Out-there billionaire Elon Musk revealed the US federal government made him take drug tests to prove he was not a drug addict after he took a drag on a marijuana cigarette on the Joe Rogan podcast.
The Tesla CEO told the Nelk Boys podcast that the government came after him after taking “one puff” of the joint on the filmed podcast in 2018.
He said the situation was “pretty nutty” and suspects space industry rivals had put the feds onto him to try to cause his company, SpaceX financial problems.
Musk was handed the marijuana joint by the podcast’s host, Joe Rogan as the pair discussed the world’s richest man’s plans to create an airplane.
The video footage shows Musk take a tentative drag of the cigarette before handing it back to Rogan.
Because the company deals with government contracts and many aspects of Elon’s space programs are run in conjunction with NASA, as the company’s CEO, he is answerable to the federal government:
“I did get a lot of backlash, because it’s still federally illegal”, said Musk.
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“Space X has federal government contracts, so our competitors were like ”why aren’t you doing anything, look at him brazenly smoking weed on Joe Rogan’s podcast’,” he explained.
“They drug tested me for everything.”
Elon Musk smoking weed for the first time on Joe Rogan’s podcast pic.twitter.com/1mMCdiWN71
— Nostalgic Nights (@nostalgicxnghts) September 7, 2018
The controversy surrounding the marijuana joint took its toll on Tesla’s share prices as major companies. While smoking the drug is legal in California, where the podcast was filmed, the brazen drug taking cost Musk billions in shares.
While he insisted to investors he was “not on weed” as shares continued to plummet, Musk did continually show his support for those who use the drug.
He Tweeted in support of basketball star, Brittney Griner who was sentenced to nine years in a Russian prison for using vaping capsules laced with marijuana.
He criticized Biden for attempting to free Griner, quipping on Twitter:
Maybe free some people in jail for weed here too? pic.twitter.com/AYo0ZC79lZ
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 31, 2022
“Maybe free some people in jail for weed here too?” along with a meme which read:
“People in the US in jail for weed while the government trades a Russian war criminal to free a woman’s basketball player in jail for weed.”
In 2020, he posted: “Selling weed literally went from major felony to essential business (open during pandemic) in much of America and yet many are still in prison. Doesn’t make sense, isn’t right.”
But while Musk has been critical of the harsh penalties for those caught using the drug, the hard-working businessman also said that marijuana was “not helpful for productivity” and added:
“There’s a reason for the word ‘stoned’. You just sit there like a stone on weed”, he told the New York Times a few weeks before taking a puff of the stuff on Rogan’s show.
But Musk seemed to successfully distance himself from this controversial period, and despite the feds accusing him of being a drug addict, in January this year the US government secured a $102 million contract with SpaceX to send humanitarian aid around the world in its rockets.