On the latest episode of Real Time with Bill Maher, the host rails against a medical industry that could allow Matthew Perry to die from a ketamine overdose.
"Matthew and I weren't super close, but he was enough of a friend and enough of a good guy to make me very angry when I read about all the enablers," Maher says. "Sometimes it takes a village to kiil an addict."
Maher was once as addict himself: "I smoked cigarettes for 20 years. That's an addiction – when the drug tells you when to do it."
However, the well-known celebrity weed smoker maintains:
"I'm not addicted to pot, because pot never does that. I've never been an everyday smoker. And to those wiseasses who always ask me if I get high before the show, the answer is no . . . well, not right before."
During the "new rule," a rare college photo of Maher holding a joint is displayed.
"It makes me nostalgic for the days when your drug dealer was actually someone you knew. Someone in your college dorm . . . like me," he explains, adding: "That's pot in my hand."
Maher sold weed at Cornell in the '70s:
"I became a pot dealer because I couldn't afford to buy pot. I never smoked pot in high school. I went off to college. I started to smoke pot. I couldn't afford it. It was like well, I could afford it if I sell it.
"You buy a pound, which is 16 ounces, and then you divide it into 17 parts. The part for me we would call the head tax. Selling pot allowed me to get through college and make enough money to start off in comedy."
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