It is not exactly one generation`s dirty little secret. It`s more like a little smoke seeping from the closet.
For the second time, a Supreme Court nominee has acknowledged trying marijuana, raising a minor fuss. And a generation that came of age in the `60s and `70s feels both a tinge of recognition and a twinge of fear.
The `60s may be the Decade That Won`t Go Away, and the `70s may seem a fresh memory, but it`s still a long time ago, and those who were once young and reckless are now middle-age and established.
”It was just part of the times,” said Barbara Bates, a nurse from Flossmoor who once smoked marijuana but says she wouldn`t recommend it to young people today.
”A lot of people in the `70s experimented with drugs,” she said. ”If you went out to parties, you came in contact with it. It didn`t mean anything. It was like smoking behind the barn.”
Many did it, don`t do it anymore and don`t really care if politicians or jurists once did it too. But they worry they could be hurt if they publicly admitted to their own personal history of pot use.
What was once a shared experience is not something to share with your boss. Or in some cases, at this late date, even mom and dad.
Said a woman who went to the University of Colorado in the mid-1970s: ”I did it, but I`d just as soon prefer my parents not knew I did it.”
”How many of those old justices drank during Prohibition?” asked a 39-year-old man who admitted smoking pot in college but declined to have his name used because, after all these years, he, too, didn`t want his parents to know.
Politicians, of course, generally don`t want the public to know, even though a few refuse to gloss over past use. Sen. Albert Gore (D-Tenn.)
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admitted to it while running for president and did not seem to suffer.
Still, the fear remains.
On Thursday, as he was hanging up the phone after discussing the issue of marijuana use, one politician uttered this lament: ”Well, I`m sure that no matter what I said about this, it`ll come back to haunt me.”
And he hadn`t even talked about using pot.
It has become a familiar complaint in recent years, as the private lives of public figures undergo intense scrutiny, that a politician is not a candidate for sainthood.
Perhaps it should be noted now that even potential saints, or at least potential priests and ministers, have smoked pot. A Catholic priest and a Protestant minister conceded privately that marijuana was smoked by students in their seminaries in the `60s.
”Yes, people smoked marijuana in the seminary,” said one.
”Use of marijuana in my seminary was slight, but it was used,” said the other. ”I remember encountering it at a party outside the seminary. I pretended to smoke it and passed it on. I wasn`t going to be a puritan and leave.”
Those familiar with the atmosphere on many campuses during most of the last three decades are not shocked that some future judge or public official broke the law by toking on a joint.
”I`m sure there are any number of public officials who`ve smoked pot at some point in time,” said Cook County Board Commissioner Danny Davis.
Michael P. Hubbarth, 37, a lawyer from Hinsdale and the father of two, said he didn`t use pot in college, but it was easily available-”it was just there”-and he was surprised that Clarence Thomas felt a need to apologize for his actions.
”He`s apologizing for it, and I think that`s odd,” Hubbarth said. ”We all do things in our youth, and I don`t know if it`s appropriate for him to apologize for growing up. Back in that time, it was not socially unacceptable in that age bracket. It was almost the oddball who didn`t.”
”I don`t think it`s anything like a big secret that marijuana smoking in colleges was a very common phenomenon,” said Roger Kotecki, 38, a member of the Du Page County Board.
Kotecki attended Northern Illinois University in the early `70s, went on to Harvard Law School and now is in private practice.
”At that time,” he said, ”many people viewed social smoking in the same way some people view social drinking. People would pass a joint around at a party, and at a party with 30 people, 20 of them might take a puff. That was very common in those days.
”You look at the old movie `Woodstock,` and there were thousands of people openly smoking it at rock festivals.”
When you`re 20 years old, you don`t think that you`re potentially hurting your future with a few puffs at a dorm party. At that age, how many know they`re going to run for president or be nominated to the Supreme Court?
”When you`re a teenager or 20 years old, most people don`t think 20 years in advance,” Kotecki said. ”If you did a lie detector test of everybody between 30 and 50 years old with a college degree occupying a significant position in society and said, well, on the basis of having experimented with marijuana you shouldn`t have your position, the leadership of this country would be decimated.”
John H. Castings, 41, is now a real estate agent who lives in Willowbrook. He does not think that the tokes in his past have kept him from taking a responsible spot in society.
”I used marijuana in college, but on an experimental basis,” he said.
”But I don`t feel it`s held me back in any job or working in business today. Different generations go through different trials with drugs or alcohol, and because of that certain people have stigmas that others raise against that class of people. I don`t feel that should be held against him because of that time period in his life.”
One 37-year-old man compared his youthful toking with streaking, a silly phase that he believes has no bearing on today.
”I can`t say that my life`s been ruined since I did it. Of course, I haven`t run for public office either,” he said.
One 48-year-old man who attended Washington University in St. Louis said he never tried pot, but shares his generation`s common view that marijuana isn`t any worse than alcohol.
”I don`t think it makes a bit of difference. I don`t view smoking pot as any more disastrous than drinking alcohol,” he said. ”I think the older the person, the more it`s going to have meaning.
”They`ve tagged the wrong item. It`s a symbol of a generation and a symbol of what they want to tag as bad.”
Jerry Geurts, 49, a Chicago architect who said he tried marijuana as a student at Iowa State, said the tag should almost be considered a badge of honor.
”I don`t think it`s evil,” Geurts said. ”Anybody of my generation who did not smoke pot was not very adventurous and probably of very questionable intellect. Laws are meant to be scoffed at.”
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The Baby Boomers may not be as mad about reefer as they used to, but their comments do reveal that some still believe in the so-called generation gap.
”What age are these people who are freaking out?” asked Charlene Carpenter, 45, discussing the issue of Thomas` collegiate smoking. ”Maybe they`re people my age who forgot when they were young. Maybe it`s the older generation.”
Those who once smoked, however, are finding that the younger generation is posing the toughest questions.
Carpenter, a secretary from the Northwest Side, had a talk with her 12-year-old niece after several joints fell out of the girl`s school bag.
”She threw it up to me. She said: `You used to smoke pot, why shouldn`t I?` ” Carpenter said. ”I told her I was a lot older.”