SOME POLITICIANS FESS UP TO SMOKING WEED

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.