MARIJUANA LOBBY PICKS BLOOMBERG

Michael Bloomberg, New York's mayor, has become the unlikely poster
boy for a pro-marijuana advertising campaign, it emerged yesterday.

The face of the billionaire bachelor, who admits he smoked the soft
drug as a youth, will appear on literature designed by an American
lobby group, the National Organisation for the Reform of Marijuana
Laws (NORML).

The Washington-based organisation hopes its crusade will persuade the
New York police department to ease its ultra-strict policy on pot
smoking in Manhattan and surrounding boroughs.

Under former supremo Rudolph Giuliani, the city adopted a "zero
tolerance" attitude towards those caught smoking the stimulant in
public. Despite his predecessor's tough approach Mr Bloomberg told an
interviewer last year who asked if he had ever smoked pot: "You bet I
did. And I enjoyed it."

Political analysts interpreted the comment as an effort by Mr
Bloomberg, 60, to shoot from the hip and appear as a "man of the
people".

But his words came back to haunt him yesterday, when NORML announced
it is to plough $500,000 into its campaign. "I am not thrilled they
are using my name," said Mr Bloomberg, adding that he has no
intention of attempting to halt the adverts on legal grounds. He went
on: "I suppose there's that First Amendment that gets in the way of
my stopping it."

The posters, which will be put up in city subway stations, on buses
and in newspapers, will feature a picture of Mr Bloomberg, his quote
on smoking pot and a tag line that will read, "It's NORML to smoke
pot".

Nicholas Thimmesch, director of NORML, said: "We are not advocating
that people smoke marijuana in public. We are just saying that when
someone does that, it doesn't make any sense to arrest them,
incarcerate them and tie up valuable police time. "We are very happy
that the mayor has expressed his own personal experience with
marijuana. And what we says is, 'At last, an honest politician'."

Mr Bloomberg responded: "We should enforce the laws as they are, and
the police department will do so vigorously."

Mr Bloomberg's unwanted association with pot is the latest episode in
a troubling period for the new mayor, who has endured a difficult
settling-in period since taking over from Mr Giuliani. As he prepares
for his 100th day in office today, many insiders say Mr Bloomberg is
often frustrated by the time-consuming nature of the job's ceremonial
duties the endless speeches, ribbon cuttings and honorariums that
clutter every mayor's day, to the extent that he has been heard to
describe himself as a "one-term mayor".

A recent article in the Daily News stated: "While Bloomberg is
relaxed and off-the-cuff in front of, say, a roomful of biotech
executives, moments that call for the soaring oratory of a
natural-born politician can seem a struggle".

New York has exercised extremely tough measures on pot smokers over
the past decade. In 1992, 720 people were arrested for smoking
marijuana. By 1999, following Mr Giuliani's zero-tolerance influence,
the figure soared to 33,471.

The mayor is by no means the first US politician to be associated
with the so-called "soft drug". Former President Bill Clinton
admitted smoking pot during his Oxford University days. He famously
joked, however, that he "didn 't inhale".

Governor George Pataki, Mr Bloomberg's current sidekick, wrote in a
memoir that he and some of his student colleagues at Columbia Law
School tried pot by cooking it with baked beans and eating it. They
eventually resorted to a more conventional method. "And yes, I did
inhale," wrote Gov Pataki.

Other luminaries who admit dabbling in the substance include
ex-presidential candidate Al Gore and Newt Gingrich, the former House
speaker.

Mr Bloomberg, who last weekend attended New York's Tartan Day
celebrations alongside Sir Sean Connery, was a pupil at Johns Hopkins
University in Baltimore from 1960 to 1964.

There he joined a fraternity that he once described in his
autobiography Bloomberg by Bloomberg as "not much different from
those in the classic John Belushi movie Animal House".

He wrote: "Though Hopkins was a serious place, and very competitive
scholastically, we did drink and party a lot together. Maybe all that
enjoyable wasted time had long-term benefits after all."