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Henican: At least Paterson keeps it real

Ellis Henican

March 26, 2008

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All that's left is the rock and roll.

Sex? Drugs? What else can David Paterson cop to now? That he played guitar in a garage band when he was growing up in Hempstead?

Don't bet against it. New York's new governor is the perfect age.

He graduated from Hempstead High in 1971. Back in the day, he says, he smoked marijuana occasionally and, at 22 or 23, tried cocaine "a couple of times." At that point in his life, he'd have been a senior history major at Columbia - or perhaps a recent graduate. It would be a couple of years before he decided he wanted to go to law school.

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But now it's 2008. Paterson's the accidental governor. And it hardly even counts as news any more that a 54-year-old man would at some point in the past have violated the state or federal laws against using certain drugs.

"Marijuana?" Dominic Carter asked in a NY1 interview.

"Yes," Paterson said.

"Cocaine?" the reporter continued.

"Yes."

And all of it, as matter of fact as that.

And why not? About all anyone can tell from the brief exchange is something utterly unremarkable: New York's new governor is a member of his own generation.

Rock on, DP!

It's not like he's alone in having a drug past, even at the upper reaches of political life. Especially at the upper reaches of political life.

Among the pols who've acknowledged illegal drug use - marijuana, mostly - are Mike Bloomberg, George Pataki, Bill Clinton, and on and on ...

Truthfully, these lists would be a whole lot shorter if they were limited to the pols who weren't grown-up drug criminals. Obviously, we've come a long way since Douglas Ginsberg was forced to withdraw as Ronald Reagan's nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court after admitting he'd smoked marijuana several times.

Now, Barack Obama, the leading Democrat for president, causes no noticeable ripples - yet! - over a memorable coke-use anecdote in his own autobiography.

Give Paterson credit for forthrightness, even if this latest nugget was pulled by an inquisitive reporter. (Not that his inquisitor needed bright lights and a rubber hose to make this governor talk.)

When it comes to illegal drug use in America, precise numbers are always hard to come by. But it's no stretch to estimate that many tens of millions of adults - perhaps 100 million or more - have violated the nation's drug laws, and not just with weed. During the coke-happy 1980s, one government study said 30 million Americans had sniffed the white powder in a single heart-pounding year.

"With numbers like these, the notion that someone has to lie is ludicrous at this point," said Ethan Nadelmann, who founded the Drug Policy Alliance and is one of drug-reform movement's chief strategists.

The hope, Nadelmann said, is that Paterson's openness will encourage not just a string of fresh confessions, but "a more realistic" discussion of drug use in America and New York.

"Look at the cohort of people age 30 to 60," he said. "A pretty substantial minority has done cocaine. Despite all the drug-war rhetoric, the vast majority of people who used cocaine did not go on to develop a coke habit or end up in terrible states. Some did. But the addiction rate was probably similar to that of alcohol."

But even as the pols are now more open, many still won't draw broader lessons from their own experience. In this way, Paterson was a rare exception - and still is.

His 2004 drug-reform plan in the state Senate still stands out as highly forward-looking. He's been a valiant fighter against the harsh Rockefeller drug laws. And unlike Eliot Spitzer, who prosecuted prostitutes while also allegedly patronizing them, no one is calling Paterson a hypocrite.

"His life and his politics have never been at odds," Nadelmann said.