HEY MAN, PUT THIS IN YOUR BONG AND SMOKE IT

This is kind of embarrassing, so let me just spit it right out. I've never
smoked pot. Not even once.

I would have kept it a secret, but U.S. Rep. Rod Blagojevich has forced my
hand.

Blagojevich, the Democratic nominee for governor, became the latest
politician this week to admit to reporters that he smoked pot in his youth.
He said he did it twice but can't remember if he inhaled.

The politicians are always concerned that somebody might hold it against
them if they admit that they smoked pot.

I'm always worried that somebody will hold it against me if I tell them I
didn't.

I've seen it in their eyes: What kind of a nerd were you, anyway?

The kind that never smoked pot, I guess.

If you're not following this, it's a generational thing.

I went to college from 1973 to 1977 at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb.

Blagojevich is a couple of years younger, so we're basically from the same
generation, even if it doesn't look like it. Maybe it was something in the
water at Pepperdine University, his law school alma mater.

Everybody at least experimented with marijuana in those days, it seemed.
That's an exaggeration, but you can bet that it's much easier to find
somebody of that age who tried it than to find somebody who didn't.

Some of my younger colleagues expressed surprise at this Tuesday,
explaining that while pot smoking was still prevalent when they were in
school, it was common to find students who abstained.

But colleagues who are closer to my age stared at me with that familiar,
suspicious look that I've received so often through the years when
revealing my secret.

They don't know whether to believe me, but it's as if they'd prefer to
believe I was a liar than some straight-laced, goody-two-shoes geek. For
them, I suppose, it speaks to an untrustworthy lack of rebelliousness.

This is why I always get a little queasy when politicians are forced to go
into self-revelatory mode on this subject. People may not care, but they
sure love to talk about it. Eventually the conversation will turn to me,
and I'll explain sheepishly that I never tried marijuana.

"Why not?" they'll ask. "Weren't you ever at a party?"

Of course, I was at parties where friends smoked marijuana, but I never
felt much peer pressure. As an asthma sufferer, I always had a ready
excuse. I've never smoked anything. But mostly, I was taught not to use
drugs, so I didn't.

Plus, there was always plenty of beer to drink. The legal age was 18 at the
time.

You might be surprised that reporters still ask such questions.

After all, it's been 15 years since U.S. Appeals Court Judge Douglas H.
Ginsburg was forced to withdraw as President Ronald Reagan's nominee to the
Supreme Court after disclosures he had smoked marijuana in the past, the
same year that Sen. Al Gore offered his own confession while campaigning
for president.

In the meantime, confession has become the norm and doesn't seem to have
proved a turnoff to voters. Among the Illinois politicians who have
admitted marijuana use are Lt. Gov. Corinne Wood, former Lt. Gov. Bob
Kustra, former state Rep. Al Salvi and former state Treasurer Patrick
Quinn, who is Blagojevich's running mate this year.

We keep asking because the answers are often so much fun.

It wasn't presidential candidate Bill Clinton's admission to smoking pot
but instead his assertion that he didn't inhale that still dogs him today
as a prime example of his tendency to prevaricate.

It was worth asking Blagojevich about pot smoking just to witness the
10-second pause that preceded his answer and his ensuing faulty memory on
the inhaling question.

"I don't know if I did or not," said Blagojevich, whose recollection is
that he smoked marijuana twice in his late teens or early 20s.

And how will we ever top Tuesday's assertion by Cal Skinner, the
Libertarian candidate for governor, that while he's never smoked marijuana,
he once chowed down on a tray of pot-laced brownies that someone had baked
for him without revealing the active ingredient.

Not surprisingly, Attorney General Jim Ryan had a very clear memory on this
issue Tuesday.

Ryan, 56, said he's never smoked pot. Perhaps mindful that this makes him
odd man out, he didn't trumpet the fact.

"I don't think I deserve any great honors," Ryan said.

Yet the attorney general was firm: "It's a crime. . . . It's wrong. . . . I
don't think it should be acceptable behavior. We ought to tell our kids not
to use marijuana."

All that's true. That's what I tell my kids, and I hope they listen. That's
what my parents told me, and strangely enough, I listened.

I'm not trying to minimize the seriousness of marijuana use.

But I'll bet just as many people are reading this and thinking that Ryan is
the one who's got some explaining to do as there are those questioning
Blagojevich.

The next time this subject is raised Ryan might want to consider working in
some stories about beer-drinking exploits.

Myself, I always enjoyed drinking beer with brownies.