Right-wing think tank the Heritage Fund is calling for the release of Prince Harry’s US visa application so they can see whether or not he admitted to past drug use before moving to his $9.5 billion home in Santa Barbara, California.
“This request is in the public interest in light of the potential revocation of Prince Harry’s visa for illicit substance use and further questions regarding the prince’s drug use and whether he was properly vetted before entering the United States,” said Mike Howell, director of the foundation’s Oversight Project.
The Duke of Sussex, 38, wrote in his memoir that he first used cocaine at the age of 17, but since then began to use marijuana, mushrooms and psychedelics to deal with his trauma.
“It was the cleaning of the windscreen, the removal of life’s filters — these layers of filters — it removed it all for me and brought me a sense of relaxation, relief, comfort, a lightness that I managed to hold back for a period of time,” the Duke said of the psychedelics.
“I started doing it recreationally and then started to realize how good it was for me.”
The recreational use of marijuana is legal in California, and the state has even begun to address the decriminalization of psychedelics after the state Senate passed a bill to legalize hallucinogenic drugs for Californians 21 years or older. They are still criminalized in the state at this time, though.
“An admission of drug use is usually grounds for inadmissibility,” former federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani says, adding there is no exception for royalty or recreational use. “That means Prince Harry’s visa should have been denied or revoked because he admitted to using cocaine, mushrooms and other drugs.”
However, James Leonard, an attorney who represented reality star Joe Giudice in an immigration case, says Prince Harry’s US visa is not at a risk.
“Absent any criminal charge related to drugs or alcohol or any finding by a judicial authority that Prince Harry is a habitual drug user, which he clearly is not, I don’t see any issue with the disclosures in his memoir regarding recreational experimentation with drugs,” said Leonard.
“You’ve got to give them something that would trigger it, and revealing it in a book, that you experimented with drugs when you were a young man, I don’t think gets you there. Immigration is not going to do anything based on that. If he got arrested or if he got a DWI, then we’re having a different conversation.”
The Heritage Foundation has reportedly sent a dossier with information on Prince Harry’s drug use to officials at the Department of Homeland Security. Prince Harry has previously said, according to a 2021 article, that he has no plans to seek a permanent US residency. However, his wife Meghan Markle, who is a US citizen, could sponsor her husband in the case that immigration issues were to arise.