Bush Says He Hasn’t Used Drugs in Last 7 Years

Gov. George W. Bush tried Wednesday to dismiss questions about whether he ever used illegal drugs as “ridiculous and absurd rumors” but later elaborated that he hadn’t used them in the last seven years.

“You know what happens? Somebody floats a rumor and that causes you to ask a question,” Bush said, interrupting a reporter who said she was trying to ask who might be planting such rumors.

“And that’s the game in American politics, and I refuse to play it,” he said. “That is a game. And you just fell for the trap. And I refuse to play.”

Later, Bush changed his response after the Dallas Morning News questioned him about the requirement that federal employees answer questions about drug use to get high-level security clearances.

“As I understand it, the current form asks the question, ‘Did somebody use drugs within the last seven years?’ and I will be glad to answer that question, and the answer is no,” Bush said in a story in today’s Morning News.

Bush, 53, would not elaborate beyond the seven-year time frame, the paper said. He said that, if elected, he would make no change in the federal policy that requires high-level presidential appointees to answer questions about drug use in the standard FBI background check.

“It’s a legitimate question to ask to make sure there are no drug users on the White House staff,” Bush told the newspaper. But, he added, “the president should recognize that some people may have made mistakes when they were younger, and the question the president must ask is did they learn from those mistakes and will they not repeat them again.”