BONNIE ERBE

STOP HOUNDING BUSH ON DRUG USE

I have a confession to make: More than 25 years ago (actually, about 30
years ago) I used an illegal narcotic.

I'm not running for president, nor any political office for that matter. And
the statute of limitations has surely run on my transgression. So it's safe
to come clean.

I won't make you guess about which drug it was. It was heroin. And here come
the gory details. I snorted it -- no, I didn't inject it.

I was caught up in the drug culture of the late '60s and early '70s, which I
state as a reason, not an excuse. And prior to trying heroin I smoked a lot
of different types of marijuana and hashish (inhaling all the time) and took
a wide variety of hallucinogens: mescaline, LSD, you name it.

If you weren't part of that era you can't possibly imagine how someone could
survive a drug-induced stupor of several years in length and emerge a
productive citizen. Well, I not only survived that stupor, I excelled at
high school studies and extra-curricular activities during it, enough so
that I ultimately gained admission to an Ivy League university.

But I recognize I'm in the minority, not the majority, in that regard. And I
certainly would not recommend my behavior to others.

Having had this experience, however, I feel sorry for Gov. George W. Bush. I
wish the media and the public would stop hounding him into not only
admitting, but into spelling out in lurid detail what we all presume he did:
snort cocaine.

We are, most of us, such hypocrites in this charade. We try to force our
politicians to live up to a standard that not even a nun could meet. Then we
wonder why the array of people willing to run for office sometimes seems so
substandard. In Bush's case, the man already has said he committed acts in
his youth of which he is not now proud. He's being honest (a rare and
undervalued commodity in politics these days).

He's consistent; when asked to comment last year on the president's personal
problems, Bush refused. He's also taken on the difficult task of trying to
push the media back to a benchmark that allowed public figures just a
smattering of privacy.

Other politicians before him have survived admissions of illicit drug use.
U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Douglas Ginsburg was the first to admit smoking
marijuana, although it torpedoed his shot at the U.S. Supreme Court. Not so
for Justice Clarence Thomas, who also admitted experimenting with drugs.
President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore both confessed to trying
marijuana. Their having cleared the path means marijuana use is no longer a
bar to public service, which is as it should be; provided, of course, the
drug use was 1) while the candidate was still a youth, 2) temporary, and 3)
far back in the candidate's background.

Bush has met those standards. Enough of the hectoring. Bush's apparent
experimentation with hard drugs could serve as an inspiration to those now
using drugs and trying to break free. We should all demand the media leave
him alone.

Bonnie Erbe, host of the PBS program "To the Contrary," writes a weekly
column for the Scripps Howard News Service.