I DID INHALE: STOCKWELL DAY

In uttering those famous words, "I did not inhale," 1992 presidential
hopeful Bill Clinton sounded -- well, let's be charitable here -- insincere.
There was little doubt in the minds of the U.S. public that the candidate
for America's top job had indeed let marijuana smoke fill his lungs and that
he had felt compelled to lie about it.

So, eight years later, Canadian Alliance candidate Stockwell Day tells
reporters in Woodstock, Ont.: "Yes, I have done marijuana and I did inhale."

The so-called Woodstock question came without warning in Oakville yesterday,
but Day indicated after meeting with businessmen there that he was prepared
for it.

"If you are going into political life then you have to be aware that you are
going to get questions like that," he said.

"I think when I talk honestly about situations people say to me, 'If you are
honest about that you are probably going to be honest with my tax dollars.'"

Yet strangely, Day's admission also sounds insincere -- not because he
didn't do it but because the confession seems to have been offered for
political advantage.

Despite his Pentecostal roots and his socially conservative stand on
everything from same-sex rights to abortion, it's not impossible to picture
the youthful Day with a doob pressed to his lips.

It would be difficult, in fact, to find a 49-year-old Canadian who had not
been exposed to the drug on at least one occasion.

So is it truly an admission in Canada in the year 2000 to say you have
smoked marijuana?

Far from lambasting the Alberta treasurer for his illegal indiscretion,
political analysts uniformly described the confession as an attempt by Day's
camp to soften his image -- almost as if Canadians, particularly Eastern
Canadians, will like him more if he admits to having had a joint or two.

The risk in the pronouncement is limited, after all.

This is not the first time political candidates have bared their
dope-smoking past for public consumption. While in the race to replace then
prime minister Brian Mulroney, for instance, Kim Campbell allowed that she
had taken a toke once or twice.

That brought Jean Charest, Campbell's rival in that Conservative leadership
race, out of the pot closet.

"Like young people of my generation, I experimented," he told reporters.

When Ross Rebagliati tested positive for marijuana at the 1998 Olympics
after winning a gold medal in snowboarding, majority consensus leaned toward
Canadian indignation that a medal could have been threatened over so minor a
violation.

"Geez," we said, "if he can get down the mountain like that when he's stoned
..."

In the two years since Rebagliati's near brush with infamy, marijuana has
been legalized for selected Canadians for medical purposes. The Liberal
party has come out in favour of decriminalization.

And even the staunch Canadian Alliance -- the party Day hopes to lead -- has
toyed with the notion of relaxing drug laws.

Which brings us back to Clinton. Why did he consider it such a black mark on
his run for the presidency to admit having tried a soft, and widely used,
drug?

His vice-president, Al Gore, did not make the same mistake. He volunteered
during the early days of the current presidential campaign that he had tried
marijuana.

But such openness was not adopted by Republican presidential hopeful George
W. Bush who, when pressed by reporters, would only cryptically deny having
smoked dope since 1974.

The American hesitation to come clean, says Ed Grabb, a sociology professor
at the University of Western Ontario in London, can be attributed, at least
in part, to the differences that exist between Canadians and their southern
neighbours.

Grabb, who teaches courses in Canadian-U.S. comparisons, says Canadians are
far more likely to adopt a laissez-faire attitude on social issues.

"On the one hand we get all this stuff about Americans being more liberal
and into free choice and individual rights and so on. But that is
overstated," said Grabb.

Americans, in general, are far more religious than Canadians, he said. The
United States is among the most religious countries in the Western world.

"If you look at moral issues, sexual issues, attitudes about prostitution,
abortion, under-age sex and these kinds of questions, they can be very
fundamentalist. They are more likely to believe that Hell is real place, the
devil is a real creature, than Canadians.

"And because of that, when it comes to moral issues like sex and drug use,
the average American is a good deal more conservative about those things."

All of which is somewhat hypocritical, said Grabb, because there is
obviously a serious hard drug problem south of the border -- even if
Canadians smoke marijuana at roughly the same rate as Americans -- and the
U.S. is the source of much of our pornography.

But admitting drug use to Republican followers in 2000 and to the American
public eight years ago would have been a risky political venture.