The meme Tommy Chong shared on Instagram claimed that John F. Kennedy smoked marijuana to manage his pain from Addison’s disease and chronic back trouble. It’s true that Kennedy suffered from both conditions, among others; per ABC News, he also dealt with prostatitis, urinary tract infections, and colitis, and his back pain reached a point where he couldn’t manage to pull on his socks. He took multiple medications a day to manage his pain.
But marijuana wasn’t one of them, at least according to his available medical records (via PolitiFact). The one unconfirmed story about his smoking pot as president paints it as a recreational use, not a medicinal one. The National Enquirer’s 1976 claim, provided by former Washington Post editor James Truitt from what he said were conversations with Mary Pinchot Meyer, was that Kennedy and Meyer went into a White House bedroom together in 1962, where Meyer provided the president with marijuana. They allegedly went through three joints together before JFK called it a night, joking that he couldn’t afford to be too high: “Suppose the Russians did something now.”
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According to Truitt’s story, Kennedy expressed interest in smoking pot again but never found the time. He also allegedly offered to return Meyer’s drug gift with one of his own: cocaine. It was implied in the Enquirer article that the president had once dabbled in that drug too.
