A former top official at the Drug Enforcement Administration is urging Attorney General Jeff Sessions to investigate whether Tesla and SpaceX-founder Elon Musk violated any federal laws when he smoked marijuana during a podcast earlier this month, according to a letter obtained by the Washington Examiner.
Previously the chief of international operations, Mike Vigil led the DEA’s global anti-drug operations. A 31-year veteran of the agency, Vigil spent 18 years abroad, including several years in Mexico and Colombia investigating cartels that became the subject of his 2014 book.
Now Vigil is setting his sights on Musk.
An eccentric entrepreneur who has attracted attention more in recent weeks for his personal life than the companies he founded, Musk made headlines in September when he smoked pot on comedian Joe Rogan’s podcast.
The problem, Vigil says, is the billions in federal funding that Musk’s SpaceX and Tesla have received. The U.S. Air Force, for example, announced a $290 million contract in March with the company to launch the government’s Global Positioning System II satellites.
“Aside from being a violation of federal law, federal defense contractors like SpaceX are subject to higher standards and must abide by additional laws and regulations governing their obligations to ensure a drug-free workplace as a condition of receiving billions in dollars in taxpayer funding,” Vigil wrote in a letter Monday to Sessions.
“Additionally, for national security launch, contractors and their leadership generally hold security clearances entrusting them with some of our nation’s most sensitive information that could be compromised through drug abuse,” he added.
While several states have passed laws to the contrary, the federal government still considers marijuana an illicit drug. Sessions has threatened to override those laws, spurring advocates to caution that he would bring about a new “war on drugs” similar to the famous campaign from former-President Richard Nixon.
Vigil charged that the Air Force was “willing to look the other way” in giving Musk and his companies billions in federal dollars, creating a double standard and setting a “horrible example to set for all our federal workforce, federal contractors, intelligence and national security community, and our allies.”
“I respectfully urge you to exercise your Constitutional authority as the chief federal law enforcement official in the United States to investigate what federal laws Mr. Musk and his company, SpaceX, have violated in failing to ensure a drug free workplace,” he wrote.
The Department of Justice has already launched an investigation into Musk’s tweet that he had “secured funding” to take Tesla private, alongside a reported parallel investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Spokespersons for Tesla, SpaceX, the Air Force, and the DOJ did not immediately respond to request for comment.
Musk is also facing a defamation lawsuit for calling a British diver involved in the rescue of a Thai soccer team trapped in the cave a pedophile.
