Ex-Navy Seal who killed Osama bin Laden explains real reason he changed career to sell cannabis

It’s quite the career change

The former Navy Seal who says he killed Osama bin Laden has decided to go for a career change and get into selling his own range of cannabis products.

It seems like everyone’s at it these days; the list of people who’ve made the foray into owning cannabis farms or selling cannabis-related goods seems to have grown pretty steadily.

Of course Snoop Dogg has got several cannabis-related businesses (it’d be a bit of a let down if he didn’t), but the likes of Woody Harrelson, Martha Stewart, and Mike Tyson have also dabbled in the industry.

With laws around the drug being relaxed in certain parts of the world, it’s become a growing market, and entering that market by setting up in New York is Robert O’Neill, who gained fame as the man that shot bin Laden.

He became known for talking about his part in Operation Neptune Spear, where Seal Team Six located and killed the al-Qaeda leader at a compound in Pakistan.

Former Navy Seal Robert O’Neill has decided to get into cannabis products (Phillip Faraone/Getty Images)

In his time speaking about it, he’s said he ‘knew he was going to die’ before going on that mission, as he thought the compound bin Laden was hiding in might have explosives to take out anyone coming to kill him.

He also said he did feel bad, not for killing bin Laden, but for his two-year-old son who was also in the room and witnessed the terrorist leader being gunned down.

Now he’s having a change of career and getting into cannabis.

Speaking to the New York Post, O’Neill explained that his experiences watching fellow soldiers suffer with PTSD helped motivate him to start selling cannabis as he found it ‘helps to get rid of the noise’.

He said: “I wanted to get into the cannabis business through my experience in the military and watching vets suffer from things like post-traumatic stress disorder.

“It’s a good way to take the edge off. It helps to get rid of the noise.”

O’Neill said it wasn’t the sort of thing he’d have been able to take while still with the Navy Seals, as you can imagine they wouldn’t look too kindly on their serving members getting high while on duty.

However, he now reckons that ‘better conversations’ can be had ‘if we take cannabis’, and suggests ‘the potential for world peace’ is even within reach.

International diplomacy may indeed be a tad more mellow if everyone doing it was enjoying a joint of cannabis, though ‘get them all high and make them hash it out’ as a negotiating strategy is likely to come with some downsides of its own.

He’s named his cannabis company ‘Operator’, a similar title to that of his 2017 book The Operator, and he’s selling products named ‘Healer-Indica’, ‘Warrior-Sativa’, and ‘Shooter-Hybrid’.