Pubdate: Mon, 22 Dec 2003
Source: USA Today (US)
Copyright: 2003 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc
Contact:  http://www.usatoday.com/news/nfront.htm
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/466
Author: Jill Lawrence

AL GORE KEEPS SILENT AFTER SON'S MARIJUANA ARREST

WASHINGTON -- Former vice president Al Gore and his wife, Tipper, 
maintained a public silence over the weekend about the arrest of their 
21-year-old son on a charge of possessing marijuana.

Police in the Washington suburb of Bethesda, Md., arrested Albert Gore III 
and two passengers Friday night after officers said that they noticed 
someone driving a car without headlights about 11:30 p.m.

The Montgomery County police department said in a statement that despite 
frigid temperatures, officers found that all of the windows and the sunroof 
of the dark-colored Cadillac were open. Police said the officers smelled 
marijuana and searched the car. They found a marijuana cigarette under the 
front console and a baggie containing suspected marijuana in a cardboard 
cigarette box under the front passenger seat, police said. Police said 
officers smelled marijuana coming from inside a crushed soft drink can.

Gore, a student at Harvard University, and two passengers from Cambridge, 
Mass., were each charged with a misdemeanor count of possession of 
marijuana and released pending trial. Police identified the two passengers 
as Yann Kumin, 21, and Marc Hordon, 22.

The younger Gore has been a source of concern to his parents before.

* In September 2002, military police near Fort Myer in Arlington, Va., 
ticketed Gore, then 19, for driving under the influence. They did not take 
him into custody. At the time, a spokesman said the Gores were relieved no 
one was hurt and were "dealing with the situation privately as a family."

* In August 2000, when Al Gore was vice president and running for president 
as the Democratic nominee, the younger Gore was stopped by the North 
Carolina Highway Patrol. He was accused of driving 97 mph in a 55-mph zone. 
Officials dropped a reckless driving charge but fined him $125 for speeding 
and suspended his driving privileges in the state.

* In 1996, when he was 13, Albert III was suspended from St. Albans, a 
private school in Washington, for smoking marijuana during a school dance, 
Bill Turque reported in his 2000 book, Inventing Al Gore. The school 
treated it in standard style, announcing the infraction without the name of 
the offender, but news organizations learned of the incident. The vice 
president called leading outlets and asked them not to publish the story, 
Turque wrote, and "all complied."

In 1989, when he was 6, Albert III darted in front of a car in the stadium 
parking lot after a Baltimore Orioles game. He lost about 60% of his 
spleen, broke a leg and a rib, suffered a concussion and bruised his 
kidney, lung and pancreas. His lengthy recovery and his mother's depression 
after the accident prompted Gore to forgo a run for president in 1992.
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