Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen was asked if she has ever “inhaled” marijuana, and she confirmed that she did at one point.
Yellen appeared on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” on Wednesday, where they discussed President-elect Trump’s tariff plan and the impacts it would have on everyday Americans.
Host Stephen Colbert asked Yellen, 78, about the 2023 story when she accidentally ate “magic” mushrooms on a trip to China. Yellen detailed her experience in Beijing and how she ate some “delicious” mushrooms that turned out to be hallucinogenic. She said she would recommend it to anybody.
Colbert noted that Yellen is leaving office in a matter of days and isn’t running for public office, so she could share her history.
“Have you ever inhaled, is what I’m asking?” he said.
“Well, I think the answer is yes,” Yellen said, and the crowd cheered.
Yellen noted that it’s been a “long time” but in college she “did have an opportunity to smoke pot.”
The Treasury secretary said she had never smoked a cigarette but at the end of college she was looking forward to an opportunity that had arisen for her to smoke marijuana. She described herself as a very prepared person and asked herself what she could do to prepare for inhaling the smoke.
“And I realized I could just go out and buy some cigarettes and try to learn to inhale,” Yellen said. “And so I did.”
Over the next several weeks she practiced how to inhale and eventually she learned.
“And so, we smoked pot, it was okay,” Yellen said. “It was neither here nor there. I didn’t really do it again for the rest of my life.”
“But, within six months, I was smoking three packs a day,” she continued, noting that she smoked cigarettes for a decade and quit one day “cold turkey.”
