Justin Bieber Speaks Out Amid Marijuana Controversy: I'm "Trying to Be Better" 
 
 Justin Bieber is taking the high road. EXCLUSIVE 
 
 kicked off the new year on a real high note -- clutching a smoldering blunt at a big party inside a Newport Beach hotel room this week ... and TMZ has the photos.The pics were snapped on January 2nd -- the day after a paparazzo was killed while trying to take photos of Bieber's Ferrari -- and it's pretty obvious ... Bieber wasn't feeling too bad about the whole situation.Sources at the party tell TMZ, Bieber's BFFwas there too -- the 19-year-old rapper who was driving the Biebs' Ferrari at the time the paparazzo was killed.According to sources, Twist and his brother were rolling all the blunts and smoking everyone up ... and there was a LOT of pot smoke.It's pretty ironic -- considering sources close to Bieber were insistent ... the photog who was killed lied when he said Justin was smoking weed hours before the fatal accident.
– Caught laughing away and getting high on the day after a paparazzo died trying to snap shots of him, Justin Bieber semi-apologized on Twitter: "Everyday growing and learning. Trying to be better. U get knocked down, u get up," he wrote today. "I see all of u. I hear all of u. I never want to let any of you down. I love u." But in all fairness, the pop icon wasn't in his car when the photog got run down in Los Angeles, Us Weekly reports. See the happy-dope pics on TMZ, which notes that a girl ("NOT Selena") crashed with Bieber at a California hotel.