South Korean rapper Bill Stax has been indicted on charges of buying and using marijuana, eight years after his last drug-related indictment, Star News reported on October 21.
The Suwon District Prosecutors’ Office indicted the 46-year-old rapper, whose real name is Shin Dong-yeol, without detention on October 16 for violating the Narcotics Control Act. He is suspected of buying and inhaling marijuana and marijuana jelly from a drug dealer in his 30s, identified only as B, in November last year.
Investigators reportedly uncovered evidence of the rapper’s drug use while looking into B’s other offenses. B, who cultivated marijuana at home and manufactured marijuana jelly from August 2024 through June of this year, was indicted on the 7th.
This is not Bill Stax’s first drug case. In 2018, he was indicted without detention on charges of smoking marijuana and using ecstasy and cocaine in 2015.
Bill Stax debuted in 2004 under the name Vasco, gaining attention on the third season of Mnet’s “Show Me the Money” in 2014, and changed his stage name in 2016. He has repeatedly spoken out in favor of marijuana legalization, saying when he released his fifth studio album “DETOX” in 2020: “Marijuana isn’t a drug, but society’s tendency to label it a drug without a second thought looked to me as if society were becoming addicted to drugs and falling apart.”
No official statement from Bill Stax or his representatives was available at the time of reporting.
