What does it look like when Justin Trudeau, Canada’s dashing new Prime Minister, smokes pot?
As you might imagine, it looks an awful lot alike when anyone else gets high.
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In these still-early days of normalization, the general public feels as if it has a right to know public figures’ history with marijuana. Who gets high? Who doesn’t? Who used to get high, even though they don’t want anyone to know about it? Who stopped getting stoned after an intense “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” sesh?
A month before Canada’s October 19 election, 43-year-old Trudeau said a Liberal government would get to work “right away” on policy that would legalize and regulate the sale of marijuana if they took power on election night. Six weeks after the election, Gov. Gen. David Johnston reemphasized Trudeau’s plan to legalize and regulate the recreational use of cannabis.
So has Justin Trudeau ever gotten high?
Justin Trudeau on pot: ‘It’s never really been a big deal’
Trudeau talked extensively about his own history with marijuana, psilocybin mushrooms and other drugs in an interview with The Huffington Post Canada in late-2013 — after Trudeau was elected to the House of Commons in 2008 but before he was elected Canada’s 23rd Prime Minister in 2015. His straightforward retelling of his experiences in altered states was so matter-of-fact, so very normal — no moral apologies, no embarrassed indignation — that we felt they were worth re-sharing here.
In late-2013, Trudeau had smoked marijuana “five or six times in his life,” according to the HuffPo article.
“It has never really done anything for me,” Justin Trudeau said. “Sometimes, I guess, I have gotten a buzz, but other times no. I’m not really crazy about it.
“When the joint went around the room, I usually passed it around to the next person. (But) sometimes throughout my life, I’ve had a pull on it.”
Trudeau said at the time that he’d last smoked cannabis in 2010 on his Montreal home’s poolside patio.
“We had a few good friends over for a dinner party, our kids were at their grandmother’s for the night, and one of our friends lit a joint and passed it around. I had a puff.”
Trudeau was backpacking through Europe when he first encountered THC inside an Amsterdam cafe. A friend ordered hash instead of a pre-rolled joint at the coffeeshop.
“We were trying to heat it over a candle,” Trudeau told HuffPo, “and it was just a total disaster.”
A couple years later, Trudeau smoked his first joint on a Caribbean trip with friends from college.
“(It) was the first time I really ever had a hit, but I don’t keep a clear memory of it, because it’s never really been a big deal.
“I’m not someone who is particularly interested in altered states, but I certainly won’t judge someone else for it. I think that the prohibition that is currently on marijuana is unjustified.”
Trudeau lived in Whistler in his 20s but rarely got high, he said. But he does suspect that his friends once dosed his spaghetti with hallucinogenic mushrooms — instead of the more traditional, grocery store-bought fungus. As HuffPo reported: “The mushrooms in his pasta seemed to have a bit more of an impact than they should have, he said.”
Trudeau said he’s never done any hard drugs, and he doesn’t drink all that much, either. To boot, he doesn’t drink coffee, and he’s never smoked cigarettes.