Popular talk show host Montel Williams will use his January 13, 2004 show to discuss his passionate advocacy of the medicinal use of marijuana, saying that he hopes the show will “inspire others to take a stand,” according to a TV Guide Online interview. Williams told the periodical that he uses marijuana because it eases the pain, depression, and sleeping disorders he suffers due to Multiple Sclerosis (MS), a condition that has afflicted him for several years.

Williams was in the news last month after he was briefly detained at Detroit’s Metro Airport when baggage screeners discovered a small amount of marijuana and some drug paraphernalia in his carry-on luggage. Officials fined the talk-show host for possessing the paraphernalia but allowed him to continue on his flight to New York City. “You cannot tell me that if one of George Bush's daughters came to him and said, ‘this is the only thing that will help my pain,’" writes TV Guide Online, “he'd say, ‘No, baby, you have to suffer. I'll lay you down on a bed and hook you up to a morphine drip, and when you wake up in four or five days, we'll talk.’"

The episode is scheduled to air nationwide Tuesday, January 13th at 9 a.m.