Toronto Mayor Rob Ford has admitted that he smoked crack cocaine, probably "in one of my drunken stupors," but insisted he is not an addict.
Speaking just days after Toronto's police chief confirmed that police have recovered a copy of a video that two media organizations have said shows the mayor smoking the drug, Ford told reporters he had smoked crack, perhaps about a year ago.
"Yes I have smoked crack cocaine," Ford said in his first admission of drug use after six months of evading the question.
"But, no, do I? Am I an addict? No. Have I have tried it? Probably in one of my drunken stupors, probably approximately about a year ago," he said.
Elected in 2010 on a cost-cutting platform, Ford has maintained strong support from voters in his suburban base even as the scandal has escalated. A poll taken after Police Chief Bill Blair confirmed the existence of the video put Ford's approval rating at 44 percent, up five points from a previous poll.
Ford repeated on Tuesday a plea to the police to release the video, which he told the Toronto Sun newspaper was probably "not pretty". He said he would not quit or take a leave of absence.
Ford has already apologized for "mistakes" in his past, admitting to being "hammered" at a street festival this summer and drunk at city hall after-hours on St. Patrick's Day last year. All four big Toronto newspapers, including the right-leaning Toronto Sun, have urged him to quit.
"I don't even remember," Ford said. "After some of the stuff that you guys have seen me, the state I've been in. It's a problem."
In May, when the Toronto Star newspaper and the Gawker media blog first reported the existence of the video, Ford said he does not use crack cocaine, and he could not comment on a video he has not seen.
Blair said last week that police had obtained a video "consistent" with the Gawker and Star accounts, recovering the video from a deleted hard drive scooped up as part of a wide-ranging drug probe.
But that video did not in itself not support charges against the mayor, Blair added.
Contacted after Ford's admission, a police spokeswoman said: "The information will be passed on to investigators."
