Anti-Drug Advocates Fault Paterson on Cocaine Admission

Governor Paterson's unapologetic admission of past use of cocaine and marijuana is drawing sharp criticism from anti-drug advocates who say he failed to warn of the dangers of drugs.

Politicians need to think carefully about the message they are sending to young Americans when they admit to having used drugs, they said, and explain that they are lucky to have shaken an addiction or ended their drug use without more severe consequences.

"It's really their responsibility to take it that extra step and to talk about how it's not something they are proud of. It's not something that is smart, that they were literally risking their life, and risking their future, so that our children don't get the idea that you can just do drugs and someday be governor," the executive director of the Drug Free America Foundation and Save Our Society From Drugs, Calvina Fay, said

Mr. Paterson joins a growing list of politicians who are owning up to past drug use, and is another example of how politicians seem increasingly inclined to out themselves instead of trying to explain their way out of past drug use, as President Clinton famously attempted in 1992 when he said he had experimented with marijuana, but didn't inhale.

Governor Spitzer and his Democratic primary opponent, Thomas Suozzi, both said during the campaign that they had smoked marijuana. Senator Obama disclosed in his memoir that he had used marijuana and cocaine as a teenager, and before running for office, Mayor Bloomberg told a reporter that he had tried marijuana and "enjoyed it."

Mr. Paterson, who said during an interview on NY1 on Monday that he had used cocaine and marijuana in his early 20s, during the 1970s, said that "a lot of people, most Americans during that period of time, tried a whole lot more than that and have gone on and led responsible lives."

A spokesman for Mr. Paterson, Errol Cockfield, wrote in an email that the governor's limited comments on a talk show about a range of issues was in no way meant to downplay the ramifications of drug use. He said the governor has been active in the effort to curtail the use of illegal drugs and increase awareness about their dangers.

The chairman and president of the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, Joseph Califano Jr. said he thinks politicians, such as Mr. Paterson, are admitting to past drug use because they would rather talk about it "on their terms" than respond defensively to a report in the press.

"I think they ought to be honest but I think they also have to say this is not something you should do," he said. "That other piece is very important."

The chief clinical officer for the Phoenix House Foundation, a nationwide treatment program for drug and alcohol abuse, David Deitch, said he thinks it's important that people come clean about their drug use, provided they tack on the following public statement: "Thank God. Thank the lucky stars," he said. "Thank whatever accident of chemistry, circumstance, and other factors, I did not get stuck in chronic drug consumption."