One disadvantage that younger politicians face

The hardest drug that I have ever taken in college was hydrocodone, which is generic Vicoden. I had gotten a hold of a bottle back in 2002. I threw up the first time I took it. I took it a couple more times, and I realized that I just did not like being under the influence of the stuff. I flushed the rest down the toilet.

I should also mention that the dentist had prescribed it to me prior to pulling out my wisdom teeth. I was supposed to take one prior to the surgery, then continue taking it to control the pain while my gums healed. The stuff made me disoriented and nauseated, and I vomited right in the dentist chair. The dentist rescheduled my appointment. On the second attempt I did not feel as queasy, so my teeth were pulled without incident. He did have to saw through part of the jawbone to get one of the teeth out. Even while I was sedated I could still hear the little electric saw, and I could feel each of the teeth being yanked out, one by one. Later that night, I took another pill. I stopped taking them after that because I wanted to go back to work. So I took ibuprofen daily until my jaw felt better. I flushed the remainder of the prescription so that nobody would find them while looking through the trash.

So there. I have never taken drugs illegally. I think that this could place me at a slight disadvantage in a political campaign if I had an opponent who publicly admitted to smoking pot. Many voters who have previously used will think that I am lying because "everybody does it." Sorry kids, but I guess I just wasn't as cool as Bill Clinton and George W. Bush were when they attended college.

There has to be a political advantage nowadays to claiming prior drug use. Politician will lie about everything else to get ahead, why not lie about this. I think that admitting to using pot (or even falsely claiming to have smoked the stuff even though you never got invited to those kinds of parties) establishes a base line of credibility. "If he is honest about this, he must be honest about everything else."

But here is what really prevents most members of Generation Y from running for office. A baby boomer can confess to college hi jinks because they happened 20 years ago. But someone fresh out of college still has to wait for the statute of limitations to expire. So they can't admit to doing something illegal in order to prove how honest they are. The only crimes that would legally safe to talk about would be those that were committed during middle school. Would you vote for some 25 year old who says that he huffed airplane glue in the 6th grade?

A baby boomer politician's best advantage is not his experience, but the fact that he has had sufficient time to put a distance between himself and any youthful indiscretions. Meanwhile, while I'm glad that I haven't been indiscreet, I may wish that I had been when I'm 40 and running for office.