORE THAN A TALK-SHOW HOST
Millions of Americans first knew Montel as the Emmy Award-winning host of The Montel Williams Show. His career, however, continued far beyond daytime television.
Speaker. Author. Entrepreneur. Patient advocate. Veterans advocate. Humanitarian. Podcast host.
Montel keeps finding new ways to use his voice.

LET'S BE BLUNT
The title says exactly what the program intends to do.
Let's Be Blunt provides education and information about the cannabis industry while creating a place for conversations involving policy, science, business, medicine, advocacy and the people affected by them.

And for AIN, that is the important part:
The conversation.