Dear God, People! No more effin Bushes or Clintons… OK? :snoop:

http://cannabisnews.com/news/28/thread28464.shtml

USA — Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush smoked marijuana while in high school, a personal use of the drug that stands in contrast to his later political stance on the plant.

“I drank alcohol and I smoked marijuana when I was at Andover,” Bush, the current Republican frontrunner seeking his party’s 2016 presidential nomination, told the Boston Globe as part of a detailed new profile that describes his time at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. Both George H.W. Bush, Jeb’s father, and George W. Bush, his brother, also attended the prestigious private school.

“It was pretty common," Bush said of his substance use during that time. A former classmate of Bush’s, Peter Tibbetts, recalled to the newspaper that the first time he ever smoked marijuana was with Bush, in some woods near their dorm.

“The first time I really got stoned was in Jeb’s room,” Tibbetts told the Globe. “He had a portable stereo with removable speakers. He put on Steppenwolf for me.” Tibbetts was eventually forced to leave the boarding school after being accused of using drugs.

As a politician, Bush has not embraced marijuana. He spent much of his time as Florida governor championing jail instead of treatment for nonviolent drug offenders, and pushed for mandatory prison sentences for drug offenders — with the exception of his daughter, Noelle, who has struggled with crack cocaine use.

More recently, while acknowledging that states should "have a right" to decide on the legalization of marijuana, Bush publicly opposed an amendment to legalize medical marijuana in Florida.

"Florida leaders and citizens have worked for years to make the Sunshine State a world-class location to start or run a business, a family-friendly destination for tourism and a desirable place to raise a family or retire,” Bush said before the November midterm election. "Allowing large-scale marijuana operations to take root across Florida, under the guise of using it for medicinal purposes, runs counter to all of these efforts."

Reacting to the Globe story, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) blasted Bush over his "hypocrisy" on marijuana.

“You would think he’d have a little more understanding then,” Paul, who may be a rival to Bush in the Republican primary, told The Hill Friday. “He was even opposed to medical marijuana. This is a guy who now admits he smoked marijuana but he wants to put people in jail who do."

The Globe also spoke to some of Bush’s former classmates, who recalled a "physically imposing" young man who was seen as intimidating by some and a bully by others. Tibbetts recalled a story to the newspaper of an occasion during their boarding school days when he and Bush taunted a smaller student who lived in their dorm by sewing his pajama bottoms so that the student couldn’t put them on.

Bush told the Globe he didn’t remember the incident or any other bullying, and was surprised that some of his former classmates viewed him that way. “I don’t believe that is true,” Bush said, adding that it was more than 40 years ago and not possible for him to remember.

It isn’t the first time that allegations of bullying have surfaced about Bush’s high school years. Another classmate of Bush’s told Vanity Fair in 2001 that he remembered Bush as a bully as well, and that there was "a kind of arrogance" about him during his time at Andover.

The Globe story echoes similar sentiments expressed in a 2012 Washington Post story about then-presumed Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney and alleged bullying during his prep school days.

A Bush spokeswoman told The Huffington Post that Bush did not have any additional comments on the Globe story.

Rand Paul would be quite a bit better, IMHO.  :thumbup:

Rand Paul rips Jeb Bush as a hypocrite for pot smoking past

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/rand-paul-rips-jeb-bush-hypocrite-pot-smoking-article-1.2098704

Sen. Rand Paul is calling out Jeb Bush for hypocrisy after revelations Bush smoked pot in high school even though Bush opposed legalizing medical marijuana as Governor of Florida.

“You would think he’d have a little more understanding then,” Paul said on Friday, in comments to The Hill after the Boston Globe reported Bush had used the drug in the late 60s during his student days Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts.

“He was even opposed to medical marijuana. This is a guy who now admits he smoked marijuana but he wants to put people in jail who do. I think that’s the real hypocrisy, is that people on our side, which include a lot of people, who made mistakes growing up, admit their mistakes but now still want to put people in jail for that,” he added.

“Had he been caught at Andover, he’d have never been governor, he’d probably never have a chance to run for the presidency.”

Rand sounded off on Bush as the Kentucky Republican kicked off his weekend in Texas, scoring a coveted endorsement from the Texas GOP Chair, Steve Munisteri.

Paul, whose father Ron Paul is a retired Congressman from Texas, spoke at the Dallas County GOP’s Reagan Day Dinner on Friday, and on Saturday will headline a Tarrant County GOP.

The libertarian leaning Paul supports legalized marijuana and has called punishment for pot possession “ridiculous.”

He has also suggested that he may have dabbled with drugs in his youth.

“Let’s just say I wasn’t a choir boy when I was in college and that I can recognize that kids make mistakes,” he said in a radio interview in December.

:weedspin :weedspin :weedspin