Prince Harry should use his trip to Colombia as a chance to say sorry for taking cocaine in his youth – as the South American state bravely fights the ‘disgusting’ and illegal drugs trade, a friend of Prince William has reportedly said.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex will land in Bogota on Thursday for a quasi-royal visit now expected to include a private meeting with President Gustavo Petro.
President Petro, Colombia’s first left-wing leader in recent history, was swept to power in 2022 after declaring that his nation’s famous decades long ‘War on Drugs’ had failed and a new global approach was needed to shut it down and ‘unite’ his state.
Harry and Meghan are set to meet him to discuss projects to protect and educate the children of Colombia.
But a friend of his brother Prince William has been quoted in the US press saying that Harry should also use these talks to apologise for his own cocaine use as a teenager, which is discussed in his memoir Spare and in an interview on CBS’ 60 Minutes with Anderson Cooper.
‘Harry admitted to doing coke in his book,’ the insider told The Daily Beast. ‘His trip to Colombia should include an admission that the country has been destroyed by narco-terrorists servicing wealthy drug users in the West, and he should stand up and apologise for his own participation in that disgusting trade’.
Given the battle with drugs gangs that President Petro is fighting, saying sorry ‘would be a helpful intervention’, the friend of William said.
Prince Harry and Meghan at the 2024 ESPY Awards at Dolby Theatre in Hollywood on July 11. They are due to land in Colombia on Thursday where they are expected to meet the President. Harry has been urged to apologise for his drug use in his youth
Harry, pictured on 60 Minutes with leading US TV anchor Anderson Cooper as he launched a publicity blitz before the release of his explosive book Spare, revealed all about his life and his relationship with his brother William, pictured yesterday, who he is estranged from
MailOnline asked Prince Harry’s spokesman to comment. They declined.
The Duke of Sussex remains at the centre of a legal case over the issue of drugs.
Donald Trump has previously suggested that Harry – who has lived in the US since 2020 – would not get ‘special privileges’ and indeed may be deported if he is found to have falsified information on his visa form.
In Spare Harry admitted to having taken cocaine and magic mushrooms – there is a legal battle in the US to get his visa forms released
In the Prince’s memoir, Spare, he revealed he previously took drugs including cocaine, cannabis and psychedelic mushrooms – which under US law would typically be grounds for a visa application to be rejected.
In Spare, Harry sensationally admitted to taking cocaine a ‘few’ times during his wilder party years.
The Duke of Sussex described being dragged into the office of an unnamed member of the Royal Household staff during his grandmother the Queen’s Golden Jubilee in 2002 after a journalist asked the Palace about his drug-taking habits.
‘Of course I had been taking cocaine at that time’, he said.
‘At someone’s house, during a hunting weekend, I was offered a line, and since then I had consumed some more.
‘It wasn’t very fun, and it didn’t make me feel especially happy as seemed to happen to others, but it did make me feel different, and that was my main objective. To feel. To be different.
‘I was a 17-year-old willing to try almost anything that would alter the pre-established order’.
In his memoir, which widened the rift with his British family, Harry also sensationally claimed he hallucinated that a bin was speaking to him after taking magic mushrooms washed down with spirits.
Harry claimed the experience happened at a party with his friends.
Prince Harry, pictured here leaving Bouijis in South Kensington in 2006, claims he was confronted by a talking bin during a bad mushroom trip
The duke, pictured here with his brother at Christmas Day Service in Sandringham in 2008, also admitted to taking cocaine a ‘few’ times
In an interview with CBS Sunday Morning earlier this month on August 4, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle spoke about the impact of online experiences on young people’s wellbeing, This will form a major part of their Colombia visit
The prince said they spied a box of mushroom chocolates in a fridge and decided to eat them before washing them down with tequila.
The trip did not go as intended however, with the duke ending up having a terrifying experience with a bin in the bathroom.
He said: ‘Beside the toilet was a round silver bin, the kind with a foot pedal to open the lid. I stared at the bin. It stared back. Then it became… a head.
‘I stepped on the pedal and the head opened its mouth. A huge open grin.
‘I laughed, turned away, took a p***. Now the loo became a head too. The bowl was its gaping maw, the hinges of the seat were its piercing silver eyes. It said, “Aaah”.’
During an interview with Anderson Cooper on 60 Minutes, he was asked about his drinking and drug taking.
