Famous Rapper Scammed the Government Out of $10 Million?

Lil Wayne is a big fan of marijuana. He often smokes joints on podcasts and onstage, and the word “baked” is tattooed on his forehead. In 2019, he launched a marijuana brand, and a few years before that, he told an interviewer that weed was one of the most important things in his life.

But in 2021, Lil Wayne — whose real name is Dwayne Carter — told the government his touring company was a “drug-free workplace.” The “dangers” of drugs such as weed were communicated to employees, he said, and they were told they could be punished or be forced to go to rehab.

No one at the Small Business Administration appeared to question it, and the government cut a $8.9 million check to Lil Wayne’s company Young Money Touring Inc.

Similarly, Austin Post, a singer better known as Post Malone, told the SBA his company Posty Touring Inc. warned employees against using drugs. But in 2020, Post said on Joe Rogan’s podcast that he made music while on hallucinogenic mushrooms, whose active compound psilocybin has been a Schedule 1 drug since 1970.

Last year, Post again told an interviewer, “Yeah, I take shrooms.” While he differentiated them from “hard drugs” and alluded to the potential medical benefits of the fungi, they’re still banned.

The documents signed by Carter and Post, whose company got $10 million in free government money, were among dozens that Business Insider received after filing a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the SBA. There’s no sign the SBA investigated them at all in its rush to cut checks; the agency’s inspector general said last year that employees had just four hours to review applications, with little time to conduct due diligence.

The office of the inspector general declined a request for comment on BI’s reporting, as its policy prevents it from commenting on specific documents or confirming or denying investigative activity. The SBA didn’t respond to a request for comment.

While it may seem like a stretch for the SBA to tie Lil Wayne or Post Malone’s pandemic payouts to their drug-law compliance, similar requirements have been in place for recipients of federal funds for decades. States and cities also sometimes demand to know what’s in people’s bloodstreams before cutting checks; several states have tried to require drug tests for welfare recipients, and San Francisco just voted to require recipients of cash grants to pass a drug screening.

“When you have social status, your substance use is treated in a different way,” Harold Pollack, a public-health expert at the University of Chicago, said. “They don’t brutalize a lot of celebrities for behaviors that we would very harshly treat in people with less prestige.”