Elon Musk smokes weed in California-based podcast appearance

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk smoked weed during a podcast interview with comedian Joe Rogan on late Thursday.

“I’m not a regular smoker of weed,” Musk, 47, said on the podcast before taking a puff from a joint Rogan said contained tobacco and weed, which is legal in California, where the two conducted the interview.

Footage of the interview also shows Musk using a flamethrower. 

{mosads}The interview is believed to be the Tesla CEO’s first appearance in a public forum since he announced in a tweet in early August that he was thinking about taking the company private, Bloomberg noted. That tweet prompted controversy and an SEC investigation.

“Am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured,” Musk said at the time on Twitter. 

“Shareholders could either to sell at 420 or hold shares & go private,” he also said.

Musk announced later in August that the company would remain public.

The billionaire CEO said in a blog post that the funding wasn’t secured and that most shareholders wanted Tesla to remain public. “The sentiment, in a nutshell, was ‘please don’t do this,’” Musk wrote. 

During the podcast interview, Musk, who is also the founder of the startup Boring Co., as well as Neuralink, said that running Tesla has been the hardest of his current projects. “It’s very difficult to keep a car company alive,” Musk said.