He said it was a reaction to his mother’s death.
‘I had a lot of anger inside of me that luckily, I never expressed to anybody.
‘But I resorted to drinking heavily. Because I wanted to numb the feeling, or I wanted to distract myself from how … whatever I was thinking. And I would, you know, resort to drugs as well’.
He also said that psychedelics including mushrooms helped him.
‘I would never recommend people to do this recreationally — but doing it with the right people if you are suffering from a huge amount of loss, grief or trauma, then these things have a way of working as a medicine. For me, they cleared the windshield, the windshield of the misery of loss.
‘They cleared away this idea that I had in my head that– that my mother, that I needed to cry to prove to my mother that I missed her. When in fact, all she wanted was for me to be happy’.
Yesterday it emerged that Joe Rogan has used his new Netflix stand-up show to savagely lampoon Prince Harry, calling him a ‘b**ch’ and joking about the royal taking magic mushrooms.
The podcast star, 57, also mimicked the Duke of Sussex’s British accent as he accused the California-based Windsor of ‘talking s**t about me’ – a reference to the Sussexes’ public concerns about ‘Covid misinformation’ on the vaccine-sceptic’s Spotify show.
He also mocked Harry by imagining what it would be like to take drugs with him – and then fantasised about hammering him over their row over vaccines while high on hallucinogens.
New Jersey-born Mr Rogan said he would get Harry tipsy and then encourage him to get high with him.
‘Could you imagine doing mushrooms with Prince Harry? You imagine if you could trick that guy into doing mushrooms with you’, he said.
‘The moment you see him chew it and swallow it. There’s a moment when you do mushrooms, like 20 minutes after you swallow it, when you know you can’t throw it up anymore.
‘And you’re like “Oh no it’s going to happen” and you’re sitting eye to eye with the prince. And here’s the thing. Mushrooms take about 40 minutes to kick in, but about 35 minutes in you hear them coming. You hear footsteps in the distance. Meanwhile, Prince Harry is tripping balls’.
To more laughter from the audience he said: ‘I’m going to hover over him and say: “Are you sure vaccines are safe?” B**ch you’re not a scientist’.
Harry and Meghan are set to tour Colombia later this week at the invitation of the country’s vice president Francia Marquez.
Ms Marquez, a lawyer and human rights and environmental activist, said the pair would join her in visiting the capital Bogota, as well as the Caribbean and Pacific regions of Cartagena and Cali.
Details of the couple’s itinerary have not yet been released, but the vice president said they would engage in several activities related to safeguarding young people online and in physical spaces.
Meghan and Harry have long been vocal about highlighting the threat posed to children by the internet.
They launched a new initiative The Parent Network earlier this month to provide parents with a safe and free-to-access support network to help those whose children have been harmed by social media.
In an interview with CBS Sunday Morning on August 4, Harry said the impact of online experiences on young people’s wellbeing was at the stage where ‘almost every parent needs to be a first responder, and even the best first responders in the world wouldn’t be able to tell the signs of possible suicide’.
The so-called ‘DIY royal tour’ is the Sussexes’s second this year, after their three-day visit to Nigeria at the invitation of the West African nation’s chief of defence staff.
Harry and Meghan are set to tour Colombia at the invitation of the country’s vice president Francia Marquez, who is pictured at the Festival Of Culture in New Orleans on July 6
The UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office states that it ‘advises against all but essential travel to parts of Colombia’. The areas affected are those shaded in orange in the above map
Harry and Meghan stepped down from the working monarchy in 2020 and no longer travel at the request of the UK Government on official overseas royal visits.
The Foreign Office warns against all but essential travel to certain parts of Colombia, with kidnapping rates remaining high.
It describes the country as ‘seriously afflicted by conflict’ with a resurgence in violence in parts of Colombia despite the peace agreement with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) movement to end the civil war.
Harry maintained last month that it was ‘still dangerous’ for Meghan to return to the UK.
He lost a High Court challenge against the Home Office in February over a decision to change the level of his personal security when he visits the UK, but he has been given the green light to appeal.
During the case, the court was told Harry believes his children cannot ‘feel at home’ in the UK if it is ‘not possible to keep them safe’ there and that he faces a greater risk than his late mother, with ‘additional layers of racism and extremism’.
