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Politics : Al Gore vs George Bush: the moderate's perspective -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: briskit who wrote (1526)	10/7/2000 5:43:01 PM
From: Frank Griffin	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10042

Stoned Al Gore Fantasized About Being President, Friend Says While working as a reporter by day and attending divinity school at night, future presidential candidate Al Gore would get stoned on high-grade opium-laced marijuana with his Tennessee buddies and fantasize about running for the White House, a friend says. "We'd get stoned and talk about what we'd do if we were president," his drug supplier John Warnecke told Newsweek's Bill Turque in 1999, in an account the magazine sat on for nearly a year. "It would allow him to get into the fantasy world of being an elected official," Warnecke added. Warnecke went public on his own last year, telling an online journal that he and Gore used marijuana regularly together right up until the veep's 1976 run for Congress. On Monday Warnecke told WLAC-Nashville talk radio host Phil Valentine that two trusted friends have since confided that they continued to supply Gore with drugs right up to his 1992 run for the vice presidency. "As Warnecke tells it, he and Gore - often joined by (his wife) Nancy and Tipper - would gather to talk politics late into the night, fueled by (Grateful) Dead albums, cognac, and high-grade opium-laced marijuana Warnecke imported from the West Coast," reported Turque in his little-noticed biography "Inventing Al Gore." "They picked apart everything from civil rights to funding for the B-1 bomber to, not surprisingly, the liberalization of drug laws." Warnecke told Turque that Gore "smoked as much as anybody I knew (in Nashville) and loved it." Once Gore even toked up while cruising the police beat as a reporter for the Nashville Tennessean. Another friend said Gore spent a lot of his off-hour time talking about "God, time and space." Though Warnecke is the only Gore friend to go on the record about the veep's once heavy marijuana use, Turque says he spoke to others who back key parts of his story. Some even described Gore's behavior while under the influence. "Al Gore stoned was a mix of expansiveness and paranoia, friends recall. He could be ironically humorous and self aware about his lot as heir apparent in a political family. But he was also worried about his bright future literally going up in smoke." Warnecke told Turque that Gore was "paranoid about being busted." Other Gore friends refused to go into detail but suggested that he has much to hide about this period of his life. "I think this is one of these areas that could be damaging for Al, so I think I'm going to have to keep my comments private," Eve Ziebart said. "That's one area that no friend of Al would ever discuss, because it's so inflammatory," Gore's Harvard roommate Bob Somerby told the Newsweek reporter.