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Jada Pinkett Smith has recently revealed why she sold drugs as a teenager in her new memoir, Worthy.
Speaking to PEOPLE magazine, the Red Table Talk host opened up about selling illicit drugs as a teen for “survival” but it also enabled her to be “independent”.
Reflecting on her difficult childhood, Jada shared she spent much of her childhood living with her maternal grandmother while other times with her mother Adrienne Banfield-Norris.
Jada said, “When you aren’t the priority of your parents you don’t know how to be a priority to yourself. I had parents who were addicted to drugs.”
“Not having a healthy foundation, as I would come to find out way into my adulthood, had some really strong effects in regard to how I saw myself,” stated the actress.
Jada argued, “Our parents are not responsible for our wholeness.”
However, she recalled. “Growing up, the drug dealers were the ones that had affluence. That’s what we readily saw as success. And so, for me, considering my circumstances at the time, my mother was not doing well.”
“She was a high-functioning heroin addict. We didn’t have the things that we should have. The home we lived in was not taken care of,” disclosed Jada.
The Matrix actress explained it was her fears that her mother might overdose or be arrested for her drug addiction that led her to start selling drugs especially crack cocaine “to create a larger safety net for herself and her family”.
“Drugs were going to touch you, period. You could use them, you could sell them, but there was no being in an environment like that and drugs not touch you,” remarked Jada.
The actress pointed out, “I’m not saying that it’s right, of course, now being in a whole different mindset.”
“But when you’re living in a war zone and you just thinking about survival, I wasn’t trying to use drugs. I surely wasn’t going to be a drug dealer’s girlfriend. But I wanted money so that I could be independent. I wanted to take care of myself,” shared Jada.
The actress mentioned, “Selling drugs was a solution at that particular time to survive.”
“And it really helped me. But it put me into a lot of danger and I hurt a lot of people along the way,” she added.