Cannabis News Media Awareness Project
  Some Politicians Fess Up To Smoking Weed
Posted by FoM on April 11, 2002 at 13:29:54 PT
By Phil Reisman 
Source: Journal News 

cannabis The question-of-the-day was put to some key politicians: Have you ever smoked marijuana? Some of them have yet to exhale with a real answer.

For starters, I asked Westchester's Big Three — County Executive Andrew Spano, District Attorney Jeanine Pirro and County Clerk Leonard Spano — whether or not they, like New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, ever tried the so-called "evil weed." Their replies came in a blend of mellow candor and evasive purple haze.


Susan Tolchin, spokeswoman for the county executive, said, that yes, Spano tried pot 30 years ago. (Hey! Me, too.)

"He tried it a couple of times," she said. "But he had no reaction." She added with a laugh, "So, therefore he either was doing it wrong or he was normally high."

Len Spano, who is in his 70s, and is no relation to Andy, said he never took a reefer, pipe or bong.

"You'll get a big laugh out of me," he said. "I never even smoked cigarettes. The worst I ever did — I had a lot of children — so every time my wife had a baby, I'd give out cigars, and I might have a cigar." For the record, Spano sired 16 children.

I admit I did not phone two of Spano's proud issues — state Sen. Nick Spano and Assemblyman Mike Spano. But, by accident, I did reach Mike Spano's wife, Mary Calvi, when I called the District Attorney's Office.

When I was put on hold, I got accidentally connected to Calvi, the former News 12 cable anchorwoman who now works for WCBS news and was calling Pirro about an unrelated matter. Wow, man, that was weird. Somebody must have been smoking dope on the switchboard.

I told Mary why I was calling Pirro and asked her if she thought the prosecutor would tell me to go to hell for asking the question. "She probably will, but you never know," Mary said.

Alas, I never made it past Pirro's phalanx of protectors who evaluate such queries with grave suspicion. It wasn't "a law enforcement question," I was told.

I also called the Board of Legislators to see if Gary F. Kriss, the director of public affairs, would poll the membership. No luck.

"They're all over the place," Kriss said. "This isn't a meeting day. That's the problem, part of the problem."

Notice, the phrase, "part of the problem." They'd probably have to call a special bipartisan caucus to handle this hot potato, seeing as how most of them bobbed and weaved a couple of years ago when I innocuously asked them if they were Yankees or Mets fans.

A watershed moment in the brief history of politics and pot was reached this week when NORML, the Washington, D.C.-based marijuana lobby, took out an ad in The New York Times that featured none other than the newly elected mayor of Gotham. Referring to a published remark Mike Bloomberg made a year ago that he not only indulged in pot but inhaled, the one-shot ad declared, "At Last, an Honest Politician."

Bloomberg expressed minor annoyance over the ad, which cost NORML about $102,000 and will eventually be followed with more ads on the sides of city buses. The ad is unique because in the not-too-distant past, before Bill Clinton and the famous "never inhaled" equivocation, Bloomberg's admission probably would have destroyed his chances of being elected.

In the beginning, (1987, to be exact) there was Douglas Ginsburg, who withdrew his name as a nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court when he revealed that he had smoked marijuana as a college student and later as a law professor.

Then came Rep. Susan Molinari's 1996 admission that she smoked pot as a college student after first denying the fact in an interview. Her career took a bit of a dive after that, and so it became imperative for ambitious politicians under the age of about 55 to fess up about their youthful indiscretions.

Hence, Gov. George Pataki's admission in his autobiography a few years ago that he not only smoked grass and inhaled, but also sprinkled the weed into his baked beans while attending Columbia Law School. Incidentally, Lt. Gov. Mary Donohue has also acknowledged she experimented with pot during her college years.

By the way, the pot question was also put to the camps of Pataki's prospective Democratic opponents — H. Carl McCall and Andrew Cuomo.

Marissa Shorenstein, a spokeswoman for McCall, said he had never tried it. McCall is 66. "He missed the boat on that," she said.

Cuomo's people tried to reach him yesterday, but did not get back to me before deadline.

I await their call, man.

Source: Journal News, The (NY)
Author: Phil Reisman
Published: April 11, 2002
Copyright: 2002 The Gannett Company, Inc.
Contact: letters@thejournalnews.com
Website: http://www.nyjournalnews.com/

Related Articles & Web Sites:

NORML
http://www.norml.org/

NORML Ad - Pictures & Articles
http://freedomtoexhale.com/ad.htm

Democrats Tried Marijuana, Republicans No
http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread12492.shtml

NY Mayor Appears in Marijuana Ads
http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread12491.shtml

Grassroots Campaign Needed
http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread12486.shtml


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Comment #7 posted by FoM on April 12, 2002 at 15:02:34 PT
Lehder
Thanks Lehder,

I was trying to remember what year it was. I remember she said that it might become illegal but wasn't when they did the tripping thing. She was a few years older then me and I never heard of drugs back then except legal diet pills and her letters blew me away. It sure was eye opening for a catholic girl. She was a catholic girl too!

[ Post Comment ]

 
Comment #6 posted by Lehder on April 12, 2002 at 14:57:53 PT
Tikkun
tikkun - to mend, repair and transform the world.

http://www.tikkun.org/index.cfm

[ Post Comment ]

 
Comment #5 posted by Lehder on April 12, 2002 at 14:51:23 PT
thank you, FoM
for the nice story. I'm sure your friend is a good hearted and competent lawyer who sees all the way through the drug wars. She's lucky to have gone to Berkeley and enjoyed Owsley's original legal acid. It was criminalized on October 6, 1966.

