CARTER ADMITS PAST DRUG USE LED TO NAVY DISCHARGE

Son Of Former President May Run For Senate Seat

RENO -- The son of former President Jimmy Carter who is considering a
U.S. Senate run in Nevada admits he was discharged from the Navy 35
years ago for smoking marijuana and claiming other drug use.

"They came around and asked people if they had ever done drugs
before, and I told them I had," Jack Carter told the Reno Gazette-
Journal in a story published Friday. "I didn't lie about it. I told the truth."

Carter's discharge garnered little attention at the time. He talked
about it in a June 2003 oral history interview with the Jimmy Carter
Library and Museum, excerpts of which were posted this week on a Las
Vegas blog, www.votegibbonsout.com.

Carter, 58, lives in Las Vegas and is considering running against
U.S. Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev. He is scheduled to be in Elko today to
meet with local Democrats and community leaders.

Carter joined the Navy in 1967 and served one tour in Vietnam. After
Vietnam, he was attending a nuclear power school in Idaho Falls,
Idaho, when he and 52 classmates were caught in a marijuana raid.

Carter said he wasn't caught with drugs in his possession, but
answered yes when Navy investigators asked if he had smoked pot.

He was given a general discharge and left the Navy in December 1970.

In the oral history interview, Carter said he took care to make sure
the Navy had enough evidence to justify a discharge.

"Nobody actually caught me," he said. "Some people had said that I
had actually smoked marijuana with them. And when they came to ask me
if that were true, I said that it was. Because it was.

"And also, threw in that I had had a couple of LSD tablets and some
THC, just to make sure that ... if I was on the borderline, to make
sure I got out," he told the interviewer.

Alfredo Alonso, a Reno political consultant, said Carter's past
likely would hurt his Senate ambition.

"I'd like to think that 35 years later, you wouldn't still be paying
for your indiscretion as a youth," Alonso told the newspaper.

"However, running for the U.S. Senate, I think people tend to hold
you at a higher standard. It will hurt him."

But Mike Sullivan, a Democratic political consultant, said voters
would be understanding.

"Will he lose the campaign because of that issue, no," Sullivan said.