TORONTO

Admitted crack smoker Mayor Rob Ford wants to make drug and alcohol testing mandatory for Toronto city councillors.

Ford lost his bid during a debate Wednesday to have councillors’ hair tested for the presence of drugs and alcohol. He even offered to cover the cost of the initiative out of his own pocket.

“I don’t want to move this motion but I have to move this motion,” Ford told council. “I’m not a rat.”

As Ford read out his motion for mandatory drug and booze testing, laughter erupted in the council chamber.

The mayor’s motion was ruled out of order by Speaker Frances Nunziata.

When Ford challenged Nunziata’s ruling, council upheld her decision and deep-sixed the mayor’s motion. She assured Ford he could still try to bring up the issue again at the next council meeting.

Earlier in the debate, Ford jumped up on his feet and applauded the notion of testing councillors when Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti suggested it during the debate on the mayor’s crack-cocaine smoking and his misleading of Toronto residents.

“Yes!” Ford shouted when Mammoliti floated the idea while questioning Councillor Gord Perks. “Move that motion!”

Perks said he didn’t support drug-testing as a general principle.

Mammoliti questioned why Perks was against it.

“Is that because you use marijuana, sir?” he asked Perks.

Perks didn’t reply to Mammoliti’s pot question.

Ford admitted last week that he smoked crack around a year ago during one of his “drunken stupors.”

In 2011, Ford called mandatory drug-testing of TTC workers a “slippery slope.”

“How do you know if someone has a beer or smokes a joint on a Friday and they come into work on Monday?” Ford asked at the time. “I’m not quite sure how it works so I’m not educated on it to say right now.”