NASA Spent $5 Million On Probe Into Drug Use At SpaceX, But Won't Release The Details

NASA spent three months looking into drug use at SpaceX, but the federal space agency is keeping quiet on what it found.

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After Elon Musk very publicly smoked a joint on Joe Rogan’s podcast back in 2018 (Musk claims he didn’t inhale and in fact doesn’t even know how), NASA found itself in a bit of a pickle; you see, federal contractors aren’t allowed to be hopped up on the Devil’s Lettuce. Business Insider used the Freedom of Information Act to try and discover what NASA knew, but it didn’t work out:

Business Insider obtained the results of that investigation under the Freedom of Information Act, but NASA redacted the document so heavily it’s impossible to determine what the agency found.

BI went looking for the results of NASA’s drug use probe, which it calls an “organizational safety assessment,” after the Wall Street Journal reported this summer that Musk “microdoses ketamine,” spurring new questions about the drug use of the world’s richest person.

The space agency initially responded to BI’s request by claiming it didn’t have any records of the assessment’s results. Public records request logs, and emails provided by NASA, show that the agency told a Wall Street Journal reporter the same thing in 2022.

Business Insider called NASA on its bullshit and received the tax-payer funded $5 million report with more blackouts than an apartment building in World War II London. NASA interviewed almost 300 employees at SpaceX at all levels to determine if the federal contractor was, indeed, the drug-free place required by law.

Despite the owner of the company publicly engaging with weed (whether he inhaled or not is irrelevant) on one of the most popular podcasts in existence, NASA insists it won’t release the investigation. The space agency t0ld BI that SpaceX is essential to the U.S. space program and the results of the study are proprietary to the SpaceX company. Seems if this study is proprietary to SpaceX, the company should have paid for the study — not the American people. This definitely puts a dent in NASA’s claim of full transparency of data with the public.

SpaceX is indeed critical to the future of space travel in the U.S. SpaceX reusable rockets are doing supply runs to the International Space Station and the company is working towards building a rocket that can carry a crew, called Starship. That vehicle exploded on April 20—4/20, a well known day to marijuana smokers—in a midair explosion that left a 385-acre debris field and sparked a small wildfire. The feds grounded Starship this past fall over multiple failure points in Starship’s launch.