A US judge has ruled that the application for Prince Harry’s visa must remain secret, despite the Duke of Sussex publicly disclosing his use of drugs in his memoirs, Spare.
In a memoir released in January 2023, Prince Harry disclosed his uses of cocaine, marijuana, and hallucinogenic mushrooms. Many visa applications ask about drug use, and that factor can have a big impact on eligibility. The conservative Heritage Foundation sued to force the government to release the documents and to learn if the prince reported his drug use in the application.
However, US Judge Carl Nichols ruled on Monday that “the public does not have a strong interest in disclosure of the duke’s immigration records.” He continued by saying Prince Harry has a legitimate privacy interest in his immigration status just like any foreign national.
Prince Harry’s entry with his wife Meghan Markle and their son Archie into the United States in January 2020 – after the couple stepped back from active royal duties – has been called into question, says a lawsuit filed last year by the Washington, D.C.-based Heritage Foundation.
Drug use is one of the salient factors being assessed in US visa application forms. On the other hand, though the immigration department enjoys discretion in its decisions, drug use in the past would allegedly deny both immigrant and non-immigrant visas. A lawsuit from The Heritage Foundation pointed out that under US law, aliens who have ever used illegal drugs are customarily found to be inadmissible.
Prince Harry said in his memoir that he took cocaine, which “didn’t do anything for me,” but later admitted that “marijuana is different; that actually really did help me.” Attorneys with the Biden administration stated that the Duke may have sensationalized facts to “sell books” because the anecdotes in his biography are not indicative proof of him using drugs.
