A spokesperson for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) said Tuesday that the potential 2016 presidential contender made a “mistake” when he experimented with marijuana as a teenager.
‘”Teenagers are often known for their lack of judgment, and Sen. Cruz was no exception,” an unnamed Cruz spokesperson told the Daily Mail. “When he was a teenager, he foolishly experimented with marijuana. It was a mistake, and he’s never tried it since.”
NBC News confirmed Cruz’s past marijuana use.
That comment from the Cruz camp followed a Boston Globe profile about former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s (R) time at an elite boarding school in New England, in which Bush said he smoked marijuana and drank alcohol as a student.
“I drank alcohol and I smoked marijuana when I was at Andover,” Bush told the Globe. “It was pretty common.”
The Daily Mail reached out to representatives for 10 potential Republican presidential candidates, but Cruz’s spokesperson was the only one to offer a new admission. The drug’s legalization has become a small point of contention in the 2016 field as more GOPers who are mulling presidential bids have admitted their past marijuana use.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) seized on the Globe profile to call out Bush for “hypocrisy” on opposing marijuana legalization, even though he has sidestepped questions about whether he smoked pot when he was younger. Last year Paul told a local TV station “Let’s just say I wasn’t a choir boy when I was in college … and I can say that I made mistakes when I was a kid.”
This post has been updated.