The admitted crack smoker and heavy drinker has long dodged calls for him to resign or go to drug rehab. He relented Wednesday after a video, shot early Saturday morning, shows him reportedly smoking crack cocaine. An audio clip, recorded secretly Monday night, reportedly catches Ford during a drunken evening out at a bar.
THE GLOBE AND MAILToronto Mayor Rob Ford is seen in this screen grab from a recently surfaced video holding a pipe. The clip was reportedly taken Saturday morning at his sister’s house.
Rob Ford is going to rehab.
A lawyer for the crack-smoking, booze-loving Toronto mayor say he’ll take a leave of absence from the job to seek help for substance abuse.
The announcement came Wednesday as new video of Ford smoking crack as recently as Saturday has emerged via The Globe and Mail newspaper. And an audio clip, reportedly secretly recorded Monday at a suburban Toronto bar, caught the mayor cursing and ranting during a late-night drinking bout,according to the Toronto Sun.
The oft-maligned mayor of Canada’s largest city will suspend his reelection campaign as he gets help to “deal with his issues,” Ford told The Sun on Wednesday evening.
He said he is “ready to take a break.”
FRANK GUNN/APToronto Mayor Rob Ford was caught on video smoking crack cocaine but has not bent to calls for his resignation.Ford has been urged to get help after videos of him smoking crack came out last year. He said he had smoked the drug once in a “drunken stupor” and publicly said he had cut back on his drinking.
But The Sun claims they have an audiotape from Monday of an “unruly” Ford ranting and cursing while ordering booze at a bar in Etobicoke, a Toronto suburb.
He even takes a nasty shot at one of his opponents in the mayoral race, Karen Stintz.
“I’d like to f—— jam her, but she doesn’t want … I can’t talk like this … I’m so sorry,” Ford reportedly says on the recording. “I forgot there’s a woman in the house.”
