Rob Van Dam Recalls How Vince McMahon Handled His 2006 Marijuana Arrest
Former WWE Champion and current Impact Wrestling star Rob Van Dam joined Wrestling Inc.'s Nick Hausman on our The Wrestling Inc. Daily podcast and chatted about RVD's endeavors in the marijuana world. RVD discussed the health effects of marijuana compared to nicotine in cigarettes noting that cigarette smokers die at a much higher rate than marijuana smokers. He also noted that marijuana is classified by the DEA as a schedule 1 drug meaning it is classified as having no medical use and has a high potential of abuse along with other schedule 1 drugs like heroin and LSD.
"I've been an advocate since like '98 or so after I did the first High Times magazine. That's always been a big part of me because I felt like people are swerved and they need to know the truth," RVD expressed. "People would pot shame me and then light up a cigarette, and I learned that marijuana's not even toxic enough to kill one person. It's very very low toxicity, and cigarettes kill one out of two, like 50% of long-term cigarette smokers die from the cigarette. So I felt like I have to tell people. I felt like obligated to educate them.
"The government says it's 'the most dangerous drug, a schedule 1 and then no one's ever died from it and then it can't kill you and then schedule 2 is where you find meth. Really? Meth is higher in medicine and safer for you than marijuana? If people knew that that's the way the government looked at it, they would demand change. So that's why I've always stood behind it."
RVD was asked if others wrestlers have come up to him and ask about marijuana. He said they have, and he is happy about that since wrestlers today aren't abusing pain killers as his generation did.
"Yes, wrestlers ask me for advice often, and I'm glad that the current generation is smoking marijuana and not eating handfuls of pills and alcohol like my generation did and they're going to live long because of that," RVD admitted. "The athletic style that requires you to really take care of yourself, you can't be out at the bar drinking till 5:00 in the morning like the wrestlers of the '70s or '80s. So basically because of Rob Van Dam, the wrestlers are going to live longer."
With marijuana being illegal on a federal level and with WWE's strict Wellness Policy, marijuana use in WWE is kept discreet including RVD once saying that Stephanie McMahon telling him to be more discreet about his marijuana use. RVD spoke on the podcast about his 2006 suspension after his drug arrest that forced him to drop the WWE Championship and ECW Championship in back-to-back days.
"If anybody semi-doesn't know what we're talking about, I had the WWE and the ECW Championship, got pulled over for speeding in Ohio, and the car smelled like weed and they found 18 grams of marijuana plus whatever we had in our vitamins," RVD explained. "So Sabu, right away, was like, 'we got to call him and tell him.' I'm like, 'what? Are you crazy? What do we tell him?' I didn't think they were going to find out, but by the time we got to the arena, everybody already knew. It was on every form of media, and Vince, when we saw him the first time, he walked right by us in the hallway. He was not ready to talk to us. I was like, 'eh, that didn't feel good,' and he was mad.
"A couple a couple hours later, after he had a chance to talk to his advisors and come up with a plan of how they were going to handle that because that wasn't the plans for me to drop the championship that night and the next night. He was cool then. The next time I saw him, he said, 'look, you're going to be suspended for 30 days. You're going to drop the championships. Just take this 30 days and get some rest.' Couldn't have been cooler."
RVD discussed briefly about his relationship with Vince McMahon saying that McMahon was always friendly with him. He said he doesn't have any stories about McMahon, "being an a–hole to him."
"He's always just been super cool to me," RVD noted. "I know that other people see different sides of him, just like with anybody, but I got nothing but respect for him and no stories of him ever being an a–hole to me or around me."
Rob Van Dam is featured in the new app Celebrity Slots, which is now available to download for free in the Apple and Google Play stores. Van Dam's full interview aired as part of a recent episode of our podcast, The Wrestling Inc. Daily. Subscribe to get the latest episodes as soon as it's released Monday – Friday afternoon by clicking here.