Sir Paul McCartney has given up the Mary Jane forever.
The pop/rock legend, who has always been open about the role drugs played in his life and his creative process, has now completely given up marijuana to set a better example for his kids. I can almost hear his dealer’s tears in the distance…
“I don’t do it any more,” he told The Daily Mirror. “It’s now a parent thing. Back then I was just some guy around London having a ball, and the kids were little so I’d just try and keep it out of their faces.” But it seems those days are over now. “The last time I smoked was a long time ago,” the 72-year-old confirmed. “Instead of smoking a spliff I’ll now have a glass of red wine or a nice margarita.”
Bob Dylan introduced McCartney to the Green back in 1964; which, he said, got him ‘really thinking’ for the first time.
However, in the years the followed it seems he wasn’t doing much thinking when his Ganja desires nearly landed him in jail for a very long time.
35-years-ago (January 16, 1980, to be precise…), McCartney was arrested at the Tokyo Narita International Airport in Japan for trying to bring almost a pound of marijuana into the country.
“We were about to fly to Japan and I knew I wouldn’t be able to get anything to smoke over there,” he said in a 2004 interview. “This stuff was too good to flush down the toilet, so I thought I’d take it with me.” Thanks to his celebrity status, good behavior in jail, and some wrangling by the British Embassy, he spent just nine days in a Tokyo jail before being deported without any charges filed. If he was charged and found guilty, he would have had to spend a minimum of five years in a Japanese prison.
Incidentally, just four years after dodging that charge, McCartney and his wife Linda were arrested for marijuana possession while on vacation in Barbados in 1984. The second of many more busts to follow.
If you’re looking for McCartney, you more like to find him hitting the gym than the bong these days.
