Which 2016 Presidential Candidates Have Smoked Pot?

DETROIT, MI – A Michigan radio station on Tuesday — presidential primary election day in the Great Lakes State — asked Republicans and Democrats who want to be president about something they haven’t talked much about on the campaign trail.

Have they ever smoked pot?

The issue is important in Michigan, where three efforts are under way to collect enough signatures to put recreational marijuana use on the Nov. 8 general election ballot.

Outsider candidate Bernie Sanders, the Vermont senator who is challenging what several months ago appeared to be former secretary of state Hillary Clinton’s almost certain path to the Democratic nomination, confessed that he smoked marijuana twice decades ago.

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“I coughed a whole lot, that was my response to marijuana,” Sanders, 74, told WWJ Radio. “About 30 years ago, maybe more than that, I smoked marijuana. It didn’t do much for me, but my understanding is that other people respond differently to marijuana.”

Sanders thinks marijuana laws should be left to the states, and doesn’t think possession of marijuana should be a federal crime.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich, a Republican, reluctantly admitted he smoked marijuana, too, but not before mixing it up some with morning show host Roberta Jasina, calling it a “gotcha” question.

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“Let me ask you this, what is the relevance of what I might have done 30 years ago? I mean this is not what matters when we pick a president,” Kasich said. “What really matters is ‘Is this somebody that can create jobs? Is this somebody that knows how to command the military, conduct foreign policy?’ ”

He doesn’t favor its legalization, though.

“We have a curse in this country related to drugs,” he said.

Republican frontrunner Donald Trump said he never smoked pot, but he likes it “from a medical standpoint” because it “does do pretty good things.”

“Certainly, from a medical standpoint, a lot of people are liking it,” he said.

Recreational use of pot should be a state’s right, Trump said.

The radio station didn’t query the other candidates on the issue. But Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, regarded as the most conservative in the Republican field, admitted to experimenting with marijuana, Mother Jones reported, but doesn’t favor its legalization.

“But I also believe that’s a legitimate question for the states to make a determination…I think it is appropriate for the federal government to recognize that the citizens of those states have made that decision …”

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio isn’t saying one way or another, according to The Atlantic.

"If I tell you that I haven't, you won't believe me,” he said. “If I tell you that I did, then kids will look up to me and say, 'Well, I can smoke marijuana, because look how he made it.' "

He opposes legalization of cannabis, and says there’s “no responsible way” to smoke it, The Washington Times reported.

“There’s no positive impact to using marijuana,” he said. “Now, if there’s a medicinal use — if you can go to the FDA and prove that it helps with medicine, that’s fine. Then turn it into medicine.”

What about Hillary Clinton, whose husband, former President Bill Clinton, famously admitted in 1992 that he smoked pot a couple of times during his Rhodes scholar years, but didn’t inhale?

Clinton said at CNN town hall meeting in South Carolina that she not only hasn’t inhaled, she’s never smoked pot.

"I didn't do it when I was young, I'm not going to start now,” she said.

Clinton said she favors more research into medical marijuana to study its efficacy and how cannabis interacts with other medications.