When Justin Trudeau unrepentantly admitted this past week that he last smoked pot just three years ago, while already a sitting Member of Parliament, the Liberal leader displayed refreshing honesty and a welcome political boldness. He also revealed a disquieting disregard for both the law and the duty of public office.

“We had a few good friends over for a dinner party,” Trudeau told the Huffington Post when asked about the last time he smoked weed. “Our kids were at their grandmother’s for the night, and one of our friends lit a joint and passed it around. I had a puff.” When the interviewer asked if he had made a mistake, he said no.

Trudeau’s frank answer is a nice departure from the cookie-cutter messaging, evasion and general opacity typical of contemporary politics. And on first blush the transgression doesn’t sound so bad. He’s describing just the sort of common recreational marijuana use — probably no more harmful than an alcoholic drink and less so than a cigarette — on which he has built his compelling, if incomplete, case for legalizing the drug.

Trudeau has said the Conservatives’ tough-on-pot approach is not only ineffective, but also out of touch with the attitudes of Canadians. And clearly he’s willing to bet his political future that voters see no tension between casual pot smoking and prime ministerial aspirations.

He may be right. The manner in which politicians talk about their personal history with pot has evolved significantly over the past several decades. During the 1992 U.S. presidential campaign, Bill Clinton sparked controversy when he admitted to smoking weed in college, though he famously claimed not to have inhaled. Fourteen years later, Barack Obama rightly calculated that it wouldn’t hurt to confess that in his youth “he inhaled frequently” because “that was the point.”

These admissions were positive steps — moves toward more honesty in politics and a more realistic view of the changing place of pot in North American culture. They helped pave the way to the increasingly reasonable approach to marijuana policy in many parts of the U.S. — help we could certainly use here.

But Clinton and Obama were more or less kids when they broke the pot laws; by the time they pursued public office, as far as we know, they had sobered up. Trudeau, on the other hand, was already in a position to work toward changing the law when he decided instead to break it. The Liberal leader need not apologize for smoking pot, but he ought to repent for failing to uphold all of Canada’s laws, not just those he agrees with.

Clearly, Trudeau hopes to turn pot policy into a generational wedge to drive between his party and his political opponents. But if he planned to use the tale of his recent toke to that end, he failed to understand what the story is really about. And so far the Conservatives haven’t fallen into his trap. “It’s currently against the law to smoke dope,” said Attorney General Peter MacKay, avoiding any discussion of the merits of the policy. “I think most Canadians expect that their Member of Parliament will obey the law.” Fair enough.

Honesty is good in itself. And Trudeau should be lauded for doing a rare thing in contemporary politics: answering a direct question forthrightly. But, notwithstanding the failings of Canada’s current pot policy, his response reveals a lack of judgment and a disregard for the law and his duty as a parliamentarian to uphold it. As a legislator he’s in an excellent position to change bad laws. Breaking them is hardly prime ministerial.

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