Johnny Depp Introduced Weed To His Daughter At 13

Johnny Depp
Photo credit USA Today/SIPA

On the stand in the U.K. yesterday, Depp was asked why he "encouraged" his daughter Lily-Rose Depp to try weed when she was 13?

He was there defending his libel case against "The Sun" for calling him a "wife-beater."

He answered with..."My daughter was 13 years old and, as we all know, at 11, 12, 13 years old, when you go to high school parties you are approached by people who will want to give you drink because they’re drinking," Depp continued with the advice he gave his daughter when she was young: "Listen, sweetheart, if you are at a party and someone hands you the joint, take the joint from that person and pass it to the next person… don’t experiment with drugs with people you don’t know."

And to his daughter he said:

"Please do me the honor of coming to me when you are ready, when you really feel you are ready, because I don’t want your first experience in this world to be with people you don’t know, taking things you don’t know that I can’t trust, so it’s a safety issue," Depp said he told his daughter.

Well, it's up to each parent to do what they think is best with their child, but I think he is assuming too much. I think we do that too much with our kids, and because we might have acted a certain way, we think they will do the same.

Most important, I think he made a mistake in not educating himself on the damaging effects of marijuana on the adolescent brain. For teens, smoking pot has been shown to decrease IQ by at least 10 points and bring on the likelihood of mental illness like depression and anxiety - and that's only a few side effects. I don't think any parent would want their child to go through that.

It's not known if his daughter ever had a problem with those things as a teen. Lily-Rose is 21 now, but I don't know much else about her.