Bill Clinton once said “I Smoked, But I Never Inhaled” – But we did

Picture this: A young Bill Clinton, standing in a room full of Rhodes Scholars at Oxford, clutching a joint like a live grenade. The smoke curls around him, thick with possibility. He brings it to his lips, hesitates, and—exhales. No inhale. No deep, reflective moment. Just a polite flirtation with rebellion, like a man ordering whiskey and leaving it untouched on the bar.

Fast forward. Clinton, now a presidential candidate, is cornered by a question sharper than any scandal. Had he ever smoked weed? He offers a response that is neither a lie nor the truth, but a bureaucratic ballet:
“I experimented with marijuana a time or two, and I didn’t like it. I didn’t inhale, and I never tried it again.”

The room laughs. Late-night hosts have a field day. But let’s pause—because behind this carefully engineered answer is a grand hypocrisy, a tale as old as power itself.

The Ritual of Contradiction

Cannabis, the plant once vilified as a societal corrupter, has not held men back from power—it has accompanied them on their journey to it. The presidents who wagged their fingers at "drugs" often had their own private indulgences.

George Washington, father of the nation, numbed his agony with laudanum, an opium tincture that kept him functioning through the sheer misery of his rotting teeth. Abraham Lincoln, the great emancipator, consumed mercury-laced "blue mass" pills that may have sent his mind spinning through manic loops of laughter and despair.

Jump to the 20th century, and we find John F. Kennedy—charismatic, brilliant, and very much medicated. Riddled with back pain, he turned to a Manhattan doctor known as Dr. Feelgood, who laced his veins with amphetamines and narcotics. One night, amidst Cold War paranoia, JFK found himself smoking a joint with a mistress but refused the fourth puff, muttering, “Suppose the Russians did something now.”

And then, there was Barack Obama—the first president to embrace his cannabis past without a scripted retreat. As a member of Hawaii’s "Choom Gang," he did more than inhale—he hotboxed cars, thanked his dealer in his yearbook, and casually admitted to dabbling in "a little blow when you could afford it." No denials, no political contortions. Just an honest acknowledgment of a plant's place in human experience.

The Shifting Tide of Consciousness

Why is it that the same plant that has fueled the thoughts of scholars, artists, and leaders is still demonized in the halls of power? If a man can hold the nuclear codes after a past of partying, why should a plant disqualify a person from a job, a home, or a life without chains?

Cannabis is not a dead-end—it is a doorway. It is a step in the long, strange journey of human consciousness, a tool for expansion, a means of seeing the world from a slightly different angle.

The real absurdity is not in Clinton’s refusal to inhale, but in the refusal of governments to recognize what is self-evident: Cannabis has never been the barrier to greatness. Fear, hypocrisy, and control have.

So, the next time a politician tells you they “experimented but didn’t inhale,” remember—it’s not about the plant. It’s about the illusion they’re trying to maintain. And illusions, like smoke, eventually fade.

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