Timothy Leary was a Pied Piper for drug use (he was a scientist who got caught up in the enjoyment of substance abuse even taking heroin to see what it was like, his experimentation continued at least through the 1970s he continued to use into the 90s). He even admitted on his website that he was consuming things like hash brownies (he included a daily rundown of his food intake as he was dying). For all of those who say that Rush was spared prosecution because he was famous, why didn't anyone try to bust Mr. Leary in the 1990s? Mr. Leary did get arrested for some marijuana possession in the 1960s and then hid out and then eventually even broke out of jail (these type of charges just seem to snow ball). I think that Carter pardoned his crimes.
I don't recall comments by Rush lobbed specifically at Jerry Garcia although he did regularly make sweeping statements about "plastic banana dope smoking good time rock and rollers". This is an attack on the hedonist values of a good number of the baby boom generation and Americans who were born afterwards.
I have heard Rush mention Kurt Cobain at times. Again, I couldn't pin down specific comments but I don't think that Kurt appears much on Rush's radar until he commits suicide. Then the popular media turns him into this big icon and for what? He was a heroin addict who was uncomfortable with his media star fame, he had a wife that he was having problems with, and had possibly made several suicide attempts prior to his death by rifle. And this makes him someone to hold up to as a "hero" for kids?
Rush has said that he is not a role model. That what he is doing isn't heroic. There may be some hypocrisy if people want to find it in what Rush said about Charles Barkley when Sir Charles tried to shrug of comments about his own actions and said something along the lines that he was not a role model; he was just an athlete.