New York Mayor Bill de Blasio told reporters at Reverend Al Sharpton’s annual National Action Network Conference Wednesday that he regrets smoking pot in his younger years.
“Yeah, I think it was a youthful mistake and I didn’t continue it,” he said.
The Daily Caller asked de Blasio at a press conference in January if he or his wife Chirlan McCray smoke marijuana at Gracie mansion, to which the mayor responded he had not since his years as a young New York University student. A spokeswoman for McCray later told NBC 4 New York that she had not smoked marijuana in a “very long, long, long, long” time.
De Blasio made light of the media’s interest in his past marijuana use at the city’s annual Inner Circle show — an event where local politicians perform parody sketches for local media.
Following the show, the New York Daily News reported that de Blasio remarked that he is aware people think he is a pot head but his use of the drug was fairly limited. “It’s quite embarrassing to say how straight an arrow I am,” he said. “I did use marijuana a few times at NYU, and never since.”
During de Blasio’s tenure as mayor of New York, the NYPD began issuing summonses for small amounts of marijuana possession as opposed to making arrests.