As I Suspected

Via the UK Daily Mail,

Hunter Biden visited his 'sugar brother' Hollywood lawyer Kevin Morris – who was photographed appearing to smoke from a bong.

. . . While Hunter was at the house, Morris was snapped on a balcony in plain view of the public street appearing to huff from a white bong, in photos exclusively obtained by DailyMail.com.

. . . It is not clear what substance was in Morris's bong, and recreational marijuana use is legal in California. He did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

This vignette raises several important questions for me, but it begins to answer one I posed a couple of weeks ago about Hunter and Kevin:

Do they do coke together? I don't think this bodes well for Hunter's future. Kevin Morris is not a serious guy.

Bongs actually came after my time doing this sort of thing in college (which I did on and off for about 18 months but outgrew pretty quickly), when all we had was old-fashioned joints, so I went to Wikipedia for an explanation:

A bong (also known as a water pipe) is a filtration device generally used for smoking cannabis, tobacco, or other herbal substances.

Mr Morris is demonstrating its use pretty clearly in the photo. There is a large-diameter glass tube filled with water or other liquid, from which we can see him inhaling with vigor. In front of the glass tube, partly obscured by the forefinger of his right hand, is a stem loaded with cannabis. He appears to be holding a lighter in his left hand that he's using to ignite the cannabis in the stem, which in turn produces smoke that's drawn through the water in the tube and inhaled to give a euphoric effect. (But despite the Daily Mail's characterization that he "appeared relaxed", the wild-haired dude looks kinda like a hungry freak to me.)

Possession of small amounts of cannabis or marijuana for personal use is legal in California and some other states. According to writers like Alex Berenson, this has been a major public policy error, and I tend to agree. But just from watching police shows like On Patrol: Live, it appears that when people who are stopped and searched for drugs have marijuana, even in states where it's legal, they also carry other drugs like cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin, and fentanyl, which currently are illegal everywhere. This contributes to the impression that marijuana is a "gateway drug" that simply makes it easier to obtain and use more dangerous and illegal drugs.

This in turn leads to the perfectly reasonable question whether Mr Morris and Hunter used other drugs besides marijuana during their visit, but even if they didn't, this largely discredits the argument that Hunter has cleaned up his act and is living a life of sober respectability. If he were, it would be a major betrayal for Mr Morris to do anything that might encourage Hunter to relapse, like use drugs in his presence and in an environment where Hunter might also feel encouraged to use them. This in turn suggests that Hunter and Mr Morris mutually and cynically understand that the idea Hunter is clean and sober is for public consumption only.

But also, according to the Daily Mail link,

Hunter arrived in the afternoon in a black SUV, escorted by Secret Service bodyguards and dressed in a blue shirt, jeans and aviator sunglasses favored by both him and his father.

Presumably Hunter is routinely tailed by paparazzi, who alerted to the black SUV and followed it to Mr Morris's place, where they got their photos and sold them to the Daily Mail. But we may surmise that the Secret Service waited around for Hunter to finish his "meeting" and drove him back to the Malibu compound or wherever else he was staying, so they must have observed just as much as the paparazzi did of Mr Morris and the bong. This in turn strongly suggests to me that the Secret Service is fully aware of Hunter's drug use and other lifestyle issues and effectively enables them -- which they've had a history of doing since Joe's time as vice president.

But finally, it's hard to avoid the impression that Mr Morris is not acting in his client's interest. According to the Daily Mail link above,

Morris is currently suing right wing nonprofit Marco Polo and its founder, former Donald Trump White House staffer Garrett Ziegler, who has been investigating the Biden family.

The attorney accused Ziegler and his nonprofit of harassment, invasion of privacy and 'criminal impersonation' in court documents filed in Los Angeles.

But Morris himself is acting in a way that damages Hunter's reputation, by portraying him as someone who is present when drugs are used -- and in fact, in the deal that Hunter agreed to for his firearm charge, for which Mr Morris was lead attorney,

Hunter Biden also has agreed to enter into a so-called pretrial diversion agreement in connection with a federal felony charge of possession of a gun by a person who is a user or addict of illegal drugs, according to the filing by prosecutors in U.S. District Court in Delaware.

Typically, such agreements call for the related criminal charge to be dismissed if a defendant complies with the conditions of the deal for a set period of time.

Those conditions would normally include abstaining from any drug or alcohol use -- but Mr Morris is by his own actions suggesting he won't encourage Hunter to take this seriously.

Well, prolonged cannabis use affects overall judgment. I disagree with the media accounts that call Kevin Morris a "legal heavyweight". He's just an entitled a stoner with more money than brains.