Meghan Markle stands at the altar during her wedding in St George's Chapel at Windsor Castle on May 19, 2018 in Windsor, England. Photo / Getty
Meghan Markle stands at the altar during her wedding in St George's Chapel at Windsor Castle on May 19, 2018 in Windsor, England. Photo / Getty
With its idyllic private beach, antiques-furnished villas and tropical gardens, Jamaica Inn has been catering to the whims of affluent lovers since the days when Marilyn Monroe and playwright Arthur Miller honeymooned there more than 60 years ago.
So when a bellboy was beckoned aside, handed a few dollar bills, and asked to buy sufficient marijuana for the 100 guests who were due to attend the wedding of an American couple at the hotel later that week, he readily obeyed the request according to DailyMail.
Actress Meghan Markle (R) and her first husband Trevor Engelson arrive at the Anti-Defamation League Entertainment Industry Awards Dinner. Photo / Getty
Eager to create an authentic Jamaican ambience, Meghan Markle, then aged 30 and a fast-rising television actress, and her fiancé Trevor Engelson, a hot-shot Hollywood producer four years her senior, evidently felt that handing out gift bags containing cannabis joints would add a 'cool and cheeky' touch to the occasion.
Having planned every last detail of the event, Meghan personally arranged to purchase the consignment of small, muslin gift bags that would contain the reefers, and even helped roll the joints — in her bridal suite, of all places, according to sources who attended.
A bacchanalian fiesta lasting four days, during which guests played raucous beach games and drank lashings of rum-punch, it was already known that the Duchess of Sussex's first wedding, in September 2011, contrasted sharply with her marriage to Prince Harry in the sombre confines of St George's Chapel, Windsor, in May.
Meghan Markle on Deal or No Deal. Photo / Getty
However, the jaw-dropping details of this hippie-style Caribbean shindig were revealed by The Sun newspaper yesterday.
It will doubtless come as an embarrassment, both to the pregnant Duchess of Sussex and to the Royal Family, whose concerns about drug use are well documented.
Last night, Buckingham Palace declined to comment. However, it would be difficult to deny that Meghan knew cannabis was one of the party 'gifts'. For the newspaper published an email she sent to a friend, who had been helping her to find the right type of bags for the dubious gifts.
'Already ordered 'em. And teeny ones for the pot that say "ssh",' Meghan wrote, after the friend sent her the link to a website that sold the bags. As a mark of her self-satisfaction, she signed the message off with a smiley face.
'Meghan thought it would make it memorable. She was excited about making that [the cannabis] a thing, showing a cheeky side people wouldn't have imagined she had, especially at her wedding,' says one insider.
Meghan Markle is seen ahead of her visit with Prince Harry to the iconic Titanic Belfast during their trip to Northern Ireland on March 23, 2018 in Belfast. Photo / Getty
Sources point out Meghan was never a habitual cannabis user. In fact, having come from a background where drug usage was not uncommon — her half-brother, Thomas, would smoke cannabis with his friends, and her father, Thomas senior, has admitted to 'the occasional sniff' of cocaine when he worked as a Hollywood lighting director — she is said to have had a 'conservative' attitude towards drugs since her teens.
Moreover, she is said to have behaved with comparative restraint when it came to cannabis, preferring to drink Champagne and rosé wine.
Nonetheless, the idea of supplying party bags containing pot seems an act of extraordinary recklessness, even if she didn't buy the cannabis herself.
For one thing, purchasing marijuana on the back streets of Jamaica — where dealers fight violent turf-wars and regularly rip-off unsuspecting customers — can be dangerous, and there have been many violent incidents in the edgy resort town of Ocho Rios, where Jamaica Inn is situated.
Furthermore, by supplying the drugs to their guests, Meghan and Engelson placed themselves at risk of prosecution, according to attorney Jacqueline Cummings, president of the Jamaican Bar Association.
For although the island's drug laws were relaxed in 2015, making possession and usage a minor misdemeanour, in 2011 it was still a criminal offence.
And though the penalty for possession was punishable by a very small fine of 100 Jamaican dollars for each ounce of cannabis, those who failed to pay could be jailed for ten days. Stiffer sentences were handed out for distributing the drug.
However, foreign tourists were seldom, if ever, troubled by the police for buying 'ganja' (as Jamaicans call it) and a wedding guest said the couple probably didn't consider the legal risks involved.
For Meghan, of course, those were very different times. She was then, in her own words, a 'free-spirited Californian hippie'.
How could she have envisaged that her marriage to Engelson would be over within two years, and that she would remarry into the Royal Family, where every aspect of her conduct would be scrutinised and she would be expected to uphold the highest standards of behaviour?
Indeed, Prince Charles has voiced fears that cannabis is a 'gateway drug' that can cause addiction to harder drugs, and when a 16-year-old Prince Harry was revealed to have smoked pot at Highgrove, in 2001, Charles reacted swiftly and firmly, sending him to visit a London rehabilitation clinic to witness the perils of addiction first-hand.
Through his charity, the Prince's Trust, Charles has also done a great deal of work towards combating drug abuse, as have the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.
