Pubdate: Tue, 05 Mar 2002
Source: Washington Post (DC)
Copyright: 2002 The Washington Post Company
Contact:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/491
Author:  Lloyd Grove

THE PROF'S PUFFS

Our old friend, the distinguished Harvard Law School professor 
Charles Nesson, is up to some new tricks. Nesson, otherwise known as 
"Billion-Dollar Charlie" because of his inclination to sue for vast 
sums, last appeared in the column for posting a nasty e-mail exchange 
between two law school colleagues on his evidence-class Web site.

His latest Internet posting is a real trip. It's an audiotape of his 
interview with the prestigious Harvard Law Record, in which Nesson 
brags that he has long used illegal drugs, including marijuana and 
LSD, and occasionally before delivering lectures to his students, who 
- -- not counting room and board -- pay $27,500 annually to hear 
Nesson's thoughts (in addition to the wisdom of his colleagues).

"I guess it would have been 1966 when I first smoked marijuana and 
then did LSD, like '69, something like that," Nesson is heard telling 
the Record's Owen Alterman. "Well, it came along with the period. I 
tried cocaine once and got nothing from it, and that was that. And 
I've tried ecstasy and amphetamines some in college. I remember 
Dexedrine got me through statistics. And that's basically it. I don't 
do any drugs now except marijuana."

The renowned legal scholar explained that he likes to have a puff or 
two of marijuana -- "that's all it takes, my boy" -- on his morning 
walks. On a morning before he teaches class, Alterman asked? "I don't 
do it on a morning before I have class," Nesson replied. Have you 
done ever it before class? Alterman pressed. "Yes, yes," Nesson 
replied.

Yesterday, we asked the professor to clarify.

"No, not immediately before class," Nesson told us. "When Owen asked 
me if it had ever had any effect on my classes, I responded that the 
things I think about naturally affect anything I do. I don't 
guarantee that nothing negative comes out."

Alterman's questions about Nesson's drug use were prompted, it seems, 
by an e-mail he sent his students from a recent trip to Jamaica. 
"Jamaican marijuana is at least to me of the same quality as Jamaican 
blue mountain coffee," he told Alterman. "Extraordinary. And very 
expressive of Jamaica."

As for this column, Nesson, 63, cautioned us not to be "snide or 
salacious or snickering. . . . I think that the serious question that 
this touches on is one of hypocrisy and how people deal with it, how 
law deals with it, how I deal with it." He refused to tell us where 
he gets the drugs.

"These kids come to me and there's probably not one of them who 
hasn't used a forged ID. Probably not one of them -- maybe not one or 
two -- who've never violated a drug law. But most of the kids I'm 
talking to are already schooled in illegal underage drinking and 
experimentation with small violations of law."

At this writing, Harvard Law School spokesman Michael Rodman said the 
law school "declined to comment," but we're still hoping for further 
guidance from the Harvard administration.

Until then, all we can say is: Groovy, baby! Yeah!
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MAP posted-by: Josh