TORONTO — He has been thrown out of a Toronto Maple Leafs hockey game for being drunk and belligerent. He groped a female politician at a fund-raiser for a Jewish community group, and was asked to stop coaching a high school football team after having a violent confrontation with one of the players. He has admitted to drinking too much.

But until Tuesday, Rob Ford, the mayor of multicultural, eco-conscious, politically correct Toronto, had vehemently denied a persistent report about a video that showed him smoking crack cocaine.

“You asked me a question back in May and you can repeat that question,” Mr. Ford told a crush of journalists, photographers and camera operators. “Yes, I have smoked crack cocaine. But no, do I, am I an addict? No. Have I tried it? Probably in one of my drunken stupors, probably approximately about a year ago.”

During his brief, impromptu news conference outside his City Hall office, Mr. Ford, 44, insisted that he had not been lying since May, when he first denied reports that he had used crack. At that time, the blog Gawker and The Toronto Star both said their reporters had seen a video from a man trying to sell it that apparently showed the mayor inhaling from a crack pipe and making homophobic remarks about another politician.