Topline
Cocaine was discovered in the White House on Sunday, but this isn’t the first time drugs have been used in the building, or reportedly by presidents, as people like Snoop Dogg and Willie Nelson have admitted to using illicit drugs in the “People’s House.”
Timeline
Jefferson Airplane lead singer Grace Slick attempted to spike President Richard Nixon’s drink with acid. She told the Wall Street Journal she had gone to the same school as first daughter Tricia Nixon, who invited her fellow graduates to the White House. Slick’s plan was to spike President Nixon’s tea with acid, but a security guard denied her entrance, stating the rocker was a “security risk.”
Willie Nelson admitted smoking with a White House servant in his 1988 autobiography. However, after President Carter corrected him, Nelson revealed it was actually Carter’s son, Chip Carter, he had smoked with on the roof of the White House. Chip Carter told the Los Angeles Times the two snuck off during one of Nelson’s performances to explore, and that’s when the duo went up to the roof and “lit one up.”
In a 1987 first-person Sports Illustrated story, former Villanova college basketball star Gary McLain revealed he was high on cocaine when he met President Ronald Reagan in 1985 at a Rose Garden ceremony to celebrate Villanova’s NCAA victory. According to McLain, the cocaine had him “floating in [his] own private world.”
Snoop Dogg admitted on his online show, GGN: The Double G News Network, that he smoked a blunt in a White House bathroom, presumably in December 2013 during the second Obama term. Dogg told guest Jimmy Kimmel he asked one of the “alphabet boys,” (referring to either a member of the CIA or FBI) to use the bathroom. When the agent asked if he was going “No. 1 or No. 2,” Dogg said No. 2. However, he mentioned he has to light something up like a cigarette or napkin to get rid of the smell, and he ended up lighting up a blunt instead. This wasn’t his last time smoking around the White House. In 2018, he sat in the public park in front of the White House and smoked marijuana while interacting with fans.
Tangent
Though it didn’t happen at the White House, David Cross admitted to snorting cocaine at a White House Correspondents dinner in 2009, and he estimated that he was about 65 feet away from President Barack Obama when he ducked under a table and snorted it. Though, he said it was a “tiny granule of coke” and not enough to get him high—he just did it to say he snorted cocaine in the same room as the president.
Key Background
On Tuesday, the Secret Service announced cocaine was found in the White House on Sunday evening. The discovery caused an evacuation—though President Joe Biden was at Camp Davis and not present. The Washington D.C. Fire Department investigated and concluded the substance was nonhazardous. The Secret Service told Forbes the substance was found in a work area in the west wing.
Cocaine Found In White House (Forbes)
She Went Chasing Rabbits (Wall Street Journal)
When Jimmy Carter’s White House was a tour stop for long-haired, ‘torpedo’-smoking rock outlaws (Los Angeles Times)
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