MAYOR'S POT QUIP TURNS UP IN ADS

Mayor Michael Bloomberg's election-year comment that he not only had tried
marijuana but had liked it is heading for wider distribution - although he
wishes it wasn't so.

The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws Foundation, or
NORML, invoked the mayor's one-time praise for pot in a $500,000
pro-decriminalization print ad campaign that rolled out today.

Bloomberg was still a mayoral candidate when New York magazine last year
asked him whether he had ever inhaled from a marijuana joint.

Came his reply: "You bet I did. And I enjoyed it."

The group's marketing promotion seeks to dissuade New York City from
arresting and jailing pot smokers, a law-enforcement dragnet expanded under
former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. The ads state, "It's NORML to Smoke Pot."

Bloomberg, for one, is unmoved.

He said yesterday he's "not thrilled they're using my name" to get
attention, but suggested he can't do much about it.

"I suppose there's that First Amendment that gets in the way of me stopping
it," Bloomberg said. "I think that we should enforce the laws as they are
in the Police Department. We'll do so vigorously."

The Washington, D.C.-based NORML is a nonprofit group whose mission is to
"better educate the public about marijuana" and to "assist victims of the
current laws."

A City University Medical School pharmacology professor is expected to
participate in the group's news conference to argue that pot possession
shouldn't send New Yorkers to jail.