From: [C reuters] at [clari.net] (Reuters)
Newsgroups: clari.usa.top,clari.usa.gov,clari.usa
Subject: Molinari Admits Lying About Marijuana Use
Organization: Copyright 1996 by Reuters
Date: Fri, 9 Aug 1996 15:50:29 PDT
Expires: Fri, 16 Aug 1996 15:50:29 PDT
                                         
         NEW YORK (Reuter) - Rep. Susan Molinari, keynote speaker at  
next week's Republican Party convention, admitted she lied years 
ago when she said she had never smoked 
marijuana, the New York Daily News reported Friday. 
         The moderate 38-year-old Staten Island, New York,  
politician said last month that she had experimented with 
marijuana in college. But in a 1992 Staten Island cable 
television interview, replayed by local NY1 News Thursday night 
and Friday, she denied ever smoking pot. 
         The Daily News quoted her as saying ``lying was a stupid  
thing to do.'' She had decided afterward that the next time she 
was asked she ``was going to tell the truth.'' 
         The daughter of Staten Island Republican leader Guy Molinari  
said in the interview four years ago that she did not want to 
embarrass her father so she avoided smoking marijuana. 
         ``''No,'' she said when asked directly whether she had tried  
pot. ``You have to understand I was born and raised Guy 
Molinari's daughter ... we were very visible.'' 
         She told the Daily News, however, that she had made a  
mistake. ``That was the first time somebody had asked me. I 
guess I panicked.'' 
         Molinari, a rising star in the Republican Party, was  
presumed presidential nominee Bob Dole's surprise choice as the 
keynote speaker at the Aug. 12-15 convention in San Diego. The 
four-term congresswoman has pro-choice views on abortion that 
are at odds with many conservatives in the party and the 
influential Christian Coalition. 
         Her admission of marijuana use while a student in Albany,  
New York, in the 1970s put her on a growing list of politicians 
who said they experimented with pot, including House Speaker 
Newt Gingrich. 
         In the 1992 presidential campaign, then Arkansas Gov. Bill  
Clinton said he tried marijuana in his student days but did not 
inhale.