U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, at the Western Conservative Summit 2013 in Denver. (Hyoung Chang, The Denver Post)

Ted Cruz ‘foolishly experimented with marijuana’ as a teenager, aide admits

Ted Cruz, the Republican Senator from Texas, isn’t a complete stranger to sativa.

The likely presidential candidate got high as a teenager, though now he calls that “a mistake,” according to the Daily Mail.

“Teenagers are often known for their lack of judgment, and Sen. Cruz was no exception,” a Cruz spokesperson told The Daily Mail earlier this month. “When he was a teenager, he foolishly experimented with marijuana. It was a mistake, and he’s never tried it since.”

If that quote sounds somewhat familiar, keen-eyed readers might remember when Buzzfeed unearthed a document last month that was evidence of Cruz’s guilty plea for possession of alcohol as a minor. A Cruz aide told Buzzfeed that he’d been pulled over and ticketed as a high school senior for having an unopened case of beer in his trunk.

Cruz’s comment to Buzzfeed at the time: “Teenagers often make foolish mistakes, and that certainly applied to me as well.”