Bad Day for Tesla: Executives Quit While Air Force Processes Musk Smoking Pot

Tesla shares dropped by 6% closing on Friday at the $263,24 mark amid investors’ fury over CEO Elon Musk's public behavior since his suggested and postponed proposal for Tesla to go private, which made some top-executive staff members decide to leave the company, Reuters reported.

READ MORE: High Times: WATCH Elon Musk Smoking Joint in Interview With Comedian

Chief Accounting Officer Dave Morton resigned after being a part of the company for less than a month, saying that he feels discomfort over the attention to the company and the pace of work. He is walking away from a $350,000 base salary and said that he believes “strongly” that he and the company have no disagreements over Tesla’s leadership or financial reporting.

“Since I joined Tesla on August 6th, the level of public attention placed on the company, as well as the pace within the company, have exceeded my expectations. As a result, this caused me to reconsider my future,” Morton said in the Tesla filing on Friday.

Later the same day, Tesla announced that Chief People Officer Gaby Toledano would not return from a leave of absence, just over a year after joining. Morton and Toledano became the last of the senior executives to leave the company after the US Securities and Exchange Commission opened an inquiry into Musk’s aborted privatization plan.

Meanwhile, on Thursday evening, the Tesla CEO was spotted on the podcast the Joe Rogan Experience discussing the future of mankind while smoking marijuana and drinking whiskey on the rocks. Musk, who has been suspected of using drugs in the past, tweeted in August about Tesla's share price of $420, asking if the drug was legal and took a hit which was caught on video.

After the clip went viral, journalists from Fox News and CNBC reported that the US Air Force could cancel Musk's security clearance, who is also the CEO of SpaceX. However, Air Force spokesperson Captain Hope Cronin told the Verge that these reports are inaccurate.

“It’s inaccurate that there is an investigation. We’ll need time to determine the facts and the appropriate process to handle the situation,” she said.

SpaceX has an official contract with the US Air Force for the launch of its satellites. Suspicions that the billionaire entrepreneur could be stripped of his security clearance come as a result of it being written in US Air Force regulations that military personnel and those with a government security clearance are prohibited from smoking marijuana, a drug legal to use in the US state of California since January 1, 2018.