A comedian who lit up a joint on Bill Maher’s HBO show also seems to have sparked a debate over whether it was real marijuana or not.

Depite Maher’s claim that it was merely a prop, Fox News contributor Margaret Hoover, who also appeared on Maher’s show, told Bill O’Reilly on Thursday night that the joint was the real deal.

During a discussion about California’s Prop 19 on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, Zach Galifianakis lamented that the ballot measure would probably fail because pot is still taboo. The star of “The Hangover” then took a joint out of his pocket and fired it up.

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As the audience laughed, Galifianakis passed the doobie over to Hoover. She didn’t toke up but she did get a good whiff of smoke.

Hoover appeared on Fox News’ The O’Reilly Factor Thursday and explained what was going through her head.

“I’m thinking first of all whenever if you have been to a rock concert you know that pot makes these big billowy white clouds,” Hoover said. “It didn’t do that. I wasn’t sure if it was real or not. Nobody is sure it was real. Now, of course, Maher is saying it was cloves. It was definitely not cloves.”

“I asked Zach afterwards,” she contined. “He said it was THC-free marijuana.”

Maher told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer Monday that the joint definitely wasn’t real.

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“If it was a real joint, Wolf, I would have smoked it.. I think it was cloves or something,” Maher said. “Zach’s crazy, he’s not that crazy.”

An online poll conducted by the Los Angeles Times found that 78 percent believed the joint was real because “we wouldn’t expect anything less from Zach.” Only 21 percent believed it was a prop.

The same poll found that most believe Hoover probably has come in contact with weed at a rock concert. “Maybe she inhaled at a Justin Bieber gig and mistook the scent of Proactiv for marijuana smoke,” 55 percent agreed.

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One thing is for sure, as a culture warrior, O’Reilly wouldn’t have stood for anyone smoking pot in his presence. “I would have had you all arrested,” he told Hoover. “Feds would have kicked that door in.”

This video is from MSNBC’s The Daily Rundown, broadcast Nov. 3, 2010.

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