Maybe it’s a sign of the times or just a crazy California quirk, but admitting to past pot smoking doesn’t seem to cause much of a stink anymore.
Peter Siggins, Gov. Arnold Schwarzegger’s former legal affairs secretary, got confirmed to San Francisco’s First District Court of Appeal on Friday with nary a discouraging word about his admitted marijuana usage back in his younger days.
Asked on his application form whether he’d ever illegally used drugs, the 50-year-old Siggins wrote: “Yes. Occasional social use of marijuana in college and some law school. Last time probably in 1978 or 1979. I do not currently use any illegal drugs.”
That would mean Siggins smoked pot until his mid-20s. But no one seems to care anymore.
It wasn’t that way 19 years ago, when Douglas Ginsburg, now chief judge of the D.C. Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, withdrew his name as a Reagan appointee to the U.S. Supreme Court after an uproar over his admitted marijuana use during the 1960s and ‘70s.