The Rolling Stone's 1972 classic "Exile on Main Street" was re-released this week.
Like most things the Stones try to sell, there's been a big media push behind it (Jimmy Fallon booked an entire week of musical acts covering "Exile" songs).
Larry King dedicated the entire hour of his Tuesday show to a taped interview with Mick Jagger.
Amid the expected softball questions, King managed to cover the topic of drug use. After all, the Rolling Stones' longevity has set the anti-drug movement's logic back about 30 years.
Here's that part of the transcript:
KING: You only had one law problem, right? A marijuana thing that you weren't convicted. Right? You were never convicted?
JAGGER: I think I was. It was a long time ago. I think I was -- every time I come to the United States I still have to sort of go to the special place.
KING: Really?
JAGGER: Yes, yes, even though it's 40-something years ago. The marijuana conviction, yes.
KING: Really?
JAGGER: I have to go into a room.
KING: You have to report?
JAGGER: Well, you go -- you can't go through -- you know the immigration line?
KING: Yes.
JAGGER: So sometimes if there is someone that knows something about how to deal with it, they can do it. But normally I have to go to a special room.
KING: Lenny Bruce once said it will be legal some day because every law student I know smokes it.
JAGGER: Yes. That never happened.
KING: No.
JAGGER: Well, it sort of half-happened, doesn't it, in the --
KING: Should it be legal?
JAGGER: You know, it's legal to grow.
KING: Do you think it should?
JAGGER: Well, the whole question of legalizing drugs is fraught with -- someone asked me this the other day. And I said, you know, the -- I don't know if I got into trouble so maybe I think, but, you know, you usually try these things out in very small places. You know, like, so you try this in -- you know, like you try a new product out, you know, in a small kind of society or an island somewhere.
And in England they always try out new mobile phones in Isle of Man. They've got a captive society. So I said, you should try -- you should try the legalization of all drugs on the Isle of Man and see what happens.
KING: Do you think it will ever happen? Ever is a long time.
JAGGER: Ever is a long time. People -- you know, there is certainly a -- human beings seem to have a propensity to want to take drugs in some form, you know.
KING: Makes you feel good.
JAGGER: Thousands of years people have taken drugs, whether it's alcohol, which was invented about 5,000 years ago. People have been using that. And all kinds of marijuana and all these things, tobacco.
