OK, everybody: Stop pot-shaming Elon Musk

Last night, a man took a relaxing hit off a joint. Or, to put it another way for readers in California, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, Alaska, Nevada, Maine, Massachusetts, Vermont, and the District of Columbia: It was a Thursday.

The man happened to be Elon Musk, founder of Tesla and SpaceX. The joint — technically a spliff or blunt, as it was marijuana mixed with tobacco — happened to be proffered by comedian and wrestling commentator Joe Rogan, who was streaming his show live from the state of California. "It's legal, right?" asked Musk as he took Rogan up on his offer.  

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Indeed it is. And for those of us in those states where marijuana is acceptable and available to adults in a dispensary near you, it was about as notable as the whiskey he also swigged on the show. Indeed, it seemed one of the more normal things Musk has done lately. 

Accusing a member of the team that rescued schoolboys stuck in a cave in Thailand of being a pedophile? Shocking and shameful. Promising funding to buy back Tesla shares and take the company private, then rescinding the promise? A real headscratcher, one that is reportedly under SEC investigation.  

Hitting a spliff once? Meh. If anything, given his stressful role and his hair-trigger tendency to send ill-advised tweets, Musk could probably do with hitting it again. It's certainly preferable to the brain-addling Ambien that may be fueling his recent controversial public statements, according to Tesla board members.

Image: joe rogan, youtube

But even in 2018, with legalization sweeping across America and much of the country aware of scientific reports showing the cannabis plant to be safer than alcohol, it seems we still have to contend with the alarmist legacy of reefer madness.

The New York Times, which has a history of misleading marijuana stories, clutched its pearls and called Musk's smoke a "stunt." CNN, based in a state that can't even get its act together on medical marijuana despite overwhelming public support, breathlessly suggested Musk would have to apologize. 

CNBC speculated that he was breaking Tesla policy (he wasn't; as Musk later told the Guardian, Tesla workers are allowed THC in their blood stream in drug tests.) Fox Business even snitched on Musk to the U.S. Air Force, and the USAF had to deny that it had launched any sort of investigation. 

Meanwhile Wall Street drove Tesla shares down more than 9% in early trading, much of the damage no doubt done by the street's famously cocaine-fueled investors.  

Marijuana possession arrests may be in decline (and given the clearly racist nature of those arrests, it's about time). But pot-shaming, apparently, is still a thing.   

It wasn't as if Musk was promoting weed-smoking. (Vice complained that he'd made the recreational activity less cool just by doing it on camera.) "I'm not a regular smoker," he said. "I don't think it's very good for productivity." This is far from a universal experience, as legendary creatives like the Beatles and Bob Dylan, who may have done their best work while high, will tell you.

Still, Musk did his duty by East Coast polite society. He was a paragon of moderation. If the Grimes-Azealia Banks text conversations released last month are to be believed — Banks has since apologized for airing dirty laundry, but hasn't refuted the content — Grimes' boyfriend is still mostly in what blogger Andrew Sullivan dubbed "the cannabis closet." Musk dismisses the fact that he pegged his buyback price for Tesla shares at $420 — a number that has long been code for weed-smoking — as a mere coincidence. 

Given this two-tiered public reaction to a single toke, is it any wonder Musk would want to spend most of his time in that closet?   

It's hard to explain to some people in non-legal states, or some (but not all) people over a certain age, just how small a deal weed really is. The lies told by the government during the War on Drugs seeped deep into our collective consciousness. No matter how many times the gateway drug theory is refuted by research, there is a vested interest in believing it. 

Many poppers of pills and swiggers of cocktails do not want to credit the possibility that their relaxation methods are really the dangerous ones — even as a recent, vast study of studies revealed the inconvenient truth that alcohol consumption is unsafe at any level.  

But given the pace of change, not just across America, but across the world, in the 21 countries that have now at least partly legalized cannabis, it may soon be hard to explain why what Musk did on camera last night was ever considered news. 

Toke on, Elon. 

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