Tesla's Musk smokes marijuana on comedy podcast

[September 07, 2018]   (Reuters) - Tesla's Elon Musk provoked another twitter storm on Friday by briefly smoking marijuana on a live web show with comedian Joe Rogan.

The forty-seven year old billionaire spent two and a half hours on a podcast late Thursday discussing everything from artificial intelligence and its impact on humankind to flame throwers and social media.

Taking a puff from a joint - which Rogan said was a blend of tobacco and marijuana and legal in California - Musk said he "almost never" smoked.

"I'm not a regular smoker of weed," Musk said. "I don't actually notice any effect...I don't find that it is very good for productivity."

Tesla was not immediately available for comment.

Musk stunned investors a month back with tweets saying he had funding to take the company private for $420 per share. He then backed off from his plan saying Tesla was better off as a public company.

He followed it up with fresh attacks on British cave diver Vernon Unsworth. Buzzfeed News reported earlier in the week that Musk, in an email to the news site, called Unsworth a "child rapist."

Neither Tesla nor Musk have commented on the Buzzfeed report.

Musk apologized to Unsworth in July for similar insults he made on Twitter following the rescue of a dozen Thai schoolboys and their football coach from a cave in Thailand.

Elon Musk in Bel Air, Los Angeles, California, U.S. May 17, 2018. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

The billionaire's behavior has raised concerns about his leadership and several Wall Street analysts have called for the company to appoint a strong No. 2 to prop up Tesla's operations and standing with investors.

His followers on Twitter went into a frenzy following the podcast. Several followers questioned if it was against the company's policy, while others mocked the CEO's initial $420 bid, a number that has become code for marijuana.

"Elon getting high on weed and whiskey is the first reason to go long on $TSLA in a while. He needs to relax a bit," a tweet https://bit.ly/2M5PdAo by user @jkmcnk said.

Another user tweeted https://bit.ly/2MT7aY4: "This guy is completely off the rails."

Shares of Tesla fell 1.3 percent in trading before the bell. They have fallen about 18 percent since Musk's tweet on taking the company private on Aug. 7.

(Reporting by Nivedita Balu and Ismail Shakil in Bengaluru; Writing by Sweta Singh)

[© 2018 Thomson Reuters. All rights reserved.]

Copyright 2018 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.  Thompson Reuters is solely responsible for this content.