Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, March 30, 1992 TAG: 9203300112
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Medium
Former California Gov. Jerry Brown, Clinton's challenger for the nomination, responded "No" when asked during a television appearance with Clinton whether he has ever violated drug laws.
"Why don't you lay off this stuff," Brown told reporters. "What you did 20 years ago is not relevant."
Over the past two years, Clinton has been asked many times whether he ever used drugs. He elaborately avoided a direct answer, saying he never violated state or federal laws.
On Sunday, a reporter noted how he told the New York Daily News he never violated "the laws of my country" and asked if he ever violated international drug laws.
"When I was in England I experimented with marijuana a time or two and didn't like it," the Arkansas governor said. "I didn't inhale and I didn't try it again." He was at Oxford from 1968 to 1970.
In late 1987, Douglas Ginsburg withdrew his Supreme Court nomination after disclosing he had smoked marijuana.
The next year, in the last presidential campaign, Tennessee Sen. Albert Gore Jr. and former Arizona Gov. Bruce Babbitt acknowledged smoking marijuana in their youth. Other candidates denied ever trying it.
The disclosures had little impact on the campaign, but it marked the first time the presidential race included people of the generation that grew up with recreational drug use.
Later, in an interview with CBS' "Up To The Minute" program, Clinton said he made the disclosure because "no one had ever asked me the direct question before . . . and I really do believe that public people really do have a right to some privacy."
Elsewhere in the campaign:
Brown campaigned in Wisconsin and Vermont on Sunday, hitting on environmental themes, before returning to New York to hold an "electronic town meeting" through an interactive computer network.
GOP challenger Patrick Buchanan, who said he would cut back campaigning after disappointing showings in Illinois and Michigan, scheduled a speech outside the Capitol today. He then planned to fly to Wisconsin and Minnesota to campaign on Tuesday in advance of the April 7 primaries there.
A poll of New York voters conducted last week said 59 percent did not believe Clinton was honest enough to be president. Twenty-nine percent believe he is.
During an hour-long forum with Clinton, Brown defended his role as director of a biomedical firm whose parent company paid a $400,000 penalty to settle charges that it falsely promoted an anti-AIDS drug.
Although Brown has centered his campaign on fighting what he calls the corrupt system of special-interest lobbying of Congress, he confirmed a Washington Post story Sunday that he called Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and asked him to look into a dispute between the company's president, a longtime Brown supporter, and the Food and Drug Administration.
Keywords:
POLITICS
by CNB