POLITICIAN'S WAFFLING CAN'T EXCUSE USING ILLEGAL DRUGS

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - From "Just say no' to 'No big deal- - I interrupt the
usual with a special request of politicians all over this great and bizarre
land called America.

If you're an elected official who's never used illegal drugs, please call
in right now and we'll write it up as news.

We'll print your name right here where the American public can gaze upon
your accomplishment with the admiration your quaint (and apparently rare)
respect for the law deserves.

The entire list should take up two or three paragraphs at most, from what I
can tell. Or at least that's what some of your fellow politicians with
messier personal histories would like us to believe.

Smoked marijuana, but didn't inhale? Declines to deny cocaine use, but any
past drug use, if it occurred, was seven, I mean 15, no, 25 years ago?
None of it matters because now I'm ... well ... Me!

Just another day of political smoke, snorts and mirrors, right?

Wrong. Why do we pretend this stuff is OK, then scream ourselves silly
over studies about American youths and drugs?

Is it OK?

Try explaining this mess to a child and then answer that question. Ask
yourself why kids sit behind bars every day for drug use while the boomers
go on to run for president because the polls say all's forgiven; to Go For It.

Call me a prude, but that's not a message I support. It's not OK with me.

I am not picking on Republican Presidential-candidate George W. Bush, just
the latest among a too-long list of politicians who, in one way or another,
seem to be implying they used illegal drugs sometime in the past.

No, my disgust over these rumors or allegations is bipartisan and real.

When Bill Clinton, who didn't inhale, looked us in the eye and lied about
Monica Lewinsky, I said he should walk.

The only thing worse than the lies and carefully spun half-truths employed
by political machines is the hypocrisy. How can America's political
leaders talk tough on illegal drugs, then address their own youthful
experunentation with the equivalent of "Gee, whiz" shrugs?

Marjorie Morrison, a Sacramento mother of three from the south area, finds
these actual or near admissions impossible to explain to children.

"Heck, I can't even make sense of it myself," the professional house
cleaner said.

She and her two older children were riding in the car last week when a
radio story referred to Bush's alleged (but never substantiated) cocaine
use. Last week, the former president's son gradually confirmed that he
hasn't used drugs as far back as 1974, when he was 28. He wouldn't talk
about drug use before that time, only saying he'd made youthful mistakes.

The story drew questions from Morrison's surprised children, a boy and a
girl, ages 14 and 10.

"I don't approve of it, so how do I explain it?' Morrison asked. "And
these are America's so-called leaders?"

Morrison, 43, said she never tried drugs. "My mother would have skinned me
alive,' she said.

Funny, then, that by Friday Bush was offering advice to baby boomer parents
such as Morrison on how to talk to children about drugs:

"I think a baby boomer parent ought to say, 'I have learned from the
mistakes I may or may not have made, and I'd like to share some wisdom with
you and that is, don't do drugs,' " Bush said.

"I have learned from mistakes I may or may not have made ..."?

What's that about?

That's the way a concerned politician answers unwelcome media questions.
That's not the way a parent talks to a child, especially when you're trying
to set the stage for honesty about a subject as important and touchy as
drug use.

I worry that the idea kids glean from these political disclosures is that
everybody's doing it (using illegal drugs). Yes, one in 10 Americans over
age 12 has tried cocaine. Which means that 90 percent haven't.

Let's make a story out of that and stop telling children in so many words
that illegal drugs are just another American right of passage.

They don't have to be.