The bosses in WaRshington would have us believe that your friend had destroyed her mind, despite her success and the successes of millions more who have used marijuana and psychedelics.

Among those bosses is Donald Rumsfeld, our Secretary of Defense, who would like not only to spend billions on star wars, in violation of our treaties, but also now promotes a version of star wars that, instead of hitting missiles with projectiles, detonates dozens of nuclear bombs high in the atmosphere to destroy incoming missiles. This man is no friend of the earth or of humanity; he and many others are simply insane.

Someday we will be able to lock up Rumsfeld and his kind where they cannot hurt people or destroy the earth, and, as described in the Tikkum article linked below, treat them with psychedelics to heal them. Meanwhile, as they destroy the lives of the peaceful and the innocent and threaten to blow up the planet, they to spew the blasphemy that we are dangerous!



[ Post Comment ]

 
Comment #4 posted by FoM on April 12, 2002 at 12:53:53 PT
Lehder
I'll tell you a little true story. I had a friend back in high school that when she graduated she went to Berkeley. She wrote me letters about LSD and how they prepared to "Trip" It was still legal and they went to gatherings for a few weeks before the actual tripping session for lack of a better term. They were told what would happen and what would not and all the posssible effects and duration of the trip. When the time came all the "students" took LSD at the same time and they had the surroundings safe and people that were there to help somoene if they went off on a bad trip. They all stayed together and were not allowed to leave and she said she was laying under the kitchen table which was made of glass and she watched it melt and she said it was awesome.

Now she is a Lawyer.

[ Post Comment ]

 
Comment #3 posted by Lehder on April 12, 2002 at 12:33:28 PT
psychedelic sedition
From the magazine Tikkun:

The disturbances of September 11 have sent us reeling, driving many to seek relief from anxiety and depression through socially-sanctioned psychotropics such as Prozac, Xanax, and alcohol. But some of the so-called psychedelic drugs (cannabis, LSD, peyote, psilocybin, ayahuasca, and MDMA or Ecstasy), targets of America's deeply misguided War on Drugs, could have a more profound and healthful effect, if used responsibly. The very idea of going off on a psychedelic "head trip" in this hour of national crisis might be seen as self-indulgent folly, or worse, an act of cerebral sedition. Yet a cold and sober look through the smoldering smoke of Ground Zero leads me to believe that, depending on individual circumstances, of course, there are now even more compelling reasons to sanction the practice of judicious psychedelic use.

Psychedelics are a weapon of war, the war of perceptions, priorities, and values. More readily than the reverse, they can be used to erode the will to use military force, so long as survival isn't at stake. How many thousands of Americans in the Sixties, tripping out on acid, grass, mushrooms, or mescaline, got a heightened sense of the utter absurdity of killing Vietnamese in their own country?

"The CIA originally envisioned LSD as a means of control," says Krassner, "but millions of young people became explorers of their own inner space with it instead. Acid was serving as a vehicle to help deprogram themselves from a civilization of inhumane priorities. Rand Corporation researchers speculated that LSD might be an antidote to political activism, but the CIA's scenario backfired."

The ironies of the drug war are everywhere today. "If [September 11 hijacker] Mohammed Atta had been a dope dealer," Grob complains, "we would have been on him. Since he was only suspected of terrorism, he eluded our watch. Our preoccupation with illegal drugs has contributed to our head being in the sand.

more:

http://www.tikkun.org/magazine/index.cfm/action/tikkun/issue/tik0203/article/020313c.html

[ Post Comment ]

 
Comment #2 posted by paul peterson on April 11, 2002 at 18:06:45 PT:

Yes I smoked pot last year, but i lost my license
Hey, I've been telling people I smoked pot for medicinal reasons (side effect treatment for ADD-ritalin causes a downslide-no other pill works the same). I've been talking to as many people as I can about this, trying to get people to fess up about themselves-One out of four lawyers will readily tell me they still do-for anxiety treatment due to the stresses of their career-finally, people are coming forward and it is almost "chigue" (hope I did the spelling close) to admit it as a politician- We are finally to the place where people don't need to lose everything to come forward-not like I have lost everything-my family (out of fear), my license to practice law, (merely because I believed it "helped me" in some way, to remain mood controlled). Now, of course, I have not embibed for some 8 months, and although I would like to toke up if I could, legally (ethically), if these darned slowpokes in the Illinois Department of Human Services would just dust off the valid statute we have had here for 30 years, people!

The Illinois State Troopers have told me they have no vehement opposition to these valid plans. The DHS people down south told me to investigate this stuff (and then the governor yelled them back into the stone age). The local lawyer police (the ARDC) actually started to commit crimes of deception to ensure my doom-my trial is 4/22/02, anyone want to come to Chicago and picket or something? Or just come right on into the courtroom-and watch a bunch of people obviously use deception to avoid admitting to their crimes whilst I speak openly and honestly about my proper attempts to gain valid authorization and keep my intent straight-The mere fact that they INDUCED THE DHS to avoid authorizing this thing, or the DHS INDUCED THE ARDC to charge me with this crime to shut me up (I still don't know which it is) is why I probably won't ever practice law again-just because I have these ideas that are ahead of these chicken (at least in the present and past tense) politicians. So you people-get out there and call your pols and tell them you expect them to toke a few now and then or you won't vote for them, eh? and report back to me THAT'S AN ORDER, SIR. paul peterson 312-558-9999

[ Post Comment ]
 
Comment #1 posted by Baked-off-my on April 11, 2002 at 15:21:12 PT:

New Large holes in the DAM!!!
Well it looks like it's a loosing fight for the drug thugs.

[ Post Comment ]

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