When Prince Harry published his debut memoir back in January, most of the press coverage centered around his comments about his dysfunctional family and his difficult upbringing.
But it’s Harry’s comments about his hard-partying past that have legal experts wondering if he’ll be thrown out of the United States.
If you’ve read the book, or even just skimmed some of the more salacious excerpts, then you know that Harry was admirably candid about his troubled past.
The Duke of Sussex admits in the book to partying with booze and cocaine and using hallucinogens like mushrooms and ayahuasca for therapeutic reasons.
Those days are behind him, of course, and Harry has grown into the very model of a mature, responsible family man.
But he’s also a man who lives permanently — or so it would seem — in a country where he is not a citizen.
In some cases, evidence of illegal drug use is enough to have a US visa revoked, and former federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani tells Page Six that Harry should be worried about getting booted out of SoCal.
“An admission of drug use is usually grounds for inadmissibility,” Rahmani tells the outlet.
“That means Prince Harry’s visa should have been denied or revoked because he admitted to using cocaine, mushrooms and other drugs.”
Rahmani adds that there is “no exception for royalty or recreational use.”
An opposing view is presented by immigration attorney James Leonard, who represented The Real Housewives of New Jersey alum Joe Giudice in the case that eventually led to his deportation.
“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,” the lawyer tells Page Six.
In his memoir, Harry recalled eating hallucinogenic mushrooms at a party at Courteney Cox’s house and losing himself in a haze of drug and alcohol abuse in his youth.
In a recent interview with addiction expert Gabor Mate, Harry revealed that he considers the use of hallucinogenic drugs to be a “fundamental” part of his life, as these experiences helped him to heal from past 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,” he told the doctor.
“I started doing it recreationally and then started to realize how good it was for me.”
Spare hit bookstores more than two months ago, so if Harry were in any real danger of being deported, he would probably know by now.
We’re guessing he’ll be fine.
After all, our country’s government isn’t stocked with weird figureheads who seem to have it out for Harry — unlike some other nations we could name.