MARIJUANA CONFESSION PUTS BLOOMBERG ON THE SPOT

Last year, New York magazine asked billionaire Michael Bloomberg -- then
just another media mogul with distant dreams of becoming mayor of New York
- -- if he had ever smoked marijuana.

"You bet I did," Bloomberg replied. "And I enjoyed it."

This week, the new mayor found his words, and a photo of his smiling face,
emblazoned on a full-page ad in the New York Times. He had become a poster
boy in the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws's
campaign to roll back a New York police policy of arresting anyone caught
smoking marijuana in public.

The same ads will soon appear in subway stations and buses across the city.

"Smoked Out," declared the Honolulu Advertiser. "Mayor's Image Goes to
Pot," noted the Daily Telegraph of Sydney.

Hizzoner took his unwonted celebrity with deadpan good humor. "Oh great,"
he said, rolling his eyes. "I'm thrilled."

Bloomberg, 60, made it clear that what he might have found pleasant is
nevertheless still illegal, and that arrests for possession and use of the
weed will continue. More than 52,000 people were arrested for smoking pot
last year, up from 720 in 1992.

The Daily News dispatched reporters to Washington Square Park in Greenwich
Village, ground zero for marijuana connoisseurs. "I love the mayor," opined
one toker. "He can smoke with me any day."