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Whoopi Goldberg’s relationship with cannabis has never been a footnote in her career. Her advocacy has been public, consistent and rooted in lived experience, so when she took the stage at IgniteIt’s New Jersey Market Spotlight in Jersey City, the conversation picked up from that long‑established foundation. What she brought to the room was a clear sense of purpose: a family‑driven platform that blends wellness, pleasure and legacy, and a willingness to talk about all three with the honesty that has defined her voice for decades.
“All of my family is involved in weed,” Goldberg told the audience. “We’re either smoking it or we’re looking at it, we’re talking about it, and they’re all old enough to do it, so no one panic. And I thought, if I’m, you know, I get to be a certain age, I need to leave them something, you know. And this seemed to be something that can always evolve. And again, there’s not a lot of women in the space.”
The conversation, moderated by attorney Lou Magazzu, centered on WhoopFam, the brand Goldberg is building with her daughter, granddaughter and a small team of industry veterans. What began as a family exploration of cannabis for pain relief has grown into something more ambitious. The next chapter is MakeWhoopi, a line of intimate care products that approaches pleasure without apology.
Goldberg didn’t mince words about why this matters.
“People feel like you lose your sexuality once you get to be a woman of a certain age, and it’s just not so,” she said. “I just want people to have a better time in life. I want women to have a better time in life. I want women to have a better understanding of their bodies and what is okay for them.”
“Maybe I’m talking about, I don’t know, flavored lubes… You know what my favorite lube is called? Eat a Friend,” she continued. “These are things that bring us all pleasure. And pleasure is a, you know, I’m 70. I like pleasure. I like pleasure, and I want you to be 150 and like pleasure as well.”
Whoopi Teams with Beauty Industry Veterans
To bring MakeWhoopi to market, Goldberg partnered with clean beauty industry veterans and Beauty Evolution founding partners Melissa Jochim and Davina Kaonohi. Jochim has spent decades advocating for clean, science‑driven formulations into the mainstream, including in intimate care and hemp‑based skincare. She made it clear that this category deserves daylight.
“Intimate is a word that just makes you think we should be hiding something,” Jochim said. “Intimate care needs to be brought out into a room and talked about fun with a punch line, yes. And we are launching MakeWhoopi, and that’s gonna be our first brand to market.”
The debut lineup for MakeWhoopi is direct and intentionally inclusive.
“We’re doing a personal lubricant that is aloe-based, water-based… we’re calling it Smooth Talker… and then we are doing the flavored lubricant, which is Eat a Friend… and we’re doing a vibrator. We’re calling that The Closer,” Jochim said.
If MakeWhoopi is the product engine, the broader mission is cultural. Goldberg has long been open about using cannabis for menstrual pain, and she didn’t shy away from the plant’s political baggage. For her, destigmatization is part of the responsibility.
“Many people of a certain age still think of it as something bad and dirty and shouldn’t do it,” she said, adding “People still believe Reefer Madness is real, and we have to help people recognize that that is a movie. It’s a dumb, old movie, and that is not how this works.”
“Weed made my life better. It allowed me to get up off the floor with terrible period cramps and use something that wasn’t going to make me sicker… For all of those who used to sell it on the street, and now you got dispensaries, and things are better. Thank you, because without y’all, I couldn’t have done better.”
That sense of purpose is shared by Kaonohi. For her, the collaboration is about more than launching a new product line. It is about reshaping the narrative around cannabinoids, wellness and pleasure.
“We have the opportunity to change people’s perspectives and to create products that help people live better… It just felt like this has to happen, and we can create new stories, and we can create new pathways that are really going to make things fun and impact people in really positive ways,” Kaonohi said.
She grounds that mission in a Hawaiian concept that sets the tone for her work.
“In Hawaiian, they call it my kuleana,” she said. “And kuleana means that I have a responsibility to my past, to my future, and to myself and to the earth, to basically create or make something that’s going to give back.”
By the end of the discussion, the message was unmistakable. Cannabis, intimacy and aging don’t need to be whispered topics. They can sit at the center of a legacy brand built on family, pleasure and plant medicine, delivered with the same honesty and humor Goldberg has brought to audiences throughout her career.
AJ Herrington
February 20, 2026 • 2:54 pm