Richard Branson Shocks Chicago Crowd: Smoke Weed With Your Kids

Cool cat and billionaire Sir Richard Branson surprised an audience of entrepreneurs in a convention held in Chicago this week when he recommended parents smoke pot with their kids.

“If they're going to have a joint, do it with them,” the 66-year-old father of two said on stage. “Don't let them sneak off and do it on their own.”

While this might seem like good advice to many parents, the attendees didn't seem very pleased. This is probably why the founder of the Virgin Group and Virgin America Inc. VA felt the need to add, "I'm on the global drug commission" and has worked to show that drugs are "a health problem and not a criminal problem.” The audience seemed to warm more to this latter comment, the Chicago Tribune reported.

Those familiar with Branson would not likely be surprised by his remarks. In the past, the businessman has not only disclosed he occasionally uses marijuana, but has also been an advocate for the decriminalization of the drug.

Over the past few years, it has become evident that musicians are not the only millionaires that publicly defend the use and decriminalization of pot. Other well-known global business moguls have publicly supported – to various degrees – marijuana as well. Among them we can count:

• Microsoft Corporation’s MSFT Bill Gates
• Whole Foods Market, Inc.’s WFM Co-Founder and Co-CEO John Mackey
• George Soros
• Playboy’s Hugh Hefner
• Facebook, Inc.’s FB co-founders Sean Parker and Dustin Moskovitz
• Progressive Corp.’s PGR late Peter Lewis.
• Men's Wearhouse Inc.’s MW Founder George Zimmer