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View information about Paul McCartney's arrest and mugshot here on famouslyarrested.com Paul McCartney. You can view information about Paul McCartney's arrest and other celebrity arrests. You can view by name or by category. We also have included Paul McCartney mugshots.
Paul McCartney
- Paul McCartney
- Musician
- January, 1980
- Possession of Marijuana
- Charges Dropped
The arrest of Paul McCartney:
He's musical legend, from his early days with the Beatles…
…to the formation of "Wings", when the Beatles broke up.
Part of the music scene for more than four decades, Paul McCartney has had several brushes with the law, mainly for the possession of marijuana.
Anyone familiar with the Beatle's music knew that the group had been dabbling in drugs. In fact, McCartney's first use of drugs occurred during the Beatles' days in Hamburg, Germany in the early 60's.
They used Preludin to maintain their energy during long performances.
He says Bob Dylan first turned him on to pot in a New York hotel room in 1964. Charges followed.
A Swedish court fined him a thousand pounds for marijuana possession in 1972.
A year later, Scottish police found he was growing the stuff on his farm and fined him 100 pounds.
He was arrested again for having pot in Los Angeles in 1975, though his wife Linda assumed the blame and the charges against him were dropped.
It was in January 1980 when Wings landed in Tokyo for a Japanese concert tour that Custom's officials found about 8 ounces of grass in his luggage
The police arrested McCartney and took him to a local jail…
…while the Japanese government tried to figure out what to do. After ten days in jail they released him and deported him without charges. (The tour was cancelled.)
In 1984, while vacationing in Barbados, he was arrested again for possession of marijuana and was fined $200.
When he returned to England, he declared that pot is "less harmful than rum punch, whiskey, nicotine and glue all of which are perfectly legal", and that he wasn't doing anyone any harm whatsoever.
On to 1997, Sir Paul (knighted in 1997 for his services to music) spoke out in support of the decriminalization of marijuana, saying people are smoking it anyway to make them criminals is wrong.
But in April 2012, he told "Rolling Stone" magazine that he pledged he was giving up the weed for the sake of his daughter Beatrice…
…eight years old at the time.