Typically, politicians try to avoid smoking marijuana on live television.
Smoking a joint on live television is tough to
deny. But that is the predicament that one German politician finds himself in
after he took a drag off a joint during a late-night talk show on Thursday
night. He says he didn't believe that it was real marijuana, but the show's
host says it was.
US President Bill Clinton, famously, didn't inhale -- at least that's
what he said. But even as most of the country assumed he was not being entirely
forthcoming about his possible marijuana consumption, there was no way to
check. There was no proof.
A German politician this week, however, is having a decidedly more
difficult time with his denials. After all, Martin Lindner, the deputy head of
the pro-business Free Democrats in parliament, appears to have taken a drag off
a joint on live television.
On Thursday evening, Lindner was a guest on Benjamin von Stuckrad
Barre's talk show, "Stuckrad Late Night," when the host produced what
he said was a joint. Lindner grabbed it to have a sniff and suggested that it
wasn't real. Barre urged him to test it -- which he then did on a balcony
outside the studio, on camera.
"I took a drag to refute the host's claim that it was a real
joint," Lindner told mass-circulation tabloid Bild. "I don't
know what it really was, but I didn't feel any intoxicating effect." Both
the show's production company and Stuckrad-Barre himself have confirmed that it
was indeed a real joint. "Mr. Lindner showed himself to be the ideal talk
show guest," the host told Bild.
'Wrong Signal'
Lindner's party is the junior coalition partner in Chancellor Angela
Merkel's center-right government. Still, it is unclear whether there will be
any political repercussions. While the possession of small amounts of the drug
has been decriminalized in some parts of Germany, including Berlin, outright
legalization remains controversial. Indeed, both the FDP and Merkel's
conservative Christian Democrats came out strongly in January against a Left
Party proposal to allow the establishment of marijuana cafes.
Some elements within the FDP, however, would like to see marijuana made
legal. The party's youth wing distributed a statement on Friday calling for the
drug to be placed on the same level as other "soft" drugs such as
alcohol and nicotine. Germany's drug commissioner Mechthild Dyckmans, likewise
a member of the FDP, was not impressed however. Lindner's televised caper, she
said, "sends the wrong signal."